Consultant George Santos, a Republican from New York, comes for a vote at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Republican Rep. George Santos on Monday denied groping a former prospective staffer in his congressional office, contacting the sexual harassment allegation “comical.”
Santos, the embattled freshman lawmaker from New York who is struggling with a litany of other scandals and investigations, reported he “of training course” denies the hottest claim “100%,” CNN noted.
That denial arrived 3 days soon after Santos’ accuser, Derek Myers, stated he had submitted a report inquiring the U.S. Capitol Police and the Residence Committee on Ethics to investigate the alleged sexual harassment incident.
Myers also questioned the ethics panel to probe Santos’ office environment for allegedly assigning him staff members obligations and promising him future work when he was an unpaid volunteer, according to a letter Myers posted on Twitter.
Neither NBC News nor CNBC have been able to independently corroborate the letter’s allegations.
A spokeswoman for Santos’ office referred CNBC to his attorney, who declined to comment. The U.S. Capitol Police did not promptly respond to CNBC’s ask for for remark on Myers’ alleged report.
Myers’ involvement with Santos initially arrived to light previous week, when Conversing Factors Memo posted audio that Myers experienced surreptitiously recorded within the congressman’s place of work. That audio, which described Myers as a neighborhood news reporter, observed that he had been charged final 12 months with wiretapping after his outlet posted leaked audio of courtroom testimony. The nonprofit Committee to Defend Journalists has identified as for those fees to be dropped.
In his letter posted Friday, Myers claimed that Santos sexually harassed him on Jan. 25 while the two guys ended up by itself in the congressman’s private office heading above constituent mail. Santos had requested Myers earlier in the working day if he experienced a profile on the LGBTQ courting app Grindr, sharing that “he, himself had a profile,” Myers’ letter explained.
Myers wrote that Santos named him “buddy” and “insisted” that Myers sit future to him on a smaller sofa before “positioning his hand on my remaining leg, near my knee and saying, ‘Hey buddy, we are likely to karaoke tonight. Would you like to go?'”
Myers declined, and Santos then “proceeded to take his hand and shift it down my leg into my inner-thigh and proceeded to touch my groin,” according to the letter. “He then proceeded to glance at me and say, ‘My husband is out of city tonight if you want to appear over,'” and shared his deal with with Myers, the letter alleged.
Myers reported he pushed Santos’ hand away and returned to discussing constituent mail, then before long thereafter still left the business quickly. 5 times later on, Myers wrote, he was beckoned to Santos’ workplace and “questioned about my history as a journalist” and issues that “experienced now been disclosed” in prior discussions with hiring administrators.
On Feb. 1, Myers’ position give was rescinded, the letter alleged. He experienced been provided a workers situation just over a 7 days previously on Jan. 23, and had started undertaking numerous responsibilities in the office the up coming working day, but he was instructed that his title would be “volunteer” until finally his onboarding paperwork had been processed, in accordance to the letter.
“Considering that this, I have learned that these types of volunteer get the job done within a Congressional workplace with no the suitable processes getting followed is in violation of the Dwelling Ethics,” Myers wrote in inquiring for an investigation of the matter.
The place of work of the Property Committee on Ethics’ Republican the vast majority did not promptly respond to CNBC’s ask for for remark on Myers’ letter. A spokesperson for Rep. Susan Wild, the leading ranking Democrat on the panel, advised NBC that the office had acquired the letter. The Office environment of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan entity that Myers had tagged in his Twitter thread, also did not instantly respond to a ask for for comment.
