Nancy Pelosi facing backlash over defense of Rep. Conyers
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declined to call for the resignation of Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) over sexual harassment allegations. Plus, her latest comments during an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press' has raised questions on whether Pelosi is putting politics ahead of protecting women.
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Sunday that Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has done a great deal to protect women, many people thought they still hadn’t recovered from their Thanksgiving coma.
Did the female leader of House Democrats just tell us that Conyers – who reportedly paid a member of his staff at least $27,000 to settle a sexual misconduct complaint in 2015 – is someone who protects women?
Pelosi seemed to walk back her statement Monday, saying she spoke with former Conyers staff member Melanie Sloan, who said Conyers had verbally abused and harassed her in the 1990s and once met with her in his office in his underwear.
“I find the behavior Ms. Sloan described unacceptable and disappointing,” Pelosi said. “I believe what Ms. Sloan has told me.”
The women of Congress need to demand the immediate release of all the names of the people on whose behalf taxpayers paid out the $17 million in sexual harassment settlements -- if they don't it will be the worst cover-up since Watergate.
Perhaps, upon reflection, Pelosi wondered for a moment if she’d be OK with her one of her daughters working for Conyers. One wonders why her initial knee-jerk reaction was to defend the Democrat over her “zero tolerance means consequences” mantra.
Conyers stepped down on Sunday as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee amid an investigation by the House Ethics Committee into allegations of sexual and other inappropriate conduct by him, all of which he denies.
Conyers' hometown newspaper, The Detroit Free Press, called for his resignation in an editorial in light of what the newspaper described as a “public betrayal” in a questionable payout using taxpayer dollars to an alleged victim.
The Free Press editorial page consistently leans left and has been supportive of Conyers on numerous issues during his five-decade long career in Congress.
Sexual harassment allegations aren’t some canned political issue. You can’t just go on a Sunday morning network news show, with talking points in hand that your press person likely printed off from the Democratic National Committee’s website, and regurgitate them to a sympathetic media personality, who nods mindlessly while you spew your anti-female rhetoric … all while still pretending to be a feminist.
From John Conyers to Al Franken – and others we still don’t know about – it’s time for women in the position of real power to say enough is enough.
Every female elected official in the House and Senate has a responsibility to unanimously join together and demand the immediate release of all the names of the people on whose behalf taxpayers paid out the $17 million in sexual harassment settlements. If they fail to do this they are not only complicit in a cover-up. They have no business talking about how they advocate for women.
Such a cover-up, if the women of Congress allow it to happen, would be the worst since Watergate.
This is how it ends. If these members of Congress know their behavior is no longer enabled, their behavior stops. Taxpayers will no longer have to fund this disgusting juvenile behavior and women will know they actually have advocates on Capitol Hill who want to empower them, instead of pre-programmed feminists who have become politicized by their party affiliation and don’t bother to fact-check the fiction that comes out of their mouth.
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