The Washington Post reports new revelations about Rep. Eric Massa and his serial “grope-age” of staff and interns.
Just three months after Eric Massa was elected to Congress, his young male employees on Capitol Hill began complaining to supervisors that the lawmaker was making aggressive, sexual overtures toward them, according to new interviews and internal documents.
And the timeline seems to suggest that, contrary to public statements, Speaker Pelosi’s office was notified of issues pertaining to Massa’s questionable living arrangements last year.
Racalto said he called a former co-worker then in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to report remarks Massa had made about the sex life of a female staffer and discuss his concern about Massa living with male staffers.
(Massa Chief of Staff Joe) Racalto said he told the Pelosi aide that he would demand that Massa move out of the townhouse. Within a day, Racalto also sent out a staff memo instructing employees to stop the sexual talk, and report to him when that rule was broken.
Good for the Post for continuing to press the story. But would that the Washington press corps had been this diligent in prying into this scandal last month when the story first broke. You remember — one week before the Health Care Reform vote?
Instead, the media stenographers bought the (Dem) party line: “Since Massa resigned, he is no longer subject to the Ethics Committee… so let’s put this behind us and move on to Health Care.”
And so they did. But one has to wonder if things might have been different if the Democratic majority — which usually defends even the most reprehensible members of its caucus “until the last dog dies” — had not so quickly defenestrated Massa and thus dodged a PR hit in the days leading up to the final, fateful vote.