Sacramento’s sexual harassment storm may slam into leading California anti-Trumper
Why California’s Senate leader, Kevin de León, may now find it a bit harder to unseat US Senator Dianne Feinstein.
While the American press is fixated on the Alabama sexual harassment allegation controversy involving Judge Roy Moore, there is a similar storm brewing on the Left Coast involving leading Democrats in our state legislature.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my descriptions of Kevin de León, President Pro Tempore of the California Senate and one of our Generals in the War against President Trump. He is planning to run against current Senator Dianne Feinstein in the 2018 election season based on his progressive, anti-Trump credentials.
Our fans may also recall that California’s state Capitol was hit with bevy of sexual harassment allegations that include a wide range of behaviors that targeted female interns, lawyers, lobbyists and colleagues.
There is indication that this particular storm may hit de León soon, which may complicate his plans to become the next US Senator from California.
The controversy surrounding sexual harassment in the state Capitol deepened on Friday and threatened to ensnare one of the Legislature’s leading Democrats, Kevin de León, as questions swirled over when the Senate leader became aware of complaints against his weekday roommate.
The plot thickened after a lawyer for a fired Senate staffer told Capital Public Radio that her client and two other employees were handed termination letters in the same meeting in which they detailed inappropriate behavior by their boss, Sen. Tony Mendoza, toward a young female intern.
The attorney’s account contradicted the timeline provided Thursday by De León’s office, raising questions about what the Senate leader, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, knew about the harassment allegations.
Mendoza, 46, repeatedly invited the 23-year-old woman to visit him at night at the Sacramento apartment he shared with De León and once invited her to spend the night at his hotel room at a Yolo County resort, according to Micha Star Liberty, an Oakland attorney for one of the fired staffers.
California colleague Katy Grimes reports that the two senators were no longer roommates.
“Over the weekend, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León moved out of a Sacramento apartment he shared with Sen. Tony Mendoza on Saturday, the same day the Sacramento Bee published a story in which a former female intern publicly accused Mendoza of inappropriate behavior toward her when she was 19,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. Yet de Leon claims he never knew about the sexual harassment allegations, despite being roommates with one of the Legislature’s alleged harassers.
To further protect his burgeoning political career female staffers, lobbyists, and politicos, de León has helped to arrange a new policy that investigations into sexual harassment claims now be done by outside attorneys.
In a break with its long-standing practices that signals growing pressure to forcefully address sexual harassment allegations at the state Capitol, the California Senate will soon take steps to hire outside attorneys for any abuse investigation involving either staff or lawmakers.
“The people who work here and the public we serve must have complete confidence that no public official is above the law or our strict zero-tolerance harassment policies,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement Sunday. “Those who violate these policies will be held to account — swiftly and justly.”
…Last week, both houses of the Legislature denied public access to some of the data covering abuse allegations made over the last decade. Information that was released in response to The Times’ formal request left unclear how many actual complaints were made in each house, focusing instead only on those that triggered formal investigations. Officials also have not revealed the cost of the investigations carried out over the last decade, or the money spent to hire attorneys who drafted harassment settlements.
I could not obtain any response from Feinstein in this particular issue, but I noted that she tweeted this today:
BREAKING: The Senate just passed our bill to prevent sex abuse in amateur athletics. This wouldn’t have been possible without the courage of women who came forward to say ‘ENOUGH is ENOUGH.’ Today is their day.
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) November 14, 2017
Feinstein led that particular effort.
I surmise our current Senator is feeling good about her chances for re-election right about now.
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Comments
“… employees were handed termination letters in the same meeting in which they detailed inappropriate behavior by their boss …”
This guy (or his staff) is this stupid.
You don’t need HR 101 or a lawyer to tell you this is … just not done.
Two things:
1. Are we really supposed to believe a new bill was needed to prevent sexual abuse in amateur athletics?
2. Is it really accurate to say “a storm is brewing” when Democrat politicians are involved? Maybe all the elements are there, but the media will never allow it to turn into a storm
Mike Gallagher asked today “Why are liberals attacking their own?” particularly with the rising demand for a “reckoning” concerning Bill Clinton.
I think there are two answers (and they’re not mutually exclusive).
The first is that by sacrificing their own, they set the stage to attack people like Moore and Trump, by (at least temporarily) abandoning the double standard to give more weight to their attacks across the aisle.
The second reason is virtue signaling. It’s easy to accuse and call for the heads of opponents, but to accuse one’s own signals greater virtue. Going after Bill Clinton in this regard demonstrates the highest possible virtue – there is simply nobody else you could attack that would give you greater virtue.
It just might hit him hard since he is running against Feinstein.
So, De León’s in hot water because somebody else was panting after a 19-year-old intern?
Sure, De León’s a d-Rat, and so by definition a bottom-dwelling scum-sucking member of one of the lower evolutionary orders … but this is getting too weird.
Call me antediluvian, but I retain a weird belief that a person should answer for his own crimes, and not somebody else’s.
As in many political scandals, it’s the cover-up that ensnares folks. And what De Leon is threatened by is the possible charge that he in his position as CA Senate leader facilitated a cover-up. So it would look to be that he will be judged for his actions one way or the other. And I suspect there will be a lot of shoes dropping from multiple legislators.
This trend of accusing every male in a position of power or celebrity of some type of sexual impropriety is extremely dangerous. The current trend to automatically believe such accusations is simply ridiculous. Women are no more reliable as witnesses than are men. Also, people who claim to be victims can be lying [Tawana Brawley comes to mind]. Yet, people are really quick to believe any of these allegations without any corroborating evidence.
Then we have the changing definition of “sexual harassment” and even assault. It used to be that sexual harassment required that a person continue making suggestive advances to another after the second person had made it clearly known that he or she wished the advances to stop. And/or a person used a position of authority over another to press for sexual favors. That changed, Women filed complains and were awarded judgement because they were not the recipients of such unwanted advances. Some awards were made because a woman complained that advances made toward a coworker were “disturbing’ even thought eh coworker did find them objectionable. See the problem? No one knows what constitutes “sexual harassment” anymore. At the moment, sexual harassment is whatever someone wants it to be.
Most of this outrage has no bearing on objectionable behavior. It is simply another strategy to destroy the social fabric of this country. Some cultures in this country, such as the entertainment industry, have institutionalized the treatment of women as sex objects and embraced the idea of sexual favors as being part of the quid pro quo of the industry. This should be addressed and changed. However, this has now spread to politics, other industries, educational institutions, etc. It is designed to permanently demonize men as being uncontrollable sexual predators and women as helpless victims [I guess the feminist identification of women as strong human beings is over [ I am woman hear me whine?]. It muddies the relationship between the sexes. It demonizes men. And, as more allegations are proven to be false, it reduces the general credibility of women.
This stuff is very dangerous in the long run.
“even thought eh coworker did find them objectionable” should read, “even though THE coworker did NOT find them objectionable”. Sorry for the typo.
There also seems to be a trend to conflate inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape, turning them all into hanging offenses as they were all offenses of the same level.