constrain enforcement activities by the Internal Revenue Service against delinquent taxpayers. After the Republicans took control of the House in 1995, Traficant tended to vote more often with the Republicans than with his own party. On the issue of abortion, Traficant voted with the position of the National Right to Life Committee 95% of the time in the 105th Congress, and 100% of the time in the 106th and 107th Congresses. However, he voted against all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. After he voted for Republican Dennis Hastert for Speaker of the House in 2001, the Democrats stripped him of his seniority and refused to give him any committee assignments. Because the Republicans did not assign him to any committees either, Traficant became the first member of the House of Representatives in over a century—outside the top leadership—to lack a single committee assignment. Defense of John Demjanjuk Traficant championed the unpopular cause of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born autoworker from Seven Hills, who had been convicted in Israel and sentenced to hang for having been the brutal Nazi concentration camp guard Ivan the Terrible. For almost a decade, Traficant (along with Pat Buchanan) insisted that Demjanjuk had been denied a fair trial, and been the victim of mistaken identity; in 1993 the Supreme Court of Israel overturned the conviction, on the basis of doubt. Demjanjuk was later deported to Germany on May 11, 2009, after the Supreme Court of the United States refused to overturn his deportation order. Demjanjuk was tried and convicted by a German criminal court of being an accessory to murder, but died before the German Appellate Court could hear his case, thereby voiding the conviction. Defense of Arthur Rudolph Following Pat Buchanan's recommendation to reconsider the denaturalization of former Nazi and NASA scientist Arthur Rudolph, who had been brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, Traficant spoke to the Friends of Arthur Rudolph, an organization based in Huntsville, Alabama. He argued that denaturalization had happened because of a "powerful Jewish lobby" influencing Congress. He added that it was a violation of a United States citizen's civil rights, and he suggested that Rudolph return to the United States nonetheless. Additionally, he "introduced a resolution in Congress [...] calling for an investigation into the OSI's handling of Rudolph's case." Meanwhile, in 1990, Traficant had planned to meet Rudolph in Niagara Falls, on the Canadian–American border; however, Rudolph was arrested by immigration officials in Toronto, and the meeting never occurred. Trial and expulsion In 2001, Traficant was indicted on federal corruption charges for taking campaign funds for personal use. Again, he opted to represent himself, insisting that the trial was part of a vendetta against him dating back to his 1983 trial. After a two-month federal trial, on April 11, 2002, he was convicted of 10 felony counts including bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion. Per House rules, he lost his right to vote on legislation pending an investigation by the United States House Committee on Ethics. Eventually, the House Ethics Committee recommended that Traficant be expelled from Congress. On July 24 the House voted to expel him by a 420–1 vote. The sole vote against expulsion was Representative Gary Condit, who at the time was in the midst of a scandal of his own and had been defeated in his reelection primary. Traficant was the first representative to be expelled since Michael Myers's expulsion in 1980 as a result of the Abscam scandal. After his expulsion, Traficant ran as an independent candidate for another term in the House while incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Allenwood. He