For those who have studied most closely the decades of Charlie Rangel’s financial tangles and fiscal subterfuge, one doggedly puzzling question overshadows all the rest.
How does Rangel have so much money and where did it come from?
This is a man who draws a salary from the government of about $175,000 a year.
It’s a comfortable salary, but it certainly isn’t going to make anybody this rich — especially someone living in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Rangel did not inherit a fortune and did not marry one. And nor had he built some huge fortune before he first won election to Congress in 1970.
So, how is it possible that the man is now worth as much as $2.5 million and collects as much as $140,000 in unearned income every year? How does the man have more property than he can keep track of, including prime real estate in the Caribbean?
And how many people earning a government salary walk around with more than $250,000 in their checking account?
The short answer is that it is impossible to tell with what he has revealed so far.
And good luck getting the powerful chairman of the tax-writing committee to shed any new light on the question.
Rangel has a long history understating his income and his assets.
Now, he steadfastly refuses to release his IRS tax returns, which not only might explain how precisely he accumulated all his wealth but also would prove whether he’s been paying his taxes.
It is possible that Rangel is such a brilliant investor that he can just make money grow no matter what’s happening to the stock market.
But something seems wrong with that theory considering the disastrous financial acumen of most members of Congress.
But here’s what we do know.
Throughout his career, Charlie Rangel has always been quick to snap up political perks like candies from a dish.
Wearing chunks of gold on the white cuffs of his flashy shirts, Rangel carries himself with a supreme sense of entitlement that anything in his domain should be free for him.
It explains small things like why he felt the right to save thousands of dollars a year by storing his vintage Mercedes in the Capitol garage, compliments of the taxpayer.
And it explains the big things like snagging four rent-contolled apartments in Harlem or taking out a $40,000 loan designed to rehab low-income housing.
By abusing such programs design to help the most impoverished, Rangel has robbed from the poor his entire political career.
And as for rules? Well, they don’t apply to a man of his stature.
That’s why he didn’t feel the need to pay taxes on rental income on his Caribbean villa even though he runs the committee that makes sure every other American does.
While these traits don’t make much of an honorable public servant, they do make for a well-to-do public servant.
Charles Hurt is The Post’s Washington, DC, bureau chief.