Congress has spent thirty years paying off the women its members harassed – with your money.
Now a thousand pages of proof are sitting on the table.
And when one member of Congress tried to expose it, 357 of their colleagues voted to keep every page buried.
Inside the Congressional Sexual Harassment Slush Fund They Paid for With Your Tax Dollars
Since 1997, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights quietly paid out more than $17 million in taxpayer money to settle nearly 300 workplace complaints filed against Congress.
You paid every dollar.
The system allowed members of Congress to harass, grope, and proposition their own staff, walk away clean, and let taxpayers cover the tab while victims signed nondisclosure agreements that gagged them forever.
This February, Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution demanding the House Ethics Committee release every harassment record on file.
357 members of Congress voted to kill it.
Not 57. Not 157. Three hundred and fifty-seven – 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats – lining up together to make sure you never saw what was in those files.
Rep. Thomas Massie called it straight: those 357 knew the resolution "ain't ever making it out of committee."
Mace said: "Both parties colluded to protect predators."
The Six Lawmakers Named in the Taxpayer Funded Settlement Documents
John Conyers – the Detroit Democrat who held his seat for 52 years – allegedly cornered a female aide in his Las Vegas hotel room in 2003.
"You know what I want, you know I have needs," he told her, according to the documents Mace obtained.
Two years later in a Chicago hotel room, Conyers allegedly demanded she either touch him sexually or find him a woman who would.
Taxpayers paid $50,000 to settle her complaint in 2010, then added another $27,111 in severance four years later.
Conyers collected his congressional salary for 52 years, denied everything when he finally quit in 2017, and died in 2019 with his reputation intact – because Congress made sure of it.
Eric Massa – the New York Democrat who laughed off his "tickle fights" on Glenn Beck – cost taxpayers $115,000 across three separate settlements in 2010.
The documents tell a different story than Massa's grinning birthday-party defense.
One aide documented Massa grabbing him repeatedly around the torso in the office – an encounter the aide found so disturbing he physically recoiled and reported it.
Another document shows Massa told a staffer his quality of work gave him "raging hard-ons," grabbed male aides by the buttocks so routinely it filled official records, and solicited them for hookups in public.
When Massa quit and spun his "tickle fight" story on national television, the harassment his actual victims endured became a punchline on Saturday Night Live.
The settlement documents note the aides' anguish at watching their abuse "portrayed in a comical and demeaning manner."
Blake Farenthold – the Texas Republican who resigned in 2018 under an Ethics probe – cost taxpayers $84,000, the single largest payout Mace uncovered.
He told ABC News he had no intention of repaying it.
And he died in 2025 without returning a dime.
Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania, Rodney Alexander of Louisiana, and an aide in the late Carolyn McCarthy's New York office round out the list – adding another $62,250 in taxpayer-funded silence to the total.
Congress Destroyed the Records Before 2004 and Voted to Keep the Rest Buried
$338,000 – that's what Mace's subpoena uncovered from the files they let her see.
Here's the detail Congress is hoping you skip past: all records before 2004 were destroyed.
Gone by design, not accident – wiped under a retention policy the OCWR quietly established in 2013.
Between 1996 and 2018, Congress approved 349 total settlements against its own offices.
Three more names from Mace's thousand pages haven't been released yet, and she has promised they're coming.
In March, when Mace forced every member of Congress on record with a floor vote, 357 of them – from both parties – voted to send her resolution to the Ethics Committee, where they knew it would die.
The same members who campaign on draining the swamp, on protecting women, on fighting Washington – walked into that chamber and voted to keep $17 million in harassment payouts buried.
Speaker Mike Johnson told Rep. Tony Gonzales to handle it with his constituents back home.
The Ethics Committee chair and ranking member issued a joint statement calling Mace's push a threat to "victim cooperation" – the same victims the system spent three decades gagging with NDAs.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said it directly from the House floor: "I think it's really disgusting how this institution protects itself."
Congress built a system where members harassed their staff, taxpayers paid the bill, victims signed away their voices, and 357 elected officials voted this year to keep every page of it locked away.
Mace dragged it into the light anyway.
Sources:
- Rep. Nancy Mace, Press Release, "Rep. Nancy Mace Secures Files From Taxpayer-Funded Sexual Harassment Slush Fund," mace.house.gov, May 5, 2026.
- Geoff Earle, "Congress 'Slush Fund' Documents Reveal Aides' Anguish at Alleged Harassment and Groping," New York Post, May 9, 2026.
- "Nancy Mace Says She Has Records from Congressional Sexual Misconduct 'Slush Fund,'" ABC News, May 6, 2026.
- "House Bats Down Mace Effort to Reveal Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Members of Congress," The Hill, March 4, 2026.
- "Nancy Mace Names 6 Lawmakers in Bombshell Comments on Congressional Sex Scandal 'Slush Fund,'" The Daily Caller, May 5, 2026.
- "Fight Over Sexual Misconduct Cases in Congress Poised to Intensify," The Hill, May 7, 2026.