Washington — Another woman who worked for longtime U.S. Rep. John Conyers is accusing him of touching her inappropriately “by stroking and rubbing my thighs” and appearing naked before her.
Elisa Grubbs, who said she worked for Conyers from 2001-13, claims she also witnessed him touching and stroking the legs and buttocks of Marion Brown, Grubbs’ cousin, and other female employees of the congressman on “multiple occasions.”
“When Rep. Conyers would inappropriately touched me like this, my eyes would pop out and I would be stunned in disbelief,” Grubbs wrote in an affidavit posted on Twitter by Brown’s attorney, Lisa Bloom.
Rep. Conyers: ‘I am retiring today’
Conyers, the longest-serving member of the U.S. House, has repeatedly denied claims he mistreated staffers.
Calls for his resignation reached the highest levels of House leadership last week, as Brown and another accuser went public detailing his alleged misconduct.
Supporters held a rally in Detroit on Monday to call for Conyers to receive “due process” and for critics to stop pressuring him to step down.
Bloom said Grubbs’ affidavit is the first of several she will release describing allegations that Conyers sexually harassed employees and “covered up complaints.”
“My client Marion Brown asks only for an acknowledgment and apology,” Bloom said on Twitter.
Grubbs described a time that Conyers slid his hand up her skirt while she was sitting next to him in the front row of a church.
She said she was startled and jumped to her feet, exclaiming, “He just ran his hand up my thigh!” — an incident she said was witnessed by other staffers.
On another occasion, she was at Conyers’ home when he emerged from the bathroom naked, she said. Grubbs ran out of the house.
Grubbs said Conyers referred to her and Brown as “Big Girl Cousins” and would often say, “Those are some big girls.”
“Witnessing Rep. Conyers rub women’s thighs and buttocks and make comments about women’s physical attributes was a regular part of life while working in the office of Rep. Conyers,” Grubbs wrote.
Conyers’ lawyer, Arnold Reed, dismissed the new allegations late Monday.
“With regard to the latest #affidavit just released, this is nothing more than tomfoolery coming from the mouth of Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer and unworthy of further comment,” Reed tweeted.
Bloom had represented Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, against several claims of sexual harassment.
Brown broke a confidentiality agreement to go on NBC’s “Today Show” on Thursday, describing what led her to file a 2014 complaint against her boss, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances.
Conyers settled Brown’s complaint for $27,000 using his taxpayer-funded office budget. Brown has offered to testify before the House Ethics Committee, which is investigating Conyers.
The Detroit News first reported last week that former staffer Deanna Maher said Conyers sexually harassed her, including inappropriately touching her, in three incidents spanning 1997 to 1999. And another former staffer filed a lawsuit in federal court this year alleging sexual harassment by Conyers but later withdrew the complaint to protect the congressman’s reputation.
Grubbs indicated in her affidavit that she’s also willing to testify under oath.
Grubbs attended a fundraiser with Conyers and Brown in 2005 at a Chicago hotel, where she overheard Conyers ask Brown to come to his hotel room because he needed her help with something, she said.
Grubbs said she later picked up her cousin, Brown, at the hotel and that she was “physically shaken and upset,” with red eyes.
“Ms. Brown then proceeded to tell me and my mother that, ‘That SOB just wanted me to have sex with him!” Grubb recalled.
Brown had said on NBC last week that Conyers had invited her to a hotel room in Chicago under the guise of discussing business but was in his underwear when she arrived.
“He asked me to satisfy him sexually,” Brown said. “He pointed to areas of, genital areas of his body, and asked me to, you know, touch it.”
Grubbs said Conyers regularly undressed in front of female employees and, at times, would call staffers in only to emerge from his private bathroom in his underwear.
Grubbs said she complained to Conyers’ chief of staff and to the staff director of the House Judiciary Committee on which Conyers serves.
“Despite my complaints, no action was taken and Rep. Conyers’ inappropriate conduct continued,” Grubbs wrote.
Another Democrat has been revealed to have used the controversial Congressional “slush fund” in 2006 to cover up sexual harassment allegations — Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York.
What were the accusations?
Meeks was not himself accused of sexual harassment, but a former staffer said that she was harassed by him and his office after she reported sexual harassment by an employee of a donor to the congressman, according to the Daily Caller.
