The federal government paid out more than $338,000 to settle allegations of sexual harassment on behalf of House members or their offices since 2004 — far more than had been previously known — according to Rep. Nancy Mace and a person granted anonymity to describe data provided to the House Oversight Committee.
The panel subpoenaed the information detailing the government payouts after a March committee vote, seeking a full accounting of secret payouts made before the settlements were ended in 2018. Some of the payments have been previously reported, but not all.
Mace (R-S.C.) released a list of offices that had been implicated in the settlements, including former Reps. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) and Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) — all of whom have been previously publicly implicated in misconduct.
Mace also listed a settlement of $8,000 for the office of the late Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) as well as a $15,000 payout associated with former Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.).
Alexander, who left Congress in 2013, said in a brief interview Monday the complaint concerned a former staffer, whom Alexander fired after learning of the accusation. A message to a former McCarthy aide seeking to learn more about the settlement was not immediately returned.
News of the settlements comes amid renewed scrutiny of how allegations of sexual misconduct against lawmakers are handled after former Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) resigned last month over claims of inappropriate behavior with staff. For the first time since the #MeToo reckoning, lawmakers have begun to meaningfully reexamine how they adjudicate such accusations.
Mace said she would release the records provided under subpoena “once we confirm that personally identifiable information of victims and witnesses has been properly redacted.”
“Accountability is not a threat,” she wrote. “It is a promise.”
The payouts she listed, which were confirmed by the person familiar with the data provided to the Oversight Committee, included some that had already been publicly disclosed.
POLITICO reported in 2018, for instance, that Meehan promised to reimburse the government for a $39,000 severance payment to settle a sexual harassment claim. Farenthold also resigned in 2018, amid a House Ethics Committee inquiry into his conduct and in the wake of revelations about a $84,000 settlement with a former staffer. Farenthold died last year.
Others, however, appear to be new revelations, and the total scope of the payments is about double what was disclosed to lawmakers in 2017 during the last period of intense focus on lawmaker misconduct.
Public reporting linked Massa, who resigned pending an Ethics Committee probe in 2010, with an $85,000 settlement, but the payments listed by Mace include an additional $30,000. Massa could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.
Similarly, Conyers — who died in 2019 — had been publicly associated with a roughly $27,000 severance payment made in 2014 to an accuser. Mace lists a separate $50,000 payment made in 2010.
The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights said in a letter to Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that it had approved 80 awards or settlements for complaints against House or Senate lawmakers’ offices between 1996 and 2018, part of a total of 349 complaints made against legislative branch offices. The letter said a number of case files had been destroyed or were scheduled to be destroyed pursuant to OCWR’s retention policy.
“There is sufficient available information in the case files to confirm that 30 of the settlements involved matters where the Member was alleged to have committed the misconduct, or where the Member was specifically alleged to know about the misconduct committed by their subordinate, or both,” the letter stated. “In all 30 of these cases, the Member is a Member of the House of Representatives.”
In 2018, Congress passed a law prohibiting the federal government from paying for lawmakers’ settlements for sexual harassment claims. No payments have been made since 2017.
