GOP Congressman Who Cost Taxpayers $84,000 in Sexual Harassment Suit Refuses to Quit but Won’t Run for Re-Election

Congressman Also Regularly Called Staffers ‘F**Ktards,’ Made Lewd Sexually Graphic Jokes, Berated Aides

Four-term Republican U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold reportedly has been told twice by Speaker Ryan to resign, but has refused. Thursday morning the Texas Congressman finally agreed to not run for re-election, according to a source cited by CNN, after agreeing to reimburse taxpayers $84,000 paid in a sexual harassment suit against him. Farenthold’s term ends in January of 2019.

“The news that Farenthold won’t seek re-election follows a CNN report Wednesday that a former senior aide to the congressman has approached the House Ethics Committee to share a damning account of working for Farenthold, with the intent of describing the congressman as verbally abusive and sexually demeaning — and his congressional office as an intensely hostile environment that drove the aide to physical and emotional distress,” CNN reports Thursday. 

There is a separate Ethics Committee sexual harassment investigation into Farenthold over allegations by a former Farenthold aide.

CNN also is reporting a former senior aide to Farenthold described “the congressman as verbally abusive and sexually demeaning — and his congressional office as an intensely hostile environment that drove the aide to physical and emotional distress.”

The details are graphic and extremely disturbing.

Michael Rekola, who was Farenthold’s communications director in 2015, described in an interview with CNN new details of the congressman’s abusive behavior. It ranged from making sexually graphic jokes to berating aides — bullying that Rekola says led him to seek medical treatment and psychological counseling, and at one point, caused him to vomit daily.

One comment from the congressman was especially personal. Rekola was about to leave town to get married in July 2015, when, he said, Farenthold, standing within earshot of other staffers in his Capitol Hill office, said to the groom-to-be: “Better have your fiancée blow you before she walks down the aisle — it will be the last time.” He then proceeded to joke about whether Rekola’s now-wife could wear white on her wedding day — a clear reference, Rekola said, to whether she had had premarital sex.

Rekola said “he was also subject to a stream of angry behavior not sexual in nature — screaming fits of rage, slamming fists on desks and castigating aides, including regularly calling them ‘f**ktards.'”

UPDATE:
The Texas Tribune is also reporting “Republican mapmakers dramatically redrew [Farenthold’s] district to protect the seat from a substantive Democratic challenge in the future.”

 

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