Tag: sexual harassment

‘Betrayal’: How Biden Adviser Anita Dunn and SKDK Played Both Sides in Sexual Harassment Case

One of President Joe Biden’s most trusted advisers is under fire amid revelations that she helped guide former Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan (D.) through a sexual harassment scandal while her firm was working with a #MeToo advocacy group representing one of Madigan’s accusers.

Anita Dunn, who has been described as Biden’s “brawler-in-chief,” in 2018 and 2019 helped Madigan to respond to allegations that he retaliated against campaign staffer Alaina Hampton, who accused a top Madigan aide of sexual harassment. Hampton claimed she was blacklisted from working on other political campaigns after filing the complaint. Madigan’s campaign paid $200,000 to Dunn’s firm, SKDK, to respond to allegations from the lawsuit, according to NPR. At the same time, Madigan’s accuser was working with SKDK and a legal defense fund bankrolled by Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual harassment.

It’s the latest example of Dunn, considered a feminist icon in Washington, quietly working for politically connected clients accused of sexual misconduct. In 2017, Dunn was revealed to have advised disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein after several actresses accused him of rape.

In addition to Dunn’s work for the Biden administration, her husband, Bob Bauer, is a personal attorney for the president. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“Betrayal” is how Hampton in an interview with NPR described Dunn’s actions.

“I don’t know Anita Dunn, and I hope I never will,” Hampton said. “But I would question her on her values and integrity, and I would ask her how she can credibly claim her commitment to women’s rights and issues.”

While it is unclear exactly what services Dunn provided Madigan, emails obtained by NPR indicate she provided advice for an op-ed that Madigan wrote in September 2018 for the Chicago Tribune. The then-speaker wrote that he should have “acted sooner” to address sexual harassment allegations at his office.

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CIA in Congress’ crosshairs over alleged mishandling of sex assault cases

The House intelligence committee is investigating whether the Central Intelligence Agency is mishandling how it responds to sexual assault and harassment in its workforce, according to four people familiar with the matter.

At least three female CIA employees have approached the committee since January to tell them that the agency is discouraging women from making sexual misconduct complaints, according to one of the people, attorney Kevin Carroll, who represents the first employee who talked to the committee. He also said the CIA is making it difficult for alleged victims to speak to law enforcement.

The allegations led committee chair Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) to send a letter last week to CIA director Bill Burns to ask for the agency’s help looking into the issues, according to another of the four people, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private letter. Burns responded within 24 hours and pledged full cooperation, according to a senior CIA official.

Carroll said his client has told him that as many as 54 women at the CIA over the past decade have said they were been victims of sexual assault or misconduct by colleagues, and that their cases were improperly handled. POLITICO could not independently verify that assertion.

“This is the CIA’s Me Too moment,” said Carroll, who is a partner at the firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP and is representing the victim pro bono.

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Cop Caught on Own Body Cam Harassing Victim Before Turning it Off to Allegedly Rape Her

The now-disgraced officer Deangelo Reyes is a bad cop. Regardless of how his rape trial unfolds, thanks to the release of body camera footage this week, the world now knows that he is a lying sexual predator who uses his authority to intimidate, coerce, and allegedly rape unwitting victims.

The Tulsa Police Department released footage from Reyes’ body camera this week that showed an incident unfolding in April 2022, leading to rape charges against the officer. Reyes’ police union-appointed defense team is not happy about the video’s release as it needs no interpretation to paint their client in a sick and twisted light.

The incident began in April of last year when Reyes was responding to a call at a local motel. As Reyes was wrapping up the call, he spotted a woman walking her dog and decided to go into full creep mode.

As the officer’s body camera footage showed, Reyes pulls up next to the unsuspecting woman, who was a guest at the hotel and begins hitting on her from his patrol car. Just a couple of lines in, Reyes tells the woman, “You’re sexy. Is that unprofessional of me? I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“Have you seen a lady in like a yellow hoodie running around here? Looked like she was upset?” Reyes is heard asking the woman. She responds, “No.”

You can hear Reyes ask the woman what her name is before he lies to her and gives her a fake name. “I’m Eric … Nice to meet you.”

