Congress’s Secret Misconduct Fund Back in Spotlight After Swalwell Bombshell
Rep. Nancy Mace’s motion to subpoena the records demands the OCWR “release of all awards and settlements paid pursuant to Section 415 of the Congressional Accountability Act prior to December 12, 2018 for misconduct by Members of Congress.”
Former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s sexual assault and misconduct scandal has prompted more calls for transparency over Congress’s slush fund to settle claims.
A friendly reminder that House Oversight subpoenaed the records of the congressional sexual harassment slush fund and we will be releasing them. Maybe we’ll see more resignations, you never know. #trashday
— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) April 15, 2026
Luna has been at the forefront since the Swalwell scandal emerged last week.
The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights handles misconduct claims. From Newsweek:
According to data from the agency, the OCWR paid out over $18 million to settle nearly 300 workplace disputes—related to pay, discrimination, harassment and other issues—between 1997 and 2019. These disputes concerned Congress, the Capitol Police, the Architect of the Capitol, and the Library of Congress.
These sums have grown calls for further transparency, with the nonprofit OpenTheBooks writing in 2021: “After 23 years and $18 million in payouts from the Workplace Rights office, it seems like taxpayers might have a right to know more details.”
The OCWR applied about $450,000 of that $18 million “to payments for violations of Section 201 of the Congressional Accountability Act, which covers sex-based discrimination and harassment in the workplace.”
During the #MeToo movement, Congress began requiring lawmakers to repay settlement costs to the Treasury.
Except, you know, their salary also comes from the taxpayers. I doubt they’ll use any of the money they gained on the outside since joining Congress.
However, we still don’t know details about the slush fund, such as “the scale of past settlements and ongoing investigations.”
Rep. Nancy Mace’s motion to subpoena the records demands the OCWR “release of all awards and settlements paid pursuant to Section 415 of the Congressional Accountability Act prior to December 12, 2018 for misconduct by Members of Congress.”
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Comments
Oh! Oh! Isn’t this the secret fund Milhouse was claiming the other day didn’t exist?
Then again if we all know about it then it can’t be that much of a secret!
There is no such slush fund.
According to Milhouse it’s a fund designed to settle any and all claims.
The SWALLWELL Act proposed by Paul Gosar (R-AZ) would produce a public list of all sexual misbehavior payouts (while protecting the identity of the victim/recipient). Perhaps it should produce a public list of ALL payouts, so we compare for ourselves the number of claims for (say) breach of employment, or tortious interference, to the number of “hide the sausage” payoffs. Then we can make up our own minds what the slush fund is REALLY for.
Reviewing Gosar’s release on the SWALWELL Act, it looks as if it already does publish EVERY claim paid against this fund, not just the sex complaints. I look forward to this happening (like I look forward to the Second Coming — it would be great, but I don’t really expect it soon).
I’m gonna have to agree with Milhouse. This is a fund to cover all sorts of nefarious conduct by all manner of bureaucrat. I would like to see both the payor and payee (for want of a better term) of these funds. It can also be a great way to channel government money to friends and relatives.
It’s like USAID — there’s what their charter says, and then there’s where their money actually gets sent. It’s the latter that lets you know what their purpose REALLY is. I look forward to the same analysis being performed on this fund,
If he did he was mistaken but since he is an authority on all things and given half a chance will lecture everyone on his brilliance and our muddled understanding I’m sure you are mistaken.
The fund has been know for years and some of us have been calling for transparency just as long. We should know how that money was spent and who did it.
Yup! Where the heck is he today?
He’s here. Look at the down votes above.
Why, yes. Yes it is.
Reminiscent of the House bank and post office scandals of the 90s.
So I learn today that on the very night Swalwell allegedly assaulted his female aide, he was giving a speech by invitation at a gala awards event for the Brady: United Against Gun Violence group.
It’s as if we’re all living in a new Ayn Rand novel, isn’t it?
Sorry — forgot to include the receipts.
I’d be a little careful about some of those claims as they sound like metoo piling on. One lady said something like they were having drinks and he talked her into oral sex. After they started she stopped and said she didn’t feel comfortable doing it which is odd but ok. She reports he immediately zipped up his pants ending it. They then kept having drinks in a bar and she followed him up to his room where she claims she blacked out but when she woke up she decided they had had sex but she was too drunk to consent so rape. Swalwell may have thought she changed her mind from earlier and afterall she went back to his room. Ladies, buyers remorse after getting hammered in a bar isn’t anyones fault but your own unless you pass out in the bar and the guy physically carries you to his cave over his shoulder. Other claims are from years ago with no way to refute them. A few are quite troubling.
It’s well known that ladies and some men who are young and smitten by power throw themselves at Congressmen and to a lessor extent Senators a few who are happy to oblige. In this day Rev. Billy Graham’s advice is the way to go anymore. Never be alone with a women that is not your wife. In an office setting do what my wife’s workplace does. If she meets with an underling, the door to the office always stays open or someone else in there with them. She associates with none of her employees outside the workplace unless I am there with her.
