In a new bombshell report from Buzzfeed News, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is the latest public servant on Capitol Hill to be accused of sexual harassment.
In 2015, he settled a wrongful dismissal complaint with a former employee who claimed she was fired because “she would not succumb to [his] sexual advances.” Among several documents, Buzzfeed included four affidavits that claimed that he “repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public.”
“I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go,” an anonymous whistleblower told Buzzfeed.
The woman filed the complaint against Conyers in 2014 with Congress’s Office of Compliance and faced “a daunting process” that ended with a confidentiality agreement and a $27,111.75 settlement, which came from Conyers’ office budget rather than the fund from the Office of Compliance.
Two staffers allege that Conyers, who currently serves as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and is one of the longest-serving Democrats in Congress, “used congressional resources to fly in women they believed he was having affairs with.” Another staffer said she was “tasked with driving women to and from Conyers’ apartment and hotel rooms.”
This was the account of another accuser:
In her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.
The documents were provided by right-wing pro-Trump journalist Mike Cernovich, who said he chose not to publish them himself because he felt Democrats would try to “discredit the story by attacking the messenger.”
According to Buzzfeed, Rep. Conyers did not admit fault for the settlement and his office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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