Reyes then asks the woman where he can find her later, but she doesn’t tell him, and the encounter ends. Moments after they part ways, this predator cop turns off his body camera before jumping onto his department-issued computer to access information on the woman he just propositioned.

According to his arrest affidavit, Reyes found the hotel where the woman was staying and approached her. Since he had just accessed the woman’s record and noticed that she had prior convictions, he used this against her, threatening to put her back in prison.

According to police, Reyes then kissed her on the neck and based on his statement about putting her back in prison, she became terrified that he was going to plant evidence on her to fabricate an arrest.

The affidavit states that Reyes proceeded to rape the woman after getting her inside the hotel room. The woman submitted to a rape kit after the encounter, proving they had intercourse. Reyes now claims it was consensual.

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‘Set phone up so I can spy on you showering.’ Hunter Biden threatened to withhold cash-strapped assistant’s pay if she didn’t FaceTime him naked, texts show – as it’s revealed she’s the FOURTH employee with whom he had a sexual relationship

Hunter Biden threatened one of his cash-strapped young female staffers with withholding her pay if she didn’t FaceTime him for sex.

Shocking texts between the President’s son, 52, and his young assistant, who was 29 at the time, show Hunter asking for video sex sessions and sending her cash via Apple Pay after she pleaded that she was struggling to make rent.

The woman, who DailyMail.com has chosen not to identify, worked as an assistant at Hunter’s law firm, Owasco, in 2018 and 2019. She is the fourth employee he is known to have had a sexual relationship with.

Documents on his abandoned laptop show Hunter put his lover and brother’s widow Hallie Biden on his company payroll, as well as her sister Liz Secundy, with whom he also had an affair, texts reveal.

He also hired his daughter’s basketball coach, reportedly former stripper Lunden Roberts, but ended her employment and stopped responding to her messages after she told him she was pregnant with his child. Roberts eventually had to sue him for child support. 

Messages and emails involving his now 33-year-old assistant first appear on Hunter’s laptop in June 2018, when he flew her from Los Angeles to Washington DC.

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Taxpayers to Cover Andrew Cuomo’s Defense in Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

Taxpayers will be left footing the bill to defend disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in his sexual harassment lawsuit.

Nearly a dozen women have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, leading to his resignation in August 2021.

Cuomo was sued by a State Trooper last year, who alleges that he hit on her, kissed her, and “placed the palm of his hand on her belly button and slid it across her waist to her right hip.”

According to a report from the New York Post, “the former governor claimed the sex harassment accusations were made while he was governor — entitling him to a state-funded defense.”

A lawyer with the Attorney General, Andrew Amer, said they had denied the taxpayer-funded defense because “all of the conduct was to serve [Cuomo’s] own self-interest.”

“These are not allegations where the conduct occurred while they were off duty. These are work place allegations,” Cuomo’s lawyer argued.

On Friday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Shlomo Hagler sided with Cuomo.

“This court grants the petition and requires that there be a defense,” Hagler said.

“[Cuomo’s] view is that everything he did was within the scope of his employment and he was just acting as the governor … when addressing trooper 1 in a friendly manner,” Hagler continued. “Did he go over the line? That is not clear cut.”

The judge said that since Cuomo has denied the allegations and claimed that he was acting appropriately as the governor, a taxpayer-funded defense can’t be denied.

“The allegations are quite disturbing,” Hagler said. “They should not be tolerated in the work place, if true.”

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A top Border Patrol official resigned after allegedly pressuring female employees for sex, officials say

A top official at the U.S. Border Patrol abruptly resigned in October after allegations came to light that he pressured a subordinate employee to perform sexual favors, and other women have since made similar allegations that they were victimized by him, say three Department of Homeland Security officials. 

Tony Barker, who served as the acting chief of the law enforcement operations directorate for the Border Patrol, is now under investigation for his behavior by Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the three officials say. 

According to the sources, one woman said she had a consensual relationship with Barker that she tried to end, prompting Barker to retaliate. Barker allegedly threatened to tell others that she had illegally issued contracts if she did not perform sexual favors.

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DOJ Probed Tara Reade’s Twitter After She Issued Allegations About Joe Biden’s Sexual Harassment, Docs Show

The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a subpoena probing Twitter for information on Tara Reade’s accounts in 2020 months after she issued allegations about being sexually assaulted by President Joe Biden in 1993, documents obtained by the Daily Caller show.

