Congress Has a "Hush Money" Slush Fund, Uses Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Pay Off Its Accusers
Congress Has a "Hush Money" Slush Fund, Uses Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to Pay Off Its Accusers
How Is The Swamp Spending Your Tax Dollars?
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Former President Donald Trump has been dragged into court by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for allegedly misreporting an alleged so-called “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star. Bragg alleges that Trump should have characterized the payment as a campaign contribution, not a legal expense. Leaving aside the potential the alleged payment was misreported, something that would generally mean a fine from the IRS, if anything, nothing Trump did was illegal. Paying people to keep quiet isn’t illegal (though demanding a payment to keep quiet, as Daniels might have done, is blackmail and very illegal), nor is having a consensual affair. All Trump did was hand some of his personal money (not government money or campaign funds) to his lawyer, who used it to pay someone to keep quiet about an alleged affair. That’s not illegal. Despite that, Bragg is ignoring the massive amount of crime that takes place on a daily basis in Manhattan to persecute Trump for allegedly mischaracterizing a relatively small expense.
Yet while the comedic tragedy has played out in court, with the portly Manhattan DA trying to squeeze as many New York Times-reading AWFLs (affluent, white, female, and liberal) on the jury as possible, most of Congress has been suspiciously quiet about the obvious lawfare attack on Trump. Why?
Because the Swamp has its own hush money scandal, one far worse in the details than Trump’s. According to reports from 2017, Congress has a hush money slush fund, one that, as of then, paid out about $17 million taxpayer dollars in settlements with various accusers. Among those who received hush money settlements were, if reports on the fund are to be believed, Congress’ sexual assault victims. Naturally, that’s something legislators certainly don’t want to be brought up, even if it means leaving Trump to once again stare down the Deep State on his own.
Congress’ Rainy Day Fund for Naughty Legislators
While Trump fights off dozens of felony charges for misreporting the expense of keeping an alleged mistress quiet, something he used his personal cash for, Congress faces nearly no scrutiny for its hush money slush fund despite using it to pay off sexual assault and harrasment victims.
That fund was created in 1995 with that year’s Congressional Accountability Act (CAA). The CAA’s passage led to the creation of the Office of Congressional Compliance (OOC), which is now called the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. That office administers a slush fund that handles disputes involving congressional officials, including not just legislators, but also the Capitol Police, the Congressional Budget Office, and other groups.1
News on the existence of that fund came from the since-renamed OOC itself. In 2017, it admitted to having paid out over $17 million in claims since 1997, some of which involved survivors of sexual assault perpetrated by members of Congress. Such is what CNN reported when the salacious story broke, noting:2
Two things have become painfully clear on Capitol Hill this week: Lawmakers and staffers say sexual harassment is “rampant” – but even members of Congress have no idea just how widespread the problem is.
The controversial and sensitive issue has taken center stage in Congress this week, with female lawmakers making fresh allegations of sexual harassment against unnamed members who are currently in office, and the unveiling of a new bill on Wednesday to change how sexual harassment complaints are reported and resolved. On Thursday, a woman shared her story of being groped and kissed without her consent by Sen. Al Franken in 2006.
…
On Thursday, the Office of Compliance released additional information indicating that it has paid victims more than $17 million since its creation in the 1990s. That includes all settlements, not just related to sexual harassment, but also discrimination and other cases.
An OOC spokeswoman said the office was releasing the extra data “due to the interest in the awards and settlement figures.” The OOC has come under fire in recent days for what lawmakers and Hill aides alike say are its antiquated policies that do not adequately protect victims who file complaints.
CNN has also learned that during the current Congress, no settlement payment approval requests have been made to the congressional committee charged with approving them.
CNN went on to note that there had been 268 settlements, though the OOC refused to say how many of them related to sexual misconduct. Continuing, CNN then noted that the opaque process surrounding Congress’ use of taxpayer dollars to cover up its own misconduct via settlements hides how the money is spent, reporting:3
It is unclear how much of the $17 million is money paid to sexual harassment cases because of the Office of Compliance’s complex reporting process. However, even knowing that dollar figure doesn’t quantify the problem: a source within the Office of Compliance tells CNN that between 40 and 50% of harassment claims settle after mediation – an early stage in the multi-tiered reporting process.
And the number of settlements reached may not be indicative of how widespread sexual harassment is, as many victims chose not to proceed with OOC’s process for handling complaints. Tracy Manzer, a spokeswoman for Speier, told CNN last week 80% of people who have come to their office with stories of sexual misconduct in the last few weeks have chosen not to report the incidents to the OOC.
While CNN had trouble confirming to what end the slush fund money was being used, Buzzfeed blew the scandal wide open. It did so with an article that came out around the same time in which it revealed the tragic story of a congressional staffer who was sexually harassed and assaulted by a Democratic congressman, then paid in a settlement to keep quiet. That outlet reported:4
Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”
Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sex acts, 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. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.
…
And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her.
“I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go,” she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman’s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.
Continuing, Buzzfeed then noted that, though the OOC fund wasn’t used in Conyers’ case, it had been used for decades to cover up “episodes of sexual abuse.” Buzzfeed reported:5
Last week the Washington Post reported that Congress’s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment. The Conyers documents, however, give a glimpse into the inner workings of the office, which has for decades concealed episodes of sexual abuse by powerful political figures.