Andrea Payne, then a congressional aide, sued after she was fired for filing a complaint at the Office of Compliance, the agency at the center of the sex predator slush fund controversy.
“This is an action to recover for damages sustained by plaintiff when Rep. Meeks violated her constitutional rights by retaliating against her, and ultimately terminating her employment, because of her sexual assault lawsuit,” said Payne’s attorneys in her subsequent lawsuit.
Payne had filed a lawsuit against a physical therapy clinic where she says an employee had sexually harassed her. The owner of the business was a donor of Meeks and angrily confronted him about the lawsuit, according to the Daily Caller.
Who else benefited from the harassment slush fund?
Democrats Rep. John Conyers (Mich.) and former Rep. Eric Massa (N.Y.) used the same agency to secretly settle accusations of sexual harassment, while Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold (Tex.) also benefited from the office’s services, all at taxpayers’ expense.
Here’s Rep. Meeks discussing John Conyers’ sexual harassment allegations
Meeks discussed the allegations of sexual harassment against Conyers in a segment on MSNBC that has taken on new meaning with the current revelations.
“The two highest forms of claims of discrimination are race and sex/gender, which is reflective of a systemic problem in America we have to address,” Meeks said at the time.
GOP preps contempt resolution for top FBI, DOJ officials after missed Monday deadline
The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday will begin writing a resolution holding top FBI officials in contempt of Congress after the agency missed a Monday deadline to turn over key evidence the committee has been seeking for months.
“We are moving forward with the contempt resolution,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner Tuesday morning. He added that the panel is still negotiating with FBI and Justice Department officials to get the requested documents.
Nunes has accused the FBI and Department of Justice of a “months-long pattern … of stonewalling and obstructing this committee’s oversight work.”
Those accusations boiled over during the weekend, after stories were leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post saying that FBI agent Peter Strzok, a key investigator in the Trump-Russian probe, was removed from the Russia probe after exchanging text messages critical of Trump to another FBI agent he was involved with romantically. Republicans had been seeking information about why he was removed, but were never told anything by FBI or Justice Department directly.
Nunes had also been seeking information about the FBI and Justice Department’s use of the Steele dossier, which contains damning but unverified information about President Trump.
But the Strzok leak was the last straw, and Nunes announced Saturday he has ordered committee staff to begin drafting a contempt of Congress citation for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and for FBI Director Christopher Wray unless they complied with the panels’ requests for information by the close of business on Monday.
After the story broke, Nunes said, the FBI and Justice Department agreed to make some of the witnesses available, but are still withholding many documents and other evidence the Intelligence panel is seeking, an aide said.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the department has given the panel hundreds of pages of classified documents and multiple briefings, and has now allowed Strzok and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to meet with the panel.
While committee aides will start writing the contempt resolution Tuesday, Nunes has not set a date for the panel to consider the contempt charges.
If approved by the committee, the resolutions of contempt would be sent to the House floor for consideration, but only if Speaker Paul Ryan chooses to bring them up. One GOP source said Ryan supports the contempt resolution.
Contempt of Congress resolutions approved by the House are referred to the the Justice Department, but they are relatively rare.
The House voted in 2012 to hold then U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents sought by the House Oversight Committee on the DOJ’s “Fast and Furious” operation that resulted in thousands of U.S. guns ending up in the hands of Mexican drug dealers.
These resolutions also are not always effective. For example, the Justice Department elected not to prosecute Holder over the contempt charge.
Critics of a jury’s verdict Thursday in the trial of Kate Steinle’s killer have taken to Twitter to #BoycottSanFrancisco.
The hashtag was trending in the wake of a controversial trial in which defendant Jose Inez Garcia Zarate was found not guilty of murdering Kate Steinle on a pier in San Francisco in July 2015.
Steinle was walking with her father and a family friend when she was fatally shot, collapsing into her father’s arms.
Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, claimed the shooting was an accident. The bullet, fired from a stolen gun Zarate found, ricocheted off the pier’s concrete surface before hitting Steinle.
However, prosecutors argued Zarate intentionally shot the gun toward Steinle.
Zarate was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and found not guilty of assault with a semi-automatic weapon. He was found guilty of possessing a firearm by a felon.
In a Twitter rant early Friday, President Donald Trump called the decision “a complete travesty of justice” and seized upon the ruling as another reason to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court,” Trump tweeted. “His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL!”
