Charles Rangel is just days from stepping away from a congressional career of 46 years. Rangel claims he’s never had a bad day in politics but parts of 2010 must have come close when he was censured by his colleagues in the House of Representatives. Our Washington D.C. Bureau Reporter Alberto Pimienta takes a look at the tough times Rangel faced in Part Two of his series: "The Lion Retires."

In 2008, Congressman Charles Rangel was on top of the world.

He was the Chairman of the Ways and Means committee, the highest body in Congress in charge of creating the nation’s tax codes. 

But a round of ethics scandals would soon cast a dark cloud.

Congressman Rangel was leasing four rent-stabilized apartments here in the Lenox Terrace complex, in Harlem. He was unlawfully using one of those units as a campaign office.

The leases were also priced below market.

Later in 2008, it was discovered Rangel did not pay taxes for a villa he owned in the Dominican Republic.

He was also accused of using his Congressional stationery to ask for donations for a center bearing his name at City College.

"If I was aware of the fact that when you solicited funds you should have used a piece of stationery that would have had a picture of the Capitol on it saying United States Congressman," Rangel said at the time. "I would have used the correct one."

In 2010, a House ethics committee found the Congressman guilty of 11 violations.

He was forced to relinquish his treasured and widely-respected Ways and Means chairmanship. 

And then in December 2010, Rangel received the most severe punishment in the House short of an expulsion. His fellow lawmakers voted 333 to 79 to censure the Congressman.

In 2012, two years after being censured, a spinal infection landed Rangel in intensive care. In the hospital, he asked his wife of more than 50 years, Alma, about everything he had missed while pursuing his dream in the halls of Congress.

"I had to find some way to try to make up to my kids, my grandkids and my wife," Rangel said,

It was there and then, in that hospital bed, that Rangel decided it was time to leave Congress.