The United States Senate Ethics Committee has cleared Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and his wife Jackie of all charges related to his supposed "sweetheart deals" for mortgages they obtained from Countrywide.

Today, the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed a complaint against Chris Dodd and determined that he and his wife Jackie did not violate ethics rules when refinancing their home mortgages.

Here is Senator Dodd’s statement:

I’m pleased and gratified that the Democrats and Republicans on the Ethics Committee have dismissed this complaint and found that the underlying accusations simply were not credible.

I’ve said all along that I welcomed a close examination of my mortgages, and I’ve also said all along that Jackie and I received the same mortgages that anyone else could have received.

After a year-long investigation in which it deposed witnesses and pored over 18,000 pages of documents, the bipartisan Ethics Committee has concluded that we violated no rules when refinancing our mortgages. There was no "sweetheart" or special deal; the allegations are and have always been false.

But I will say this. I understand that my reaction to those false allegations only served to foster cynicism. And that was my fault.

I’m confident the people of Connecticut will be glad to know that I’ve been cleared. But I also want them to know that I’ve learned from this experience.

Because, it’s not enough to hold yourself to a high ethical standard, you have to be ready and willing to respond to attacks on your integrity in a way that allows the public to feel confident that they were right to trust you in the first place.

I hope that today’s dismissal will go a long way towards restoring the bond of trust and confidence that I’ve worked long and hard to build with the people of our state. I want you to know it’s a relationship I have never, and would never, take for granted.

And now that the facts have been aired and the lessons learned, it’s time to move on. I’m going to continue fighting for you – humbled, wiser, and always proud to serve the people of Connecticut.