Tawdry Tales Depict a Texas Congressman’s Frat House on the Hill

The following article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg was posted on the New York Times website December 11, 2017:

Two former aides to Representative Blake Farenthold, Republican of Texas, described his office as freewheeling, yet also filled with fear. Credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

WASHINGTON — When Lauren Greene, a former communications director for Representative Blake Farenthold, sued him claiming sexual harassment, among her complaints was that he “disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for ‘a threesome.’”

Mr. Farenthold, in legal documents, said that Ms. Greene had it wrong. The woman wasn’t a lobbyist, he said.

As allegations of sexual misconduct rock Capitol Hill — three lawmakers announced their resignations last week alone — Mr. Farenthold, Republican of Texas, stands out as the survivor. He was sued over accusations of sexual harassment three years ago, paid out an $84,000 settlement, financed by taxpayers, and has an open Ethics Committee investigation into his behavior. Yet only a few Republicans have called for his resignation.

A peek into the inner workings of his office reveals the kind of hostile work environment, rife with sexual innuendo, that prompted Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, to call Congress “the worst” place for women to work.

Throughout the Capitol, House aides have described office cultures where sexually explicit conversations are routine, pickup lines are part of daily life, hiring can be based on looks, tolerance is expected and intolerance of such behavior is career-ending. In Mr. Farenthold’s case, legal documents and interviews with former aides suggest an atmosphere in which the congressman set the tone for off-color jokes and inappropriate banter, which flourished among his underlings.

Former employees also said that Mr. Farenthold had an explosive temper and often bullied his aides, prompting a high turnover. That echoes complaints about Representative Tim Murphy, Republican of Pennsylvania and a fierce social conservative who was drummed out of office this year after revelations that he suggested his mistress have an abortion.

So far, Republicans are mostly standing by Mr. Farenthold; his backers, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan, cite a 2015 decision by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent, nonpartisan board that cleared Mr. Farenthold of wrongdoing.

But the congressman’s status changed sharply last week, when the House Ethics Committee announced that it was forming an investigative subcommittee to examine Ms. Greene’s allegations. Ms. Greene, who won the $84,000 settlement, is said to be cooperating. Mr. Farenthold has promised to repay the Treasury and insists his conduct has been proper.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said in a brief interview last week. “I’m happy to visit with anybody who has a concern and explain the facts to the extent that I am allowed to under the settlement agreement.”

Details of Ms. Greene’s allegations have been known for several years, ever since she filed suit against Mr. Farenthold in 2014; she said, among other things, that Mr. Farenthold told another aide he was having “sexual fantasies” about her and that she was fired after she complained.

But she was not the only Farenthold aide to find fault with the office environment; in 2016, two additional aides complained — prompting the congressman to hire an independent law firm to investigate, a spokeswoman for Mr. Farenthold, Stacey Daniels, confirmed in a statement.

One aide reported that Mr. Farenthold’s chief of staff, Bob Haueter, treated the female employees “differently.” The second aide — identified by The Houston Chronicle as Elizabeth Peace, a former press secretary to Mr. Farenthold — reported to Mr. Haueter that the first employee “did herself engage in inappropriate sexualized commentary in the workplace,” the statement said.

The review found no evidence of “gender bias” or “inappropriate sexualized comments,” Ms. Daniels said, adding that all staff members, including Mr. Farenthold, later “took sensitivity and anti-harassment training to ensure full compliance with office policy and the law.”

In an interview, Ms. Peace said “the behavior never changed,” which was partly why she decided to quit in March. “There were a lot of inappropriate things that happened in that office that I don’t think would have happened if the congressman hadn’t already set the tone,” she said.

Ms. Peace and another former aide to Mr. Farenthold, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of harming that aide’s reputation, described an atmosphere in his Washington office that was freewheeling, yet also filled with anxiety.

The congressman, they said, was volatile. When he was angry, they added, Mr. Farenthold would berate them, sometimes sweeping his arm across his desk, knocking its contents to the floor, and threatening to fire people. Ms. Daniels, who has worked for Mr. Farenthold since March, said she had never witnessed such behavior, adding, “All the staff get along here very well.”

The refrigerator in the “bullpen” — the open area where aides worked — was filled with beer, and sometimes happy hour would begin at 4:30 p.m., which his aides called “beer-thirty.” Ms. Peace said women would discuss which male lobbyists had texted them pictures of their genitals, and both men and women would talk about strip clubs and whether certain Fox News anchors had breast implants.

“There were numerous lewd comments that were made either about female reporters’ breast size, or other reporters’ breast size as well as female lobbyists and their appearance that would go on,” the other former aide said. “On any given week you were prone to either ridicule, rude comments, acts of aggression or rage.”

In the office, the congressman was known to like redheads. In her complaint, Ms. Greene said Mr. Farenthold “regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘redhead patrol’ to keep him out of trouble.”

In their response, lawyers for Mr. Farenthold acknowledged that “some staff occasionally joked that Rep. Farenthold finds redheads attractive.” But they said he denied the rest of that allegation, including “the implication that this was a source for, or cause of, concern for any staffer.”

Experts in civil rights and employment law say that the culture of any office or organization is set from the top and that sexual harassment may be more prevalent in workplaces in which there is anger and infighting among employees.

“If you are trying to create a workplace where sexual harassment and other sorts of unlawful harassment don’t happen, you really need to be thinking about workplace culture more broadly and about civility and respect,” said Emily Martin, the general counsel for the National Women’s Law Center here.

Kristin Nicholson, who spent 20 years as a House aide and now directs the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said that every office on Capitol Hill reflected the personality of the lawmaker and the chief of staff.

“Anecdotally we all know that there are offices out there that are really toxic or unpleasant to work in, whether it’s sexual stuff or the way that staff is treated,” Ms. Nicholson said. “I don’t think that’s the norm, but it’s certainly not unusual for staffers to be subjected to inappropriate comments or sexist remarks.”

Mr. Farenthold, who turns 56 on Tuesday, has had a whiff of notoriety about him ever since he first ran for office in 2010. At the time, he was best known as a host of a conservative radio show. But during his campaign, photographs surfaced of him at a costume party, wearing duck-print pajamas and standing next to a scantily clad woman.

He won the election, ousting Representative Solomon P. Ortiz, then an incumbent Democrat who had served for more than two decades, by less than one percentage point. The Republican-controlled legislature then redrew the district lines, making the district much more conservative. He is now serving his fourth term.

In 2014, the same year in which Ms. Greene sued him, Mr. Farenthold announced that he would be giving up an internet domain name — one that describes a sexually explicit act — that he had held since 1999, when he was in the business of buying such names on speculation and selling them.

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