Sorry if this offends people but responsibility goes 2 ways. Swalwell who deserves jail I’m sure but also for the ladies who put themselves in that position. Unless he forcibly restrained them I have little sympathy for next day regrets.
We didnt create the Me Too law. The left did. Its not our fault they are now having to live by the same rules as the right.
Totally agree. I’m just pointing out that in most cases of this it takes two to tango.
No means No.
Offices are not meat markets. Your wife’s office policies are entirely appropriate, and you seem to recognize that. But you still seem to have no problem with Swalwell asking for a BJ from an underling. How do you know he didn’t slip something into her drink to “lower her inhibitions”? Buyer’s remorse? Ugh. If she was impaired and incapable of saying NO, then sex is off the table. Period. Whether you personally have any sympathy for either of them is irrelevant.
By that standard, no liberal woman can give consent. They obviously aren’t capable of coherent thought.
How do you know he did slip something into her drink.? It’s way past time to confirm it and I don’t think any of the ladies so far have alleged that so your slipping a red herring into the conversation. The lady I mentioned also stated when she said no he stopped. What happened afterwards is very hazy so your not making a good argument. She went up to his room willingly and there is no evidence he forced her to. I have no idea what your entire post is saying as nothing in it is true, born out by facts or even her claims. Get a grip.
“I’d be a little careful about some of those claims as they sound like metoo piling on.”
I don’t care. Applying Democrat Rules to Democrats is encouraged, Democrats created ALL these punitive social structures for partisan reasons, therefore they should be subject to them — all the way up to and including #BelieveAllWomen.
“After they started she stopped and said she didn’t feel comfortable doing it which is odd but ok.”
Not at all puzzling if you recall Swallwell’s unusual flatulence problem.
Well, ok. I’ll give you that as maybe he had some crotch cheese going on but by her own claim when she said stop he immediately said “ok” and zipped up his pants. He stopped. Dude is a sleaze and I’m not shedding a tear over him but be very careful in this because it could be you with a claim from years ago rearing it’s ugly head. I had an ex crazy lady start making claims about me and it is not pretty. I finally called her and told her to stop or I’d have her professional therapist license yanked.
But that’s the point isn’t it? If that sort of thing happens, then the Democrat Rules will say that I still get hounded for it regardless. So why in the world would I give Swalwell a pass when the Democrat Rule is still in place.
Congress needs a complete enema.
Wow, congress is bimbo heaven. Sleep with some pig, receive an anonymous payout, and get a special above-the-line tax deduction for legal fees.
I don’t believe any of the charges. The fund is a counter to MeToo assumption of truth in women’s crazy rememberings, and politicians being handy deep pockets.
Flirtation and men’s persistence was how people got together. Nowadays women prefer resentment.
I absolutely don’t care if the charges are real or phony.
This entire thing is Democrats knocking Democrats off jungle ballots by finding Democrats to make Democrat charges against them, My personal principles don’t even enter into this… or they cancel each other out because both sides are equally culpable.
I say, when your enemy is making a mistake, help him make it bigger.
“I will be the first candidate to say that reducing gun violence has to be a top three issue. Last year I wrote a bill calling for a buy back and ban on assault weapons—not just to ban future manufacturing, but to just take the 15 million that are out there and buy them back. And do what Australia did, do what New Zealand did. They’ve shown us—Australia in the 90s, New Zealand just this week—that courage in doing the right thing can protect people.”
I’m enjoying the hell out of Swalwell’s current plight, engineered by Democrats for Democrats — same as I enjoyed the vicious internecine #MeTooing of Harvey Weinstein, during which he tried to virtue-signal his way out of it by telling Howard Stern that “I never want to have a gun. I don’t think we need guns in this country, and I hate it, and I think the NRA is a disaster… I’m going make a movie with Meryl Streep and we’re going to take this issue head on, and they’re going to wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.”
Still waiting for the movie, Harv, so I can decline to buy tickets.
This is a total hit job on someone every Democrat was quite happy with when he was attacking Trump but when he got close to being Gov of Cali and this crap might come out boom. I wonder how much money Steyer or Porter has in this sudden wealth of women coming out of the wood work
Absolutely no question about this. Which is why my attitude is, if his fellow cannibals want to eat him, I’ll squeeze the charcoal lighter.
bigger government bigger corruption
too bad the gop capitulated about jan 6 and the real meaning
oh but that would mean they too would lose their jobs/power
In some more interesting news, that twit AZ insurrectionist senator Ruben Gallego is now being investigated, He was Swallwell’s BFF until he turned on him. Hopefully there is some real stuff there and he will get the same treatment. He is deserving of it after all.