The DOJ asked Twitter to testify before a grand jury on Dec. 16 of 2020 and provide “all subscriber information” from Reade’s accounts, according to emails and subpoena documents obtained by the Caller.

The subpoena shows that Twitter was asked to provide information on two of Reade’s Twitter accounts, including @ReadeAlexandra and @TaraMcCabe.

The requested information included the accounts’:

  1. Subscriber name;
  2. Address;
  3. Records of session times and durations, to include attempted/failed/unauthenticated logins;
  4. Length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized;
  5. Telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and
  6. Means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number)

The DOJ, Twitter and Perkins Coie, the law firm representing Twitter for the subpoena, did not respond to the Caller when asked to verify the authenticity of the subpoena.

Reade said she doesn’t “know why” her Twitter accounts were of interest to the FBI.

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Three Wisconsin Middle School Boys Hit with Title IX Sexual Harassment Complaint for Calling Non-Binary Classmate by Wrong Pronouns

Three Wisconsin middle school boys were hit with a Title IX sexual harassment complaint for refusing to refer to a non-binary classmate by ‘they/them’ pronouns.

Three 8th graders at Kiel Middle School are under investigation for refusing to capitulate to a so-called ‘non-binary’ student’s demands.

Title IX covers rape, dating violence and quid pro quo sexual favors.

Attorneys at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty argue that Title IX doesn’t cover the misuse of pronouns and neither do any of the school district’s policies.

WLUK reported:

The school district has filed a Title IX complaint against the Kiel Middle School students, accusing them of sexual harassment for using incorrect pronouns when addressing another student.

I received a phone call from the principal over at the elementary school, forewarning me; letting me know that I was going to be receiving an email with sexual harassment allegations against my son,” Rosemary Rabidoux, one of the parents of the students being accused said. “I immediately went into shock! I’m thinking, sexual harassment? That’s rape, that’s inappropriate touching, that’s incest. What has my son done?”

Rabidoux’s 13-year-old son Braden is one of the three eighth-grade Kiel Middle School students accused of sexual harassment — something she disputes.

“(The investigating principal) said he’s being allegedly charged with sexual harassment for not using proper pronouns,” said Rabidoux. “I thought it wasn’t real! I thought this has got to be a gag, a joke — one has nothing to do with the other.”

According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), now defending the accused students, in March, one of their peers announced the pronouns they’d prefer to be addressed as — they/them.

One of the alleged incidents Braden and the others were supposedly involved in happened in late April.

“She had been screaming at one of Braden’s friends to use proper pronouns, calling him profanity, and this friend is very soft-spoken, and kind of just sunk down into his chair,” Rabidoux explained. “Braden finally came up, defending him, saying ‘He doesn’t have to use proper pronouns, it’s his constitutional right to not use, you can’t make him say things.’”

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Britain may outlaw catcalling

Pestering women on the street and in bars could soon become an offense as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women against violence.

Loopholes in current laws mean there is no specific offense for sexually harassing women verbally in the street.

Now a Government-commissioned review will next week call for public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offences, reports The Telegraph.

The proposed change is part of a push to outlaw “public sexual harassment”.

However, calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime will be rejected — as it’s thought it be ineffective, according to sources.

A Whitehall source told the paper: “The Law Commission is not going to class misogyny as a hate crime because it would be ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.

“But it will call for a public sexual harassment offence which doesn’t currently exist.

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How China Managed to Wipe Out All Mentions of Its Most Explosive #MeToo Case

Hours after Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused a former Communist Party official of sexual assault in a shocking online post, Eric Liu witnessed one of the most intensive censorship campaigns carried out before his eyes. 

The process looked familiar to Liu, who worked as a content censor at Weibo, the microblogging site where Peng described how former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into sex before the two entered into an on-and-off affair. But the scale was unprecedented, the 34-year-old said, due to the shocking nature of Peng’s story, the sheer number of people on social media, and the Communist leadership’s growing desire to keep public opinion under control.

“It is an extremely grand-scale campaign,” said Liu, who quