How ironic that Karen Kraushaar, whose identity became known only yesterday, called Herman Cain a serial denier.
It turns out that Kraushaar is a serial complainer, demanding money at a second employer for supposed inappropriate language, via AP:
A woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in 1999 complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email, The Associated Press has learned.
To settle the complaint at the immigration service, Kraushaar initially demanded thousands of dollars in payment, a reinstatement of leave she used after the accident earlier in 2002, promotion on the federal pay scale and a one-year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, according to a former supervisor familiar with the complaint. The promotion itself would have increased her annual salary between $12,000 and $16,000, according to salary tables in 2002 from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Kraushaar told the AP she considered her employment complaint “relatively minor” and she later dropped it.
What was the “sexually charged email”? According to AP:
The joke circulated online lists reasons men and women were like computers, including that men were like computers because “in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.” Women were like computers because “even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.”
We still don’t know what Herman Cain allegedly said to Kraushaar that gave rise to her demand for money from the National Restaurant Association. But we do know why Kraushaar didn’t want her name public.
I’ve seen this movie before when I was in private law practice. There are certain people whose radar is up, like cats waiting for the mouse. And when they see an opportunity to cash in, they take it, and usually more than once. This quote from the AP story rings so true:
Kraushaar’s complaint at the immigration service prompted managers to use caution when writing and speaking to Kraushaar while the complaint was being investigated, another former supervisor told the AP. Two supervisors said Kraushaar asked a colleague to act as a witness when she had conversations with one manager after she filed her complaint.
It may be that Kraushaar had two valid complaints, or none. Now that she has gone public and wants a joint press conference, Kraushaar should consent to the NRA releasing its full file on her complaint.
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Right, professor, and I would be willing to wager than over her career there have been other incidences of cashing in on alleged sexual grievances.
Note too that the erstwhile attorney has been a mainstay for at least a decade and a half.
Come awwwn,seriously? Credible accuser,my eye.Its people like her that hurt small businesses.
I hope a reporter asks her if she thinks sexual harassment is a serious charge.
Haha! I hope so, too!
Off Topic: David Gregory compares the hierarchy in the Republican Party to that of the Ku Klux Klan:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/11/09/david_gregory_no_grand_wizard_in_gop_right_now_to_force_cain_to_go_away.html
This whole thing is character examination and assassination. Palinizing. Borking. Personal destruction.
Cain said it best, IMHO, when he said “A presidential candidate should have his character examined under a microscope.” (paraphrase) Cain is putting himself out there both as a leader AND as a man of character.
Can’t attack his leadership cred. Therefore, go after the character.
Funny thing, though. The MSM doesn’t appear to care about the character of the accusers which is as relevant, if not more so, than the allegations these women are making. The character of these women, along with the reports and agreements held by the NRA, need to be made public and clearly understood before any validity to the claims can be made regarding the two verified “inappropriate behavior” (i.e. “nuisance”) cases.
As for the Bialek lady, she has nothing but her word; any statements her “lawyer” Allred took can only claim that she told them something – the men were NOT present as eye witnesses, and are thus not witnesses to the alleged “assault;” thus, their statements are hearsay, and one-sided hearsay at best! Also, the statue of limitations for any such allegations is in place for a reason, as the Professor has said.
Hmmmm….. I thought it was “innocent until proven guilty?” Oh, yeah….that’s only for Democrats. Silly me! /sarc
Bialek has some red flags up already, putting serious doubt on her claims. Also, this government serial complainer has now been revealed, and thus far there are PLENTY of flags going up about her.
Seems to me the Politico might just have jumped the shark – and may have taken down the Dem Alinsky strategy they so willingly assist when engaging in “the politics of personal destruction.” People were FED UP with it when they did this to Palin in AK (the numerous FALSE ethics claims); then the “targets=kill=lunatic MUST have gone on a shooting spree because of …… PALIN!!” debacle; to the “race card” at everything; now…..this.
People are giving Herman Cain LOTS of money……and support……yeah, they jumped the shark. People don’t BELIEVE this mud-slinging cr*p anymore.
May we get on now with the ISSUES, and stop with all the tawdry DISTRACTIONS, please?!
Nuclear Iran, Israel surrounded, Afghanistan being lost, Iraq victory snatched away by this incompetent administration – not to mention, the debt, the deficit, the high unemployment, high crime related to OWS, etc. etc.
Let’s stop allowing ourselves to be so distracted; Cain must address these allegations, but let us not aid the bottom feeders!
Let’s focus on the ISSUES, please.
Really? You do understand that the AP is the agency that released the serial complainer story. So to claim that the media is giving the women a pass on their character is probably false.
I think at this point the AP doesn’t want to look like idiots again by purposefully sitting on a story which can be easily discovered by even the slightest journalistic effort.
The Main Stream Morons have been hit so many times by Breibart for sitting on stories that attack Conservatives but give Democrat individuals a pass that they’re actually starting to appropriately fear losing viewership / readership. They have to hold their nose and write about the stuff they would rather gloss over, lest even MORE of their viewership / readership abandon them.
[…] Legal Insurrection’s Bill Jacobson says Kraushaar is a serial complainer. So, do two attempts to cash in on claims of sexual harassment qualify as a serial complainer? What do you think? […]
“But we do know why Kraushaar didn’t want her name public. I’ve seen this movie before when I was in private law practice. There are certain people whose radar is up, like cats waiting for the mouse. And when they see an opportunity to cash in, they take it, and usually more than once.”
Professor, this strikes me as a relatively charged statement from someone trying to claim the dispassionate observer role. (I know, I know, you through in a CYA saying it may be that she had two valid complaints. That being a possibility, as you acknowledge, why make the insinuation that it is not until the facts are out?).
It may seem like a charged statement, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate.
A professor of mine used to say this:
“A law license is a front row-ticket with a back-stage pass to the greatest show on earth. The Human Race in all it’s glory and debauchery.”
This is one of those things where you see it a couple of times, and you can learn to read the overarching symptoms which says that something needs to be examined closer.
When you see smoke coming out of the punch bowl at a Halloween party, you think “dry-ice.” You don’t have to actually put your hand into the bowl to make that reasonable assumption. You might be wrong (it might be a little smoke machine), but there’s only a limited number of things that create that effect.
The same sort of reasonable inferences are present here.
It might or might not be accurate, but that is my point. Are we waiting for all of the facts to come out or not? Because that his been the line that we have been operating off of, and I for one don’t think “Well, the left does it, too” is a good enough reason to start smearing people.
There are a lot of reasonable inferences that cut against Cain as well; for example, Cain had a short tenure at the NRA, he resigned at about the time that these charges were made, he has been accused by multiple women, at least two of whom have come forward publicly, he said he remembered the amount of the one claim and misstated it as a few months salary. Do any of those mean he is guilty of harassing women? No. But if we are going to play the reasonable inferences game, let’s play it. If we aren’t let’s not.
Professor Jacobson is not obligated to stand mute unitl “all the facts are in” while others use unproven accusations as pretext to call fro Cain’s head. Neither is anyone else.
Kraushaar told the New York Times she hoped she and the other accusers might hold a joint press conference “where all of the women would be together with our attorneys and all of this evidence would be considered together.”
“These allegations can be considered together as a body of evidence.”
Cain said Kraushaar’s allegations were the only ones he remembered, and that the National Restaurant Association had found the allegations were not credible.
“When she made her accusation, they were found to be baseless and she could not find anyone to corroborate her.”
Cain claims the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also found “no basis” in the claim — though the agency has refused comment.
Bennett, however, told MSNBC it was an “an internal investigation [that Cain] denied [ever occurred] but it was done by employees of NRA under the supervision of Cain.”
Cain insists the worst allegation Kraushaar made was that she had said he told her she was the same height as his wife, and pointed to under his chin.
“That was the one gesture that I remember,” Cain said.
“The door was open. My secretary was sitting there. It wasn’t anything behind closed doors. I gestured because her height, comparing it to my wife’s height, end of story.
“That one I remember because that was the one that my general counsel came to me and said, the one that appears to be the one that she was most upset about was that,” he said.
But that’s not how Bennett, remembers it , telling MSNBC his “client filed a detailed, written complaint in 1999 specifying multiple incidents of sexual harassment — my client stands by her complaint.”
He’s said Kraushaar’s allegations were similar to Sharon Bialek’s accusation of groping — and that it’s “up to [the] NRA” to disclose the settlement papers.
Friends describe Kraushaar, 55, as a level-headed, married woman who would not fabricate explosive claims.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/karen-kraushaar-leave-job-herman-cain-sex-harass-accuser-article-1.974734#ixzz1dDsNBSYj
Game on–Lin Wood …. earn your fee
“The joke circulated online lists reasons men and women were like computers, including that men were like computers because ‘in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.’ Women were like computers because ‘even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.'”
She whined about that? It’s both true, and funny. If she complained about that joke – particularly if she thought it was “sexually charged” – then she’s a pathetic loser with absolutely no sense of humor.
