Taxpayers funded more than $300K in payouts for sexual harassment claims in congressional offices, Nancy Mace claims

Rep. Nancy Mace has claimed Congress paid more than $300,000 to settle sexual harassment claims linked to multiple lawmakers’ offices.

Mace identified six of these lawmakers, all of whom have left office, in a statement shared on X Monday. The list includes the offices of former Reps. Rodney Alexander, John Conyers, Blake Farenthold, Eric Massa, Carolyn McCarthy and Patrick Meehan, she said.

“The results of my subpoena of Congress’s sexual harassment slush fund are in. Nine members. One thousand pages,” she wrote.

Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, said she plans to release the documents “once we confirm that personally identifiable information of victims and witnesses has been properly redacted.”

Her claims come after Reps. Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress last month amid investigations into their behavior. Both deny any wrongdoing.

While in office, Mace has sought to uncover sexual harassment on Capitol Hill, and has been an outspoken advocate of releasing the Justice Department’s files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender.

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The earliest settlement Mace listed was a $15,000 payment associated with Rodney Alexander’s office in 2007.

Alexander said there were “two separate and unrelated incidents,” and that the “offending staffers” were fired following an investigation. He was in office from 2003 to 2013.

“Nineteen years ago, during my tenure in Congress, there were two separate and unrelated incidents involving the behavior of two staffers in my office. The allegations were referred to the proper authorities and settlement payments were made by the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights,” he told The Independent.

“After an immediate investigation, both offending staffers’ employment with my office were terminated immediately. At no time during my tenure in Congress was any allegation made against me,” he continued.

Two years later, Carolyn McCarthy’s office was linked to two cases that resulted in one settlement of $8,000, Mace said. McCarthy, a Democrat from New York, was in office from 1997 to 2015 and died last year.

According to Mace, Eric Massa’s office was associated with three payments in 2010: $85,000, $20,000 and $10,000. Massa, another New York Democrat, resigned in 2010 amid reports he was being investigated over sexual harassment allegations made by a staffer.

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The Independent has contacted Massa for comment.

John Conyers’ office was linked to a $50,000 payment in 2010 and a severance payment of $27,111.75 in 2014, Mace said. He resigned in 2017 amid sexual harassment allegations and died in 2019.

Blake Farenthold’s office was also associated with an $84,000 payment in 2014, Mace claimed.

Farenthold, who resigned in 2018 and died last summer, “publicly promised to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for $84,000 in funds paid to settle the lawsuit brought against him for claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation,” according to the House Ethics Committee.

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The most recent payout was a $39,250 severance payment linked to Patrick Meehan’s office in 2017, according to Mace. She said there were two cases that resulted in one settlement.

In 2018, Meehan resigned from Congress and promised to pay back a $39,000 severance payment.

“I will pay $39,000.00 to the U.S. Treasury to reimburse for the severance payment that was made from my office account. That payment will be made within 30 days of my resignation from the House of Representatives. I did not want to leave with any question of violating the trust of taxpayers,” Meehan said at the time, according to NBC News.

The Independent has contacted Meehan’s office for comment.

The settlement payments Mace detailed were funded by taxpayer dollars, CNN reports. In 2018, Congress prohibited the use of federal funds to pay lawmakers’ settlements in connection with sexual harassment allegations.

In a letter to Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights said it approved 80 awards or settlements from 1996 to 2018 in connection with complaints against lawmakers’ offices, according to Politico.

“There is sufficient available information in the case files to confirm that 30 of the settlements involved matters where the Member was alleged to have committed the misconduct, or where the Member was specifically alleged to know about the misconduct committed by their subordinate, or both,” the OCWR’s letter said.

“In all 30 of these cases, the Member is a Member of the House of Representatives,” the letter continued.

The Independent has requested comment from Mace’s office and Comer’s office. The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights declined to comment when reached by The Independent.

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