The woman who settled with Conyers launched the complaint with the Office of Compliance in 2014, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and ended up facing a daunting process that ended with a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of more than $27,000. Her settlement, however, came from Conyers’ office budget rather than the designated fund for settlements.
Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward.
After this an employee can choose to take the matter to federal district court, but another avenue is available: an administrative hearing, after which a negotiation and settlement may follow.
…
In this case, one of Conyers’ former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers’ taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would “rehire” the woman as a “temporary employee” despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.
…
The process was “disgusting,” said Matthew Peterson, who worked as a law clerk representing the complainant, and who listed as a signatory to some of the documents.
“It is a designed cover-up,” said Peterson, who declined to discuss details of the case but agreed to characterize it in general terms. “You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It’s like being abused twice.”
Because of OOC’s intentionally opaque reporting on the fund, it is unknown how many other members of Congress, like Conyers, systemically harassed staff or others, sexually abused them, and then used taxpayer dollars to cover it up.
Politico also reported that, in Conyers’ case, his office paid the settlement, not the OOC fund.6 Further, Politico reported that, as of 2017, the House claimed that the House’s use of the fund was limited:7
House Administration Committee Chairman Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) told GOP lawmakers in a closed-door Friday morning meeting that only one House office in the past five years had used an Office of Compliance account to settle a sexual harassment complaint. Harper said in that one instance, the settlement totaled $84,000.
However, that statement was classic Swamp speak in that it obfuscates the full scope of the problem by emphasizing the recent past. Specifically, it excludes the Senate, meaning other such settlement payments could have originated from Senate offices. Further, Harper’s assurance was limited to just five years out of the fund’s then-two decades in existence, so how frequently the fund was used to pay off sexual abuse victims for the other three-quarters of its existence was left unsaid. Additionally, Politico’s report indicated that the fund appears to have been used to pay a settlement for Rep. Farenthold of Texas when he was accused of sexual harassment, so there is evidence that the fund was used for that purpose.8
In any case, when the story about the fund broke, the public was furious. So, a bill was then introduced in November of 2017 to prevent lawmakers from using “public funds to pay awards and settlements in connection with claims under such Act which arise from sexual harassment.”9 It was introduced but never made it any farther;10 just as predictably as the public being outraged, the Swamp voted to use other people’s money to pay off its sexual abuse victims.
Then, in 2018, Congress passed a law that would ostensibly reform the process and generally make members liable for the damage wrought by their misdeeds, particularly those of a sexual sort.11 But, of course, there were limitations on Congressional liability, as Reuters reported:
Over the past year, several U.S. lawmakers have left office following sexual misconduct allegations, including Democratic Senator Al Franken, Democratic Representative John Conyers, and Republican Representatives Trent Franks and Blake Farenthold. They all denied the allegations.
Under the legislation, lawmaker liability would be capped at $300,000 when a court has assessed the damages, but there would be no limit on lawmaker liability for settlements. Currently, the money is paid from taxpayer-funded accounts.
The legislation says Congress must also regularly report and publish settlements, a departure from past practices in which settlements were secret.
Farenthold left Congress in April, several months after Politico reported he settled a sexual harassment lawsuit with taxpayer funds. He denied wrongdoing, but pledged to pay the money back.
But while the law was changed, the amount paid out by the fund continues to climb. In a 2021 report, for example, Open the Books noted that the total paid out climbed to $18.2 million in 2019.12 While that does not necessarily include incidents of a sexual nature, as the reasons for the payments remain opaque, it shows that the fund is still in operation and still pumping out dollars for members of Congress, even after “reforming” it.
The Swamp at Work
Revolver News, commenting on the sad state of things in America as shown by the Congressional hush money revelation and the judicial system’s treatment of Trump, summed up the situation best when it noted:13
Mr. Conyers wasn’t paraded into court for using our tax dollars to quiet down a victim, was he? We’d love to do a little digging and see if any other lawmakers or federal employees got the same treatment as President Trump, but guess what? We don’t know the names of the federally employed folks who dipped into this congressional “hush money” honey pot.
What we’re witnessing in the United States is a prime example of peak corruption in action. Federal employees can get away with sexual assault left and right, and when they’re caught, the slush fund jumps into action to hush it up, no questions asked. And instead of these scumbags facing the music, it’s President Trump who’s under the microscope and being dragged through a sham political trial.
There are two tiers of justice in this country now: Swamp Creature and everyone else.
Members of Congress not only are never held to account for sexual harassment or abuse, but had a fund set up to keep allegations of misconduct quiet, a fund that was in operation for decades and the extent to which it was used for the purpose of sexual assault, much less by whom, remains a mystery. No one was held to account, taxpayers remain out of pocket to cover up the misdeeds of others, and the fund remains in some degree of operation.
Meanwhile, mere mortals like Trump are dragged through the mud in obviously political trials because an accountant allegedly misstated the line item on his return, a small misdemeanor at the absolute worst. Unlike the members of Congress, this isn’t a sexual assault case, much less sexual abuse. It’s just a bureaucratic error blown out of proportion by a vindictive leftist of a DA. Yet Trump’s facing the fire Congress never faced for its much worse crimes because the Swamp protects its own, and he’s not in their horrifying club.
Featured image credit: By Diliff - Self-published work by Diliff, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=558744