The Office Congress Ordered to Name Sex Scandal Lawmakers Just Went Silent

Eric Swalwell called Trump a predator right up until the day four women accused him of the same thing.

Now Congress wants to know which other lawmakers used your tax dollars to make accusers go away.

The office sitting on those names just told Congress it has no further comment.

The Slush Fund Congress Built to Buy Silence With Your Money

Congress has been running a hush-money system since 1995 – one funded by your tax dollars and designed to make sexual misconduct accusers disappear quietly.

The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights administered those payments for over two decades.

Between 1996 and 2018, the OCWR approved 349 awards and settlements against legislative branch offices.

Eighty of those were settled directly by a House or Senate office.

Thirty involved members who were personally accused of misconduct or who knew about it in their offices.

Seven required payments directly out of the Section 415 Treasury fund specifically for sexual harassment.

None of the names were ever made public.

The money came from a special Treasury account that Congress quietly eliminated.

Rep. Thomas Massie was done tolerating that.

The outgoing Kentucky Republican forced a vote using a privileged resolution – a procedural move that bypasses leadership and forces the full House to act immediately.

The result: a 420-0 vote mandating that the OCWR and House Ethics Committee release a single consolidated public list – names and dollar amounts – of every lawmaker who used taxpayer funds to settle sexual misconduct claims.

South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace was the lone member who did not vote yes – she voted "present," arguing her own subpoena had already accomplished the same thing.

They have 60 days from June 30 to comply.

Massie argued on the floor that transparency was the only way to restore public trust – and that Congress owed its own employees the basic respect it claimed to stand for.

The 60-Day Clock Is Running and Washington Is Already Going Quiet

The Daily Caller News Foundation asked the OCWR directly whether it was holding settlement data the public hadn't seen.

Their full answer: "We fully intend to comply with the provisions of H. Res. 1399 within 60 days of passage, as directed by the resolution. We will have no further comment until then."

No details. No reassurances. No indication there's nothing to hide.

The House Ethics Committee issued its own statement claiming it has never been notified of a single award or settlement involving member sexual misconduct since the 2018 reforms.

They're pointing at the OCWR.

The OCWR is pointing at a clock.

Massie suspects there's a reason.

He designed the resolution to close a loophole in the 2018 law – one he believed allowed certain claims to escape the new reporting requirements.

Since those 2018 reforms passed, there have been zero reported instances of any lawmaker actually repaying the government for a misconduct settlement.

Zero.

Rep. Nancy Mace had already been pulling on this thread for months.

Her March subpoena forced the OCWR to hand over documents – and what came back was more than one thousand pages covering nine members and settlements totaling over $300,000 paid on behalf of six of them.

The files came with one more revelation. Mace posted to X: "Read that again: they destroyed all the evidence prior to 2004."

What the OCWR Releases in Late August Could Be Worse Than Swalwell

The resignations of Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales in April cracked open a culture Congress spent 30 years carefully maintaining.

Swalwell – who ran for president as Trump's most vocal moral critic and positioned himself as a champion of accountability – resigned ahead of an expulsion vote after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and assault.

Gonzales walked out the same day after explicit text messages he had sent to a female staffer who later died by suicide became public.

Their exits closed Ethics Committee investigations automatically – the committee loses jurisdiction the moment a member walks out the door.

Resign and the case dies.

That loophole is why the settlement records matter more than any single resignation.

The OCWR is holding what it has now been legally compelled to release.

Bureaucracies sitting on nothing don't go stone cold silent after a 420-0 vote.

By late August, Americans will find out whether what is in those files is as dark as this silence is beginning to suggest.

Sources:

• Nicole Silverio, "Congressional Office Silent For Now On Taxpayer Funds Doled Out For Lawmakers' Sexual Misconduct Settlements," The Daily Caller, July 6, 2026.
• Brooke Mallory, "House Overwhelmingly Passes Resolution to Unmask Lawmakers' Sexual Misconduct Settlements," OAN, July 1, 2026.
• "Rep. Nancy Mace Secures Files From Taxpayer-Funded Sexual Harassment Slush Fund," Representative Nancy Mace Official Press Release, May 5, 2026.
• "Ethics Committee Says It Doesn't Have Sexual Harassment Settlement Data That House Resolution Seeks," The Washington Times, July 2, 2026.