Posted on 09/28/2018 7:42:47 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
A Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) employee who has accused Director Mel Watt of sexual harassment described her allegations Thursday in gripping testimony before a House committee.
Simone Grimes, a special adviser at FHFA, told lawmakers that Watt made dozens of sexual advances toward her, withheld a promised pay raise over her refusal of his advances and was protected by senior agency officials charged with investigating her accusations.
Grimes told the House Financial Services Committee that the FHFA’s Office of Inspector General responded to her claims with “hostility, intimidation, bullying, laden with gossip and public shaming” and sought to protect Watt throughout the process.
“Not only are you hurt by what has happened, but you quickly learn that all of the agency mechanisms that you hope have a sympathetic ear are not only slightly hostile, but make it clear that they’re not there to support you, but defend their client no matter what their client has done,” Grimes said.
Lawmakers in both parties praised Grimes for coming forward, expressing sympathy and pledging to support her efforts to seek justice.
“She deserves to be heard and she needs to be heard,” said Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas).
Grimes alleged that Watt routinely sexually harassed her, starting in September 2015, with comments about her appearance and his attraction to her. Grimes had been seeking a pay raise that she said she was promised after taking on a new position, and that Watt regularly tied her compensation and advancement within FHFA to her refusal of his sexual advances.
“There was a clear correlation between the two,” Grimes said, adding that Watt made her feel “uncomfortable,” “unsafe” and “diminished to just an object.”
Grimes recorded audio from encounters with Watt in which he made inappropriate remarks, and has shared those tapes with reporters. Grimes said she informed Watt that he was being recorded, but that he appeared to not believe her.
Watt, a former Democratic congressman, has denied the allegations and refused to cooperate with internal investigations into Grimes’s claims. He is scheduled to testify before the committee Thursday afternoon.
Grimes also said that the FHFA inspector general (IG) and human resources department sought to protect Watt, hindered her ability to hold him accountable and halted her advancement within the agency.
Grimes said the FHFA inspector general’s decision to name her in a subpoena for records regarding her claim was particularly cruel, and imposed severe financial and emotional costs. Alleged victims of sexual assault are not typically named in complaints out of respect for their privacy.
“It was a shameful tactic by the IG to name me,” Grimes said, adding that the office “has taken the posture that they are there to defend the agency and its senior staff regardless of what they’ve done.”
FHFA Inspector General Laura Wertheimer told the committee that Grimes sent a detailed account of her complaint against Watt and recordings of their encounters to more than 100 agency managers using her office computer and email account.
Wertheimer said that FHFA attorneys were told they needed to name Grimes in their subpoena for the records by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which has jurisdiction over the agency.
“We wanted to file that motion under seal,” Wertheimer said. “We have court rules we must follow. The assistant U.S. attorneys handling this matter were told we could not file this under seal given the facts presented to them, which they would disclose to the court.”
Several Democrats questioned Wertheimer’s explanation and urged the FHFA to protect employees filing sensitive complaints.
“There has to be something to protect the person who came forward,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).
Wow,
This is how typical democrats treat accusers, not as victims but enemies. It’ll be interesting to see how this comes out.
Watt is a former Democrat congesscritter and an Obama appointee. The sexual harassment occurred while Obama was president.
Clearly it is Trump’s fault.
Boss is a Democrat
Entirely unrelated to Ms. Grimes's harassment complaint, it is infuriating that there is such a job as "special adviser" and that there is such an agency as FHFA. There are thousands upon thousands of Federal employees like this, in agencies that do nothing but complicate citizens' lives, doing "jobs" that involve no actual work.
They are highly paid with excellent benefits, they are unionized, and they have lots of time on their hands to make sure that the Federal government grows ever more expensive and intrusive.
Ladies and gentlemen, This is how a legitimate claim of sexual harassment looks.
"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."
Thus, my tagline.
Some interesting background. Watt is the poster boy for the ‘progressive’ rats union with the banksters. I am sure Watt took this position, even though he could have been Congressman for life from his district, to ready himself for a jump to the big money as a bankster:
In 2009, fellow congressman Ron Paul reported to Bloomberg that while Paul’s bill HR 1207, which mandates an audit of the Federal Reserve, was in subcommittee, Watt had substantially altered the substance of the bill, a move which had “gutted” the bill’s protections.[24] According to Bloomberg News, on October 20, 2009, “The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.” Paul said there is “nothing left” in the bill after Watt’s actions.[24]
Paul responded when he and Alan Grayson of Florida passed a competing amendment hours before the bill cleared the House Financial Services Committee to restore the bill’s original language and undo Watt’s attempts to weaken its effects. Watt won support from Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and the Congressional Black Caucus, both of which backed his amendment. Eight of the ten Black Caucus members on the committee voted against the Paul-Grayson amendment. Watt and Frank voted to inhibit the bill’s approval. With pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus to delay consideration of the bill by the full House of Representatives, it is unclear when HR 1207 will face a final vote.[25]
The country’s largest bank Bank of America is headquartered in Charlotte in Watt’s congressional district and has threatened to leave. The Sunlight Foundation reported that 45% of Watt’s campaign contributions for 2009 are from corporations in the real estate, insurance and finance industries, the seventh-highest percentage of any member of Congress.[26][27] Watt’s largest contributors included American Express, Wachovia, Bank of America and the American Bankers Association.[28]
And sometimes it's worse than this.
“Entirely unrelated to Ms. Grimes’s harassment complaint, it is infuriating that there is such a job as “special adviser” and that there is such an agency as FHFA. There are thousands upon thousands of Federal employees like this, in agencies that do nothing but complicate citizens’ lives, doing “jobs” that involve no actual work.”
You’ve broken “the code!” Federal Agencies are established for the sole purpose of giving patronage jobs to undeserving $hit people in exchange for their votes. As you point out, at best these agencies only serve to complicate our lives as ordinary citizens while fleecing us of our hard-earned tax dollars for exorbitant salaries, benefits and pensions.
“Melvin Luther Watt is an American politician who has been Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency since 2014. He was appointed by President Barack Obama. He is a former United States Representative for, from 1993 to 2014.”
And you don’t have to ask what shade of melanin his has. The middle name “Luther” is all you need to know.
Content of character rather then color of skin. I don’t care what color his skin is, I care that he’s likely a scumbag
“I don’t care what color his skin is”
I don’t either! I was just commenting on the fact that his picture was absent from the article, and that skin color was probably high on the list of reasons why it wasn’t displayed. It’s the Left’s “idea” of how to protect miscreant AAs.
Bookmarked
Thanks for the background.
Luther was no clue to anything. Ask Luther Strange.
It is a rare name for Blacks.
Good tagline.
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