Hoyer calls for training review as former Rep. Massa investigations heat up

The controversy surrounding former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) extended in
several directions Wednesday amid reports of a new ethics investigation
and an FBI probe.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called for immediate changes to
House policies and office training procedures as  Republicans publicly
question whether Democratic leaders and their staffs responded properly
to reports that Massa was sexually harassing his staff.

{mosads}The House ethics panel, which had initially dropped an
inquiry into Massa when he resigned from Congress, launched a formal
investigation and widened the scope to include how Democratic leaders
and their staffs handled complaints against Massa by his own staff.

Separately, The Washington Post reported late Wednesday afternoon
that the FBI was launching a corruption investigation of Massa centered
on large payments the congressman allegedly made to a senior aide
within days of his decision to resign from Congress last month.

Prosecutors are scrutinizing a $40,000 payment Massa’s campaign made
to his top aide and another $39,000 check paid to renew the lease on
the congressman’s personal car.

Massa has said he did not authorize the $40,000 payment and has
accused Joe Racalto, his former chief of staff, of abusing his position
to falsely say the fee had been approved. Racalto claims he was owed
the $40,000 under a compensation agreement for ongoing political work
on Massa’s campaign.

Massa announced his resignation shortly after the allegations
surfaced that he had sexually harassed several male members of his
staff.

Hoyer has been aggressive in responding to the Massa allegations on
several occasions, and on Wednesday he offered more of the same.

In a letter, Hoyer formally asked the House ethics and
Administration committees, as well as the Office of Compliance, to
consider actions that would “empower” employees to “report alleged
inappropriate behavior in their offices swiftly and without fear of
professional or personal retribution.”

Hoyer recommended a number of immediate changes aimed at the heart
of the Massa scandal, including additional ethics training every two
years for senior employees that would stress “the duty of senior staff
to avoid treating as internal office matter any allegation of
harassment raised by junior staff.”

Drawing on what he called a “troubling” April 13 Washington Post
story describing how aides to Massa spent months feeling as though
their complaints about their boss’s sexual advances were falling on
deaf ears, Hoyer said the Massa case “argues for a more thorough and
in-depth treatment of workplace issues.”

Hoyer said the “obvious implication” from the Post story “is that
the vast majority of House employees, especially younger and relatively
inexperienced employees, are generally unaware of the options available
to them to report possible cases of workplace sexual harassment.”

The ethics panel interviewed Hoyer on Wednesday about the
allegations against Massa. Hoyer was not subpoenaed but talked with the
ethics panel voluntarily, according to a Democratic aide.

Hoyer’s response to the Massa controversy has been much more public
than that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was copied on
the letter Hoyer sent Wednesday but was not a co-signer.

“The Speaker has made herself available to meet with the ethics
committee at their earliest convenience,” Pelosi spokesman Nadeam
Elshami said in an e-mail. “Members of our staff have met and fully
cooperated with the ethics committee.”

Pelosi’s office did not respond directly to questions about Hoyer’s letter.

Last month, when it first became known that Pelosi’s office also
learned about complaints against Massa in February around the same time
Hoyer’s office did, the Speaker acknowledged that her staff did not
inform her personally. But she brushed off any suggestion that she or
her office acted improperly.

“I asked my staff, I said, ‘Have there been any rumors about any of
this before?’ ” Pelosi said when asked at a news conference about when
she learned of the allegations against Massa.

“There had been a rumor, but just that, no formal notification to
our office that anything — a one-, two-, three-person-removed rumor
that had been reported to Mr. Hoyer’s office that had been reported to
my staff, which they didn’t report to me, because, you know what? This
is rumor city. Every single day there are rumors. I have a job to do
and not to be the receiver of rumors.”

{mosads}Republicans seized on Pelosi’s response in particular, using
it as a chance to offer a number of resolutions calling for the ethics
committee to broaden its investigation into Massa to include a probe
into what Democratic leaders knew and when.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) didn’t let up on Wednesday.

“Members of Congress, especially leaders, have clear
responsibilities when it comes to protecting congressional employees
and interns from harassment and abuse,” Boehner said. “I hope this
investigation will establish, in a timely fashion, whether the
Democratic leadership lived up to those standards in the case involving
Congressman Massa and his employees.”

But Boehner was unwilling to differentiate Hoyer’s response from Pelosi’s.

“Speaker Pelosi’s staff has acknowledged they knew about problems in
Mr. Massa’s office back in the fall of 2009, and House Majority Leader
Hoyer’s office was contacted at least several days before the
allegations were publicly known,” Boehner’s statement said.

“We need answers to serious questions: What did Democratic leaders
know about former Rep. Massa’s conduct? When did they know? What did
they do to protect the staff and interns who were being subjected to
harassment by their boss?”

When the allegations first became public, Hoyer’s office immediately
began disseminating to the press the back story of how he handled the
complaints after they were first relayed to him by his senior staff in
early February, which included a 48-hour ultimatum to Massa’s office to
report sexual harassment complaints to the ethics committee.

“Majority Leader Hoyer, through both his words and actions, has
always made it clear that the bipartisan ethics committee should take
all appropriate action regarding the allegations against former Rep.
Massa,” Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant said in a statement regarding the
formal ethics probe.

This story was updated at 3:40 p.m. and 4:31 p.m.