Game on, my a$$.
After trolling so hard for complainants, they are on their fifth try. This isn’t working out any better for the astroturf arm of the Democratic Party than the coffee party and the OWS did.
In the United States, you can always find somebody willing to say anything you choose.
The fact that those other supervisors acted like she’d accuse them at any time of anything, speaks volumes. In a word: they were fully expecting baseless accusations, and taking appropriate care to protect themselves.
This whole sordid Cain affair has the fingerprints and MO of the democrat attack apparatus that is running in overdrive.
Threaten the current regime with a competent black man and all the stops must be pulled to neutralize the threat! Actions that the Chicago mob and DNC are fully capable of.
Hopefully, there are enough people left that are smart enough to see through the charade and act accordingly.
My support for Cain is as strong as ever!
Serial lurker here signing on for the first time
Thank you Professor Jacobson for this forum
What I find curious about this woman from the first instance was
Her inability to rein in her counselor particularly since she allegedly
Wished NOT to go public. Followed two weeks later desiring a group
Press conference with other persons accusing Mr Cain. Sounds as if
Someone was either not wholly confident bringing her situation to light
Or a decision was made to draw out the attention if needed
According to reports not one example of THESE cases of former employees
Filed a case with the EEOC – that puts those incidents in rather murky
Waters
“I am interested in a joint press conference for all the women where we would all be together with our attorneys and all of these allegations could be reviewed as a collective body of evidence,” Kraushaar told The Washington Post. (Also quoted by commenter spartan.)
Memo to Kraushaar and Allred:
The plural of anecdote is not data. The plural of allegation is not evidence.
2. Might a federal employee in a Democratic administration profit professionally by discrediting a fast-rising Republican candidate? Especially a black Republican whose personal story is strongly at variance with the leftist narrative about race.
Just askin’.
@ gs – the fact that Kraushaar is a government employee is the titillating fact in this case. Is it just my overzealousness to desire to point it out – that will surely spring a bear claw trap as to my biase? It is almost undoubtedly a worm on the hook
Mark Levin had some audio on an on air conversation regarding Ms Bialek previous employment at CBS – very interesting innuendo that she was likely to be the predator in other instances
Well, hell, let’s just go ahead and demand these women be branded with a big scarlet letter. There is no possibility they might be telling the truth, right? After all, Cain is one of the good guys because he is one of us, right? You know, because branding women you don’t even know is so much more important than Fast and Furious, Solyndra, or Obama’s horrible hot mike remarks about Benjamin Netanyahu.
See? Not to be taken seriously.
Branding is bit strong but an examination of their character is indeed within order as they have into question the same of Mr.Cain is it not? How better to judge the veracity of their accounts regarding the subject ?
I would really appreciate to know why Ms. Bialek sought out Mr.Cain to discuss employment personally – was the human resource department not a viable avenue formsuch an endeavour?
Was it nessecary to meet Mr. Cain in person in DC? Why would it be the case??
Facts to these accusations are soo light they make the waif like supermodels appear morbidly obese
And for the record I am not leaning towards voting Cain in any primary
I agree with one thing. The entire NRA file on these incidents should be made public. I suspect, though, that the big loser at this point would be Cain so don’t expecf him to join in the call. He’s had two weeks to do that to demonstrate that the charges were not much and found to be “baseless.”
It will all out. That is now inevitable. Meanwhile, it might be prudent to go a little easy on attacking the complainants. That is particularly true with respect to Kraushaar who, so far as we know, kept her own counsel, preferred not to go public and was outed to the press anyway.
Kraushaar “appeared” to desire staying out of the limelight BUT still did little to rein in her counselor & in fact “arrived” after Ms.Bialek came on scene. Of course it was her brother in law who outer her (anyone see the Val Plame play here?)
[…] Jacobson has got this woman’s number: I’ve seen this movie before when I was in private law practice. There […]
Look, are we going to have a double standard here? If we took Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Jennifer Flowers eriously, then we should at least give the 2 women who brought their cases years ago, when cain was not running for anything,seriously. I don’t care how Democrats treat women who come forward like this, but we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. This character assassination is wrong. Disagree with them if you like, but they both were happily staying out of things until someone at the NRA spilled the beans to Politico. These women were outed by the press. Whether you believe their grievances were significant or not, at the time filed, these women did not wish to destroy Cains presidential campaign.The NRA is the only organization that can put out the relevant documents from the time that were entered into evidence, so Cain should put pressure on the NRA to release those documents if he wishes to clear this mess up.