Rep. Joe Sestak’s troubles may be far from over. According to the Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) has promised to “file a formal request to the [House Ethics Committee] by July 4 if an outside group does not do so beforehand.” Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and former ethics-panel chairman, tells National Review Online that an ethics investigation into Sestak would be “significant.”

“Now, I have not spoken with anyone on the ethics committee, but I assume they’re looking into this, based on the heavy media coverage,” Smith says. “At the same time, it’s not my role to pressure the ethics committee, and I wouldn’t give them a timetable. We need to give them time to be methodical, time to pursue this. Wait and see what happens in the coming weeks. If and when we hear that they are conducting an independent investigation, it’ll be significant in a number of ways.”

Compared to the House GOP’s efforts to investigate the Sestak-Romanoff stories on its own, the House ethics panel carries more weight, Smith says, since it “operates differently, with its equal number of Republicans and Democrat.” Still, he notes that he’s “not holding my breath that a congressional committee will subpoena anyone about this anytime soon.”

Should Sestak, as a member of Congress, get greater scrutiny from the House than Andrew Romanoff, the Colorado Democrat who was also allegedly offered a position to drop out of a Democratic primary? “I’d like to keep this impersonal,” Smith says. “It’s up to the ethics committee to decide whether to look into [Sestak]. [The House GOP] is pressing on all of the offers, trying to find out what the facts are, and where they lead. The public has the right to know.”