Congressional staffers were allegedly harassed and propositioned by the lawmakers they worked for — according to secret settlements costing US taxpayers more than $300,000 and preventing the accusers from ever speaking publicly about what they endured, documents viewed by The Post reveal.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) forced out the “slush fund” documents after obtaining a subpoena voted through by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March.
Mace, who has undertaken multiple high profile crusades on behalf of assault victims, opened the files for The Post’s review this week. Neither Congress nor any court substantiated the allegations contained in the files.
One female aide claimed Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who represented Detroit for 52 years, coerced her into sharing a hotel room on a 2003 trip to Las Vegas. “You know what I want, you know I have needs,” he told her, according to a document outlining her accusations.
“I felt that Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave if she had known of his double personality,” the alleged victim said, referencing the civil rights icon who worked for Conyers for decades.
The alleged harassment continued on a 2005 trip to Chicago in Conyers’ hotel room, where “he switched the conversation to me meeting his sexual needs and that either I was going to ‘touch it’ (meaning his penis) or I needed to find him a woman who would satisfy his sexual needs,” she alleged.
Conyers called the allegations untrue when he quit Congress in 2017, telling WJBK “my legacy can’t be compromised or diminished in any way by what we are going through now.”
The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights records show a payout of $50,000 in 2010, plus a $27,000 severance payment in 2017. Conyers died in 2019.
Since 2018, following #MeToo revelations and action by Congress, lawmakers must foot the bill for their own settlements when confronting harassment allegations. The newly revealed settlements came between 2004 and 2018 under the old system.
The claims also exploded disgraced former Rep. Eric Massa’s “tickle” defense to an aide’s accusations of misconduct. Massa cast it as a fun pile-on — which got the matter lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.”
“I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe, and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy,” Massa told Glenn Beck on Fox News in 2010.
But in an official 2010 “Request for Counseling” document, an aide described a jarring wine-fueled office encounter.
“The tickling involved the Congressman touching [redacted] repeatedly on the sides of the torso. [Redacted] was extremely upset by this treatment and physically pulled away from his touching.”
Another document, filed by a lawyer on behalf of an accuser, said Massa told him “I like my coffee [redacted] and sweet, just like you.”
Massa allegedly told the aide the quality of his work gave him “raging hard-ons.”
He made unwanted advances at a wedding and at a funeral, according to allegations included in the documents. Massa commonly grabbed male staffers by the buttocks, repeatedly talked about oral sex, and solicited them for hookups in public, accusers claimed.
The aide alleged Massa “drank at all hours of the workday, filling his coffee cup with wine to mask his consumption.” He “routinely commented about the sex lives” of staff and made “overt comments about oral sex.”
Allegations against Massa resulted in settlement payments totaling $115,000.
The lawmaker, who resigned in March 2010, denied wrongdoing at the time and did not return a request for comment last week.
The filing mentioned that a program — presumably SNL — aired a sketch “that impersonated Mr. Massa’s account of the so-called ‘tickle fight.’
“The staff was portrayed as several young men … jumping on top of Mr. Massa tickling him,” it said.
“The very real sexual harassment that [redacted] and other staff members endured for a year at the hands of Mr. Massa was being portrayed in a comical and demeaning manner, all because Mr. Massa publicly lied and mischaracterized his conduct.”
In the documents, the ex-aide describes a time in 2010 when Massa, who shared a group house with several male aides, allegedly “came back to the group home and drank approximately 14-16 beers while making fundraising calls,” which Massa likened to oral sex and “giving head.”
Upon reaching the settlement, the complainant signed a release not to “disseminate or publish, or cause anyone else to disseminate or publish, in any manner, disparaging, defamatory or negative remarks or comments” — effectively quieting the subject after Massa quit Congress.
The documents include hand-written notes of a conversation between an official and an employee of former Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), whose alleged behavior brought a $15,000 payout.
According to the notes on the accuser, “Member & I had romantic relationship previously. His wife knew about it. It was a consensual relationship. Once he got elected — his wife got really jealous.”
“I was treated differently – like I wasn’t included in meetings because Rep’s wife was jealous of me,” according to the notes. Alexander told Politico the complaint had to do with a former staffer who he fired after learning about the accusation.
Another document includes a young aide’s accusations against former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) in a 2014 wrongful termination complaint: “A month prior to the Congressman allegedly telling [redacted] in confidence, he was having sexual fantasies about [redacted].”
The government paid out $84,000 to settle the aide’s complaint against him — the largest single payment Mace identified. Farenthold quit Congress in 2018 while facing an Ethics Committee probe. He died last year.
Others identified in the trove include former Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), connected to a $39,000 settlement over harassment allegations involving the lawmaker and a complaint involving alleged harassment by a staffer.
“There is nothing [Mace] puts out that wasn’t already public 8 years ago,” Meehan told ABC. He said he personally repaid the government for the settlement amount as he said he would when he left Congress in 2018, while saying he considered a young aide to be a “soul mate.”
Another complaint involved the office of former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), who died last year, where an aide was accused of harassment and the government made an $8,000 payment.
