Congressional staffers were allegedly harassed and propositioned by the lawmakers they worked for — according to secret settlements that cost American taxpayers more than $300,000 and prevented accusers from speaking publicly about what they endured, documents seen by The Post reveal.
Rep. Nancy Mace (RS.C.) subpoenaed the “slush fund” documents after receiving a subpoena voted down by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March.
Mace, who has waged several high-profile crusades on behalf of victims of the attacks, opened the files for review by The Post this week. Neither Congress nor any court has verified the allegations contained in the files.
Another female assistant said that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who represented Detroit for 52 years, forced him to share a hotel room on a 2003 trip to Las Vegas. “You know what I want, you know that I have needs,” he told her, according to the document detailing the things he is accused of.
“I felt that Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave if she knew about his double personality,” the victim said, referring to the civil rights icon who worked for Conyers for decades.
The alleged abuse continued on a 2005 trip to Chicago in Conyers’ hotel room, where he “switched the conversation to me meeting his sexual needs and whether I would say ‘touch it’ (meaning his penis) or I needed to find him a woman to satisfy his sexual needs,” she said.
Conyers called the allegations untrue when he left Congress in 2017, telling WJBK “my legacy cannot be compromised or diminished in any way by what we’re going through now.”
Congressional Workplace Rights office records show a $50,000 payment in 2010, and a $27,000 severance payment in 2017. Conyers died in 2019.
Starting in 2018, following the #MeToo revelations and Congressional action, lawmakers must introduce a bill to address their issues in the face of allegations of harassment. These newly revealed settlements came between 2004 and 2018 under the old system.
The allegations also blasted former Rep. Eric Massa’s defense of “tickling” the aide’s allegations of misconduct. Massa put it down as a fun bunch — which made the story even featured on “Saturday Night Live.”
“I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe, and four guys jumped on me. It was my 50th birthday. It was killing an old man,” Massa told Glenn Beck on Fox News in 2010.
But in a 2010 official “Request for Counseling,” the aide described a wine-fueled office gathering.
“The tickle affects the Congress [redacted] repeatedly on the sides of the body. [Redacted] he was very upset by this treatment and was removed from his touch. “
Another document, filed by a lawyer on behalf of the accuser, said Massa told her “I like my coffee.” [redacted] and sweet, like you.”
Massa is said to have told an assistant that the level of his work gave him “difficult things”.
He made unwanted contacts at a wedding and a funeral, according to allegations filed in the papers. Massa often grabbed male employees by the buttocks, repeatedly engaged in oral sex, and asked them to perform public sex, prosecutors said.
The aide alleged that Massa was “drinking at all hours of the workday, filling his coffee cup with wine to hide his drinking.” He was “constantly talking about the sex life” of employees and “made blatant comments about oral sex.”
The allegations against Massa resulted in a settlement of up to $115,000.
The attorney, who resigned in March 2010, denied wrongdoing at the time and did not respond to a request for comment last week.
The filing revealed that a program — possibly SNL — aired a sketch “that gave an account of Mr. Massa’s so-called ‘tickle war.’
“The workers were depicted as several young men … jumping on top of Mr. Massa and tickling him,” it said.
“That is real sexual harassment [redacted] and other workers who endured for a year at the hands of Mr. Massa were presented in a funny and humiliating way, all this is because Mr.
In the documents, a former assistant describes a time in 2010 when Massa, who shared a club house with several male assistants, allegedly “came back to the club house and drank about 14-16 beers while making fundraising calls,” which Massa likened to oral sex and “giving head.”
When he reached the agreement, the plaintiff signed a letter saying “not to distribute or publish, or cause anyone else to distribute or publish, in any way, derogatory, defamatory or bad words or comments” – to silence the subject after Massa withdrew from Congress.
The documents include handwritten notes of a conversation between an official and a staffer for former Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), whose alleged conduct led to a $15,000 settlement.
According to the notes to the complainant, “The member and I had a romantic relationship before. His wife knew about it. It was a consensual relationship. Once he was selected – his wife got really jealous.”
“I was treated differently – like I wasn’t included in the meetings because the Rep’s wife was jealous of me,” according to the notes. Alexander told Politico that the complaint is about a former employee he fired after hearing about the case.
Another document includes a young aide’s allegations against former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) in a 2014 impeachment complaint: “A month before Congress said. [redacted] in confidence, he had sexual thoughts about [redacted].”
The government paid $84,000 to settle an aide’s complaint against him — the largest single payment Mace has ever been identified. Farenthold left Congress in 2018 while facing an investigation by the Ethics Committee. He died last year.
Others identified in this trove include former Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), who has been linked to a $39,000 settlement over allegations of harassment involving a lawyer and a complaint involving allegations of harassment against a staff member.
“It’s nothing [Mace] you’re saying that wasn’t public 8 years ago,” Meehan told the ABC.
Another complaint concerns the office of former Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who died last year, when her aide was accused of abuse and the government made an $8,000 settlement.
