The bipartisan committee sent a public letter admonishing the South Carolina Republican for soliciting donations to Herschel Walker ’s campaign in the Russell Senate office building during a November 30, 2022, interview with Fox News.

Your actions failed to uphold that standard, resulting in harm to the public trust and confidence in the United States Senate,” Chair Chris Coons, a Democrat, and Vice Chair James Lankford, a Republican, wrote in the letter.

But the secretive committee exists to police and punish members who break the rules, which can include a public rebuke like the one Graham received on Thursday.

A Graham aide said the senator had completed almost a dozen similar interviews in the prior weeks “on the same matter from Washington, South Carolina, and Georgia.”

Graham contacted the two leaders of the Senate Ethics Committee after the interview to notify them of what occurred and to express regrets, the aide noted.

While Graham solicited funds for his own campaign during a media interview in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Ethics Committee found his behavior at the time to be “inadvertent, technical, or otherwise of a de minimis nature.”