A woman who used to work as the top Democratic lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee said that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) once showed up to a meeting wearing nothing but his underwear.
The woman, Melanie Sloan, told ABC News that she “walked into his office having been called up to brief him on something and he was walking around in his underwear.”
Sloan, who served as minority counsel for the committee, said she was startled by the encounter that took place in the Rayburn House Office Building.
“I was pretty taken aback to see my boss half-dressed,” Sloan told the Washington Post. “I turned on my heel and I left.”
Although Sloan did not accuse Conyers of sexual harassment, she did accuse him of verbally abusing her while she worked for him.
“There was an occasion where he called me out of a meeting with a bunch of advocates and was screaming at me in the halls, including [about] me not wearing stockings on a 95-degree Washington summer day … while he wasn’t wearing socks,” she said.
Sloan added that she felt there was nothing she could do to stop him.
“I was dismissed and told I must be mentally unstable,” she said.
Conyers’ attorney, Arnold Reed, claimed that the Michigan Democrat “has never done anything inappropriate to Melanie Sloan.”
The House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate Conyers after a BuzzFeed News report revealed that Conyers’ congressional office paid a former female staffer $27,000 of taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment claim.
Reed said Conyers, the longest-serving House member, is innocent and that the lawmaker will not resign despite the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into his alleged misconduct.