Elon Musk backs call for releasing names of lawmakers who used 'sexual slush fund'
Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, along with entrepreneur Elon Musk, are calling for the names of federal lawmakers whose offices have used tax dollars to settle claims of sexual and other types of harassment to be made public.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., published an X post last week stating that “Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices.”
The $17 million statistic cited by Massie comes from a report released by the Office of Compliance of the U.S. Congress in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement defined by allegations of sexual misconduct implicating powerful men. The report noted that the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 established “an account of the Office in the Treasury on the United States for the payment of awards and settlements.”
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According to the data compiled in the report, a total of 272 settlements were paid between 1997 and 2017. The combined total of the settlements amounts to more than $17.2 million. The report did not disclose which office the settlements originated in.
The number of settlements reached on an annual basis ranged from a low of six in 1997 and 1999 to a high of 25 in 2007. Total settlement amounts ranged from just over $39,000 in 1997 to more than $4 million in 2007.
Nearly a decade has passed since the report’s publication, meaning that it is likely that additional settlements have been reached since then.
“Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives,” Massie tweeted.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., shared Massie’s post and expressed support for his proposal.
“I want to release the congressional sexual slush fund list. Tax payers should have never had to pay for that. Along with all the other garbage they should not have to pay for.”
Elon Musk, the CEO of X, SpaceX and Tesla, also agreed. In a reply to Massie’s X post, Musk wrote, “Whoa? Yeah.”
The discussion about making the identities of Congress members who settled sexual harassment claims in the past two decades comes as President-elect Donald Trump has tasked Musk with co-leading a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency that will operate independently from the federal government.
Trump said the purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency is to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies — essential to the ‘Save America’ movement” and to “drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending.”
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate also tapped to co-lead DOGE, elaborated on their vision for the agency in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
While the two did not explicitly identify the harassment settlements as expenditures they would put on the chopping block, Musk’s statement in support of making the names public and the suggestion of members of Congress that taxpayer money should no longer go to such payments raise questions about how much longer the status quo will continue.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
