Taxpayers Pay $84k For Texas Rep's Sexual Misconduct

Republicans have been howling for Democratic Rep. John Conyers to resign from Congress after it was found that he had settled a sexual harassment suit with an accuser. It now looks like the congressman will not run for re-election in 2018 (and has said he would give up his position on the House Judiciary Committee).

I am left to wonder if those same Republicans will be just as vociferous in calling for the resignation of one of their own. Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold (U.S. House District 27 in Texas) has been reported to have also settled a claim of sexual harassment against himself. He was accused of the harassment by a member of his own staff, who was paid $84,000 to settle the lawsuit.

And guess who paid that $84.000? It wasn't Farenthold. It was the American taxpayers! Here is how his transgression is described in Politico:

Rep. Blake Farenthold used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by his former spokesman.

Lauren Greene, the Texas Republican’s former communications director, sued her boss in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

Greene claimed in the lawsuit that another Farenthold aide told her the lawmaker had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene. She also claimed that Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” and told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”

When she complained about comments Farenthold and a male staffer made to her, Greene said the congressman improperly fired her. She filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but the case was later dropped after both parties reached a private settlement.

Greene had worked for Farenthold for 18 months. According to Greene's complaint in court, Farenthold and his top aide, Bob Haueter, sexually harassed her. . . .

“Farenthold regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘red head patrol to keep him out of trouble,’” Greene’s complaint alleged. “On one occasion, prior to February 2014, during a staff meeting at which [Greene] was in attendance, Farenthold disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for a ‘threesome.’”

The complaint added: “On June 10, 2014, in response to Haueter’s complaint about [Greene’s] shirt … which Haueter claimed was transparent and showed [Greene’s] nipples, Farenthold told [another woman staffer] that [Greene] could show her nipples whenever she wanted to,” Greene’s complaint asserted.

(Farenthold, on the right, at a "pajama party" a few years ago.)

Congress Protects Its Sex Abusers (& Bills The Taxpayers)

(Cartoon image is by John Deering in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.)

Since 1997, the government has paid out at least $17 million in workplace claims against members of Congress -- much of it for sexual harassment/abuse claims. That's $850,000 a year for the last 20 years, and the people footing the bill for that are the American taxpayers. That's right -- when a congressman discriminates against an employee, or abuses that employee sexually, they don't have to pay their victim. They pass the cost on to taxpayers.

And making matters worse, the offending members of Congress are not revealed. Before receiving any settlement, a victim must sign a nondisclosure agreement, and congressional rules prevent the offenders names from being made public. As a taxpayer, you don't even get to know whose crimes and unethical behavior you are funding.

Is this OK with you. It's not OK with me. I believe Americans deserve to know what their taxes are being spent on. And they, especially the voters, deserve to know which members of Congress are violating ethical or criminal rules. Anytime a payment is negotiated and agreed to, it should become public information -- and the name of the member of Congress that caused it should be made public (along with the charges resulting in the settlement).

Readers will know that I am a die-hard Democrat, but this is an issue that transcends party labels. Any member of Congress that discriminates against, to sexually harasses or abuses an employee should be named publicly -- and that is true whether they are a Republican or Democrat.

We expect people in other professions to adhere to a high standard of conduct. Why should we expect any less from members of Congress? I think a case could be easily made that they should be held to a higher standard.

Trump Tried To Lift Sanctions On Russia (For Election Help?)

(Cartoon image is by Kevin Siers in The Charlotte Observer.)

Most people don't know it, but one of the first things Trump tried to do after taking office was to lift the sanctions Congress had put on Russia for its aggression in Eastern Europe. And he wanted to do that unilaterally, without the U.S. receiving anything in return. Was this an attempt to reward Russia for its help in getting Trump elected in 2016? I can't think of any other reason why he would do such a thing. Russia certainly hasn't curbed the aggression that caused those sanctions to be applied.

He is how Mark Sumner at Daily Kos describes Trump's sneaky attempt to lift those sanctions:

The “deep state,” composed of government employees who wage a surreptitious campaign against Trump, is a fantasy of the alt right. But in the early days of the Trump regime, workers in the State Department did engage in a conflict to ward off a move so blatant it seems unreal.

Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.

This was in the same period that Trump brought in James Comey to try and extract a pledge of loyalty, the same period Trump and Putin talked on the phone for the first time (so far as we know), the period that Trump dropped the Joint Chiefs from the National Security Council. With Rex Tillerson still waiting approval, Trump was already pressing for Russian sanctions to be lifted.

In exchange for lifting the sanction, Trump was to get … nothing.

“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several “panicky” calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, “Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”

Despite the knowledge that Russia has just directly interfered in the election, Trump was determined to hand Russia a big reward. Or maybe the word shouldn’t be “despite.” Maybe it should be “because.”

Trump gave every sign that, rather than punish Russia for interfering in the US election, he wanted to reward them for his win.

… the administration was developing a plan to lift sanctions — and possibly arrange a summit between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin — as part of an effort to achieve a “grand bargain” with Moscow. “It would have been a win-win for Moscow,” said [former assistant secretary of state for human rights Tom Malinowski], who only days before he left office announced his own round of sanctions against senior Russian officials for human rights abuses under a law known as the Magnitsky Act.

Trump wanted to flip those sanctions, return the Russian compounds in New York and Maryland, and lift the economic sanctions—a move that would gift Moscow hundreds of millions in oil revenue. In exchange the Russians would not have to give back Crimea, not have to admit their invasion of Ukraine, and not have to admit any involvement in the US election.

Since this was the same State Department bureau that had helped develop the punitive measures in the first place, and actively pushed for them under the leadership of Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had just resigned, the tasking order left staffers feeling “deeply uncomfortable,” said one source, who asked not to be identified.

Maybe that’s one definition of “deep state”—the experienced staff that’s deeply uncomfortable with Trump’s foolish actions.

The only thing that stopped Trump from lifting the sanctions immediately seems to be that employees of the State Department brought the effort to the attention of Congress. That effort led to action that made it more difficult to remove the sanctions without a public process.

The lobbying effort produced some immediate results: On Feb. 7, Cardin and Sen. Lindsay Graham introduced bipartisan legislation to bar the administration from granting sanctions relief without first submitting a proposal to do so for congressional review. “Russia has done nothing to be rewarded with sanctions relief,” Graham said in a statement at the time.

If not for the lobbying effort of a small group of State Department employees who saw what was happening and moved in the only way they know how, Donald Trump would have already lifted sanctions against Russia.