In Monday's 'Revenge of the Deplorables' piece, which detailed the astounding amount of scandals engulfing anti-Trump industries and people, such as Hollywood and the MSM, along with the recent Clinton scandals, I said things were "getting uglier day by day," and since I wrote those words, the shoe that we have all been waiting for to drop..... just has, right on the heads of the ultimate swamp monsters, Congress.
Brief update on the MSM sexual scandal before getting into the huge news: Two more virulent anti-Trump journalists and reporters have now been fired and/or suspended over sexual misconduct allegations.
Executive editor and host of Charlie Rose Show and Charlie Rose The Week, co-host of CBS This Morning, has been fired from CBS, PBS and Bloomberg after eight women came forward and accused him of sexual harassment.
"A short time ago we terminated Charlie Rose's employment with CBS News, effective immediately," said a statement posted to Twitter from CBS News President David Rhodes. "This followed the revelation yesterday of extremely disturbing and intolerable behavior said to have revolved around his PBS program."
In a statement, PBS also announced it had ended its relationship with Rose, whose self-titled interview show began airing in 1991.
"In light of yesterday’s revelations, PBS has terminated its relationship with Charlie Rose and cancelled distribution of his programs. PBS expects all the producers we work with to provide a workplace where people feel safe and are treated with dignity and respect," PBS said.
Bloomberg TV confirmed it had severed ties with Rose, but had no further comment as of Tuesday afternoon.
THE OTHER SHOE JUST DROPPED
Those are just the latest casualties to the anti-Trump media, but the real blockbuster that has the political establishment feeling like they are on the Titanic headed straight for the iceberg, was something we were warned about by Jonathan Swan over at Axios on November 19th, while reporting about the allegations against Senator Al Franken, he stated "Members of Congress with histories of mistreating women should be extremely nervous." He continued on to warn "Democratic Sen. Al Franken is the very tip of the congressional iceberg. Many more stories are coming and we wouldn't be surprised if they end several careers."
The claim was that they should be worried because "Major outlets, including CNN, are dedicating substantial newsroom resources to investigating sexual harassment allegations against numerous lawmakers."
Swan was right and wrong in a way, because it wasn't a "major outlet" that dropped the shoe we have all been waiting for, it was none other than Independent journalist Mike Cernovich, who provided information and documents to BuzzFeed, so the message wouldn't be lost due to the attacks against the messenger, to expose Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives as a sexual predator.
Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sex acts, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.
Conyers confirmed he made the settlement in a statement Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was published, but said that he "vehemently denied" the claims of sexual harassment at the time and continues to do so.
BuzzFeed then independently verified the accounts and documentation, as well as crediting Cernovich in their report detailing the sordid allegations and claims against Conyers, which he is denying.
While the Conyers story is huge right on top of more women making accusations against Franken, the bombshell here isn't the individuals being accused, but of how Congress actively covers up sexual misconduct by it's members, to the tune of millions of dollars in settlements, while the victims are then sworn to secrecy.
Reason describes this cover-up on the part of the House of Representatives as a "highly opaque process through which the House of Representatives handles such settlements—and keeps them concealed."
Because of the provisions of the ironically named Congressional Accountability Act, settlement payment come from a special Treasury fund that the Office of Compliance draws from as necessary. The offices responsible for the payouts, and the reasons for the settlements, are kept strictly confidential.
In Conyers' case, his office didn't even go through that process, according to the documents obtained by BuzzFeed:
[O]ne of Conyers' former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers' taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would "rehire" the woman as a "temporary employee" despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.
Because of the nondisclosure agreement and the use of regular office payroll to obscure the payout, there was practically no way for the public to know it was bankrolling Conyers' settlement.
Former House Speaker John Boehner and current House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have both issued statements saying they were unaware of the Conyers payments. That's no surprise. Congress created a perfect black box of secrecy, designed to shield its members from scrutiny, give senior leadership plausible deniability, and avoid any of the regular reporting that other federal settlements are subject to.
And it's all paid for by you.
Cernovich explains his reasoning in handing over such an explosive story to another outlet, at a post over at Medium, while ending it with a warning to Congress, stating "Remember me, Congress, I did this to you. Remember me, Congress, I am coming for you."
BOTTOM LINE ANALYSIS
There is no doubt this will follow the same pattern as the Hollywood and MSM scandals have, with establishment politicians names trickling out, then becoming a flow, but the bigger picture of the widespread system in place in the halls of Congress to protect and cover-up the sexual harassment claims against it's members, is an even bigger scandal, one that truly holds the potential to offer voters a reason to drain the ultimate swamp monsters from Congress.
With that said, the pity here is had the upper echelons of Congress, or Hollywood and the MSM for that matter, not provided protection for these sexual predators, they would have been held accountable, suffered the consequences of their actions at the time of the occurences, and perhaps been able to turn themselves around to follow a better path into the future.
By protecting them and covering up these scandals, they enabled them to continue without intervention, depriving them of the opportunity to change their course, and opened the door for more people to be harmed by them.
