Politics Jan 11, 2018
Numerous state lawmakers across the country have been accused of sexual misconduct or harassment during the past year. Those who so far have resigned or faced other consequences:
RESIGNED FROM OFFICE
1. Alaska: Rep. Dean Westlake, submitted resignation letter Dec. 15 after being accused by several women of inappropriate behavior.
2. California: Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, resigned effective Jan. 1 after a lobbyist said he pushed her into a bathroom during a Las Vegas social event and engaged in lewd behavior in front of her.
3. California: Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, resigned in November after allegations that he had kissed or groped multiple women without their consent.
4. Florida: Sen. Jack Latvala, resigned effective Jan. 5 following allegations of sexual misconduct raised by multiple women.
5. Minnesota: Sen. Dan Schoen, resigned effective Dec. 15 following several allegations from women.
6. Minnesota: Rep. Tony Cornish, resigned effective Nov. 30 following several allegations, including from a lobbyist who said he repeatedly propositioned her for sex.
7. Mississippi: Rep. John Moore, resigned in December after multiple women made complaints against him; the House speaker’s office said he had been facing an investigation led by an outside lawyer.
8. Nevada: Sen. Mark Manendo, resigned in July after a law firm concluded that he violated the Legislature’s anti-harassment policy and behaved inappropriately toward female staffers and lobbyists.
9. Ohio: Sen. Clifford Hite, resigned in October after being accused of sexually harassing a female state employee.
10. Oklahoma: Rep. Dan Kirby, resigned in February after two former assistants alleged he sexually harassed them, including one with whom he had reached a confidential wrongful-termination settlement that included a $44,500 payment from House funds.
11. Oklahoma: Sen. Ralph Shortey, resigned in March and later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of child sex trafficking after being accused of hiring a 17-year-old boy for sex.
12. Oklahoma: Sen. Bryce Marlatt, resigned in September after being charged with sexual battery for allegedly groping an Uber driver who picked him up from a restaurant in the capital city.
13. South Dakota: Rep. Mathew Wollmann, resigned in January 2017 after admitting to sexual contact with two interns, which a legislative panel said was a violation of rules.
14. Tennessee: Rep. Mark Lovell, resigned in February as a House ethics panel concluded that he had violated the
Legislature’s sexual harassment policy.
OTHER ACTIONS
1. Arizona: Rep. Don Shooter, suspended in November as chairman of the appropriations committee pending an external investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed a female colleague.
2. California: Sen. Tony Mendoza, agreed Jan. 3 to take a one-month paid leave of absence during an investigation into allegations that he behaved inappropriately with three young women who worked for him.
3. Colorado: Rep. Steve Lebsock, replaced Jan. 9 as chairman of the House Local Government Committee after allegations he sexually harassed a female lawmaker.
4. Illinois: Sen. Ira Silverstein, resigned in November as majority caucus chairman after a victims rights advocate publicly accused him of sending inappropriate messages to her.
5. Kentucky: House Speaker Jeff Hoover, resigned from his leadership post Jan. 8 after secretly settling a sexual harassment complaint with a female legislative aide and acknowledging he sent inappropriate text messages to her.
6. Kentucky: Rep. Jim DeCesare, removed from a legislative committee chairmanship in November after signing a secret sexual harassment settlement.
7. Kentucky: Rep. Brian Linder, removed from a legislative committee chairmanship in November after signing a secret sexual harassment settlement.
8. Kentucky: Rep. Michael Meredith, removed from a legislative committee chairmanship in November after signing a secret sexual harassment settlement.
9. Massachusetts: Senate President Stan Rosenberg, stepped aside in December from his leadership position pending an investigation by an independent law firm. The firm is looking into whether he violated any rules following a media report alleging that his husband sexually abused several men, including some who had dealings with the Legislature.
10. New Mexico: Sen. Michael Padilla, ousted in December as Democratic majority whip by the caucus after decade-old allegations that he had sexually harassed women in a prior job. Padilla also dropped out of the lieutenant governor’s race.
11. New York: Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin, formally sanctioned in November by a legislative ethics panel after allegations that he asked a female legislative staffer for nude photos and leaked her name when she filed a harassment complaint.
12. Oklahoma: Rep. Will Fourkiller, advised in February to get sensitivity training and blocked from interacting with the Legislature’s page program for a year after being accused of making inappropriate comments to a high school page in 2015.
13. Oregon: Sen. Jeff Kruse, removed from committees in October and told in a letter from the Senate president not to touch women after new accusations that he had inappropriately touched female colleagues. He faces an ongoing Senate investigation.
14. Pennsylvania: Sen. Daylin Leach, announced in December that he will “step back” from his campaign for a congressional seat after allegations that he behaved inappropriately toward female employees and campaign aides. Also facing a call from Gov. Tom Wolf to resign.
15. Washington: Rep. Matt Manweller, resigned as assistant floor leader and was removed as ranking member of a House committee in December. Manweller also was placed on paid leave from his job as a political science professor at Central Washington University and barred from contacting past and present students while the university investigates allegations of sexual harassment against him.
16. Wisconsin: Rep. Josh Zepnick, removed from legislative committees in December after being accused of kissing two women against their will at political events several years ago.
ALSO OF NOTE
1. Idaho: Rep. James Holtzclaw, accused in a complaint of making inappropriate comments to at least two people during the 2017 session.
2. Pennsylvania: Rep. Tom Caltagirone, facing calls by Gov. Tom Wolf to resign after reports that House Democrats authorized paying about $250,000 to settle a sexual harassment claim from a legislative assistant against Caltagirone in 2015.
3. Rhode Island: Rep. Teresa Tanzi, publicly alleged in October that a more senior legislator had suggested that sexual favors would allow her bills to go further, but Tanzi has not publicly identified the lawmaker.
