CongressionalBadBoys.com | home | Myers Michael Joseph "Ozzie" Myers Democrat, Pennsylvania (1975-1980) On October 3, 1980, the Honorable Michael "Ozzie" Myers became the first congressman, since the Civil War, to be expelled for Congress--and the first for official corruption.  The vote was 376-30.  Several months earlier, Myers, then 37, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy for taking $50,000 in cash from an FBI undercover agent in the Abscam investigation.  He got three years in the federal pen and fined $20,000.  He was released before his full term had been completed. Myers became a member of the Congressional Prison Caucus. Myers, a former longshoreman with a tenth-grade education, was unrepentant and filed two lawsuits against both the Ethics Committee and the FBI.  Myers was caught on video tape saying this, while pocketing money from the undercover "sheik":  "I'm gonna tell you somethin' real simple and short.  Money talks in the business and bullshit walks.  And it works the same way down in Washington."    True, Ozzie, but other members of Congress don't like hearing the truth. [For other pearls of wisdom, check the Quote Board]. Myers on tape boasted about his influence in Congress;  later he said he was only "play-acting."  Thus, Myers argued, he did not have any "criminal intent." But there was a particular problem on the video tape:  Ozzie is in the Barclay Hotel in Philadelphia complaining to undercover feds that he had only received $15,000 from the first payoff in the $50,000 packages of bribes.  About 200 members of Congress took time out go to the House recording studio and watch the tape of Myers taking the money and spouting those infamous words. The only other Congressman in modern times to actually go through an expulsion proceedings of the full House of Representatives (and lose) was the Honorable Jim Traficant. Earlier, Myers got in trouble when he was charged in 1979 with assaulting two employees of an Arlington, Virginia, hotel.  He was charged with kicking and punching a security guard and a cashier during a brawl in the rooftop lounge at the Pentagon City Quality Inn.     Sources:  Charles R. Babcock, "Myers Expelled," Washington Post, Oct. 3, 1980, A1; "Pa. Rep. Myers Will Answer Assault Counts," Washington Post, Jan. 18, 1979, B2;  Charles R. Babcock, "Six Defendants in Abscam Get Prison, Fines," Washington Post, Aug. 14, 1981, A1.