4. Florida: Sen. Jeff Clemens, resigned in October after an extramarital affair with a lobbyist. The House speaker had said that because a lobbyist is dependent on legislators, “the facts here raise a very real question of sexual harassment.”
5. Kentucky: Rep. Dan Johnson killed himself in December, just days after being publicly accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 2013.
(ha tip Beautiful_Gracious_Skies)
DEMOCRAT ALCEE HASTINGS ASKED STAFFER WHAT KIND OF PANTIES SHE WAS WEARING--
knows "nothing" about $220,000 settlement
Winsome Packer
Cong Hastings Record sexual harassment settlement exposes byzantine congressional process
by LEIGH ANN CALDWELL / NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON — With new harassment accusations being revealed on a nearly daily basis in Congress, documents obtained by NBC News from the Hastings case shed light on how taxpayer money ends up being used to essentially sweep such incidents under a bureaucratic rug with little accountability. On Capitol Hill, a sexual harassment complaint is a long process. The documents include drafts of a letter approving the settlement and a confidentiality agreement as well as an internal “lessons learned” memo written by a House employment lawyer. And while many of the accusations and details of the case remain in dispute, the eventual settlement is a case study of a process shrouded in secrecy despite being funded by taxpayers.
In 2011, Winsome Packer, a congressional staffer who worked for the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (known as the Helsinki Commission) filed a complaint against the commission, alleging that its chairman at the time, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., made unwanted sexual advances toward her and that she was threatened with retaliation. The details of Packer’s specific allegations are recorded in the complaint she also brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Publicly filed court documents in that lawsuit show that Packer alleged that she “was forced to endure” repeated “unwelcome sexual advances, crude sexual comments and unwelcome touching” by Hastings. In describing the incidents, Packer alleged that Hastings had hugged her multiple times, sometimes in front of witnesses at public events, pressing his whole body against her, and his face to her face. Packer also claimed that after she complained to the commission’s staff director, she was subject to threats of retaliation by both the director and Hastings himself, including “threats of termination.”
Hastings, who has been in Congress since 1993, has denied Packer’s allegations. He called them “malicious” and “absolutely false” in a letter obtained by NBC News. The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee in 2010. After reviewing more than one thousand pages of documents and interviewing eight witnesses, the committee closed the case after finding that while the congressman admitted to having made some unprofessional comments, it had found “no additional evidence supporting [Packer’s ] allegations.”
The federal court also dismissed the case, with prejudice, in June 2014. Both sides maintain they were wronged. But this case, which took four years to settle, shows the system is so flawed that even Hastings’ House-provided attorney issued a retrospective critical of the process. In an internal congressional document obtained by NBC News this week, Gloria Lett, an attorney for the Office of House Employment Counsel, offered some “lessons learned” from Packer’s case that recommended the adoption of new policies to handle such claims.
So how did Winsome Packer end up getting a $220,000 taxpayer-funded settlement in May 2014? And why was that payment, settling sexual harassment claims against a member of the House of Representatives, not included in a disclosure to the House Administration Committee of all such settlement payments in the last five years, provided by Congress’ Office of Compliance, the congressional office that approved the payment?
The puzzle of a byzantine process starts with what Packer says happened when she first made the complaint. Packer claims that from the outset she faced a system that was onerous and intimidating. In an interview, she told NBC News that the process “is designed to totally demolish you and convince you to drop it.” At the beginning, like any accuser who files a complaint with the Office of Compliance (OOC), Packer paid for her own legal representation while it’s the taxpayers who provide free legal counsel for the member of Congress or the office involved in the complaint. Packer completed an initial requirement of a 30-days-or-less, mandatory counseling period for accusers, and then proceeded to a second requirement of a 30-day mediation period. She called that process “worse than the harassment.” She and one of her lawyers describe an attempt to undermine her credibility and intimidate her. George Chuzi, who represented Packer in her first meeting regarding the complaint, said the House lawyers were “unbelievably aggressive.”
Two government-paid lawyers representing Hastings sat across the table, as did her immediate supervisor. According to Packer and Chuzi, among the first things the House counsel said is that Packer is a “liar and an extortionist.” Packer added that the House attorneys also made an initial demand: Packer had to quit. Chuzi said he was “in shock” about the treatment of the accuser. Packer continued to press her case in federal court for three years. How Congress is trying to expose sexual harassment payouts Packer eventually received a settlement payment of $220,000, an amount confirmed by documents reviewed by NBC News and the largest known about since the Congressional Accountability Act was passed in 1995. One document obtained by NBC News details early draft terms of Packer’s settlement, and it is one of few such documents that have become public.
The others have not been released because confidentiality requirements, established by Congress and signed into federal law as the Congressional Accountability Act, bind accuser, accused and other legal entities from disclosing any terms or details. Despite these confidentiality requirements, Packer said she had decided to speak out because the environment has changed for accusers and she has little to lose. Packer, 60, who worked for the commission from 2007 until 2014, said she has not worked since the settlement was reached nearly four years ago, and is now living with her sister in Florida. Prior to her work as a policy adviser to the Helsinki Commission, Packer worked as a GOP staff member on the House Homeland Security Committee from 2003 through 2006. But when NBC News directed questions about the settlement and the payment to the two congressional entities the documents showed were involved in establishing and approving them — the Office of Compliance and the Senate Office of the Chief Counsel for Employment — neither provided answers. In an email, the Office of Compliance’s media representative wrote that “the Congressional Accountability Act requires that the OOC maintain the confidentially of contacts made with the office. The OOC cannot comment on whether matters have or have not been filed with the office.”
The Senate legal office did not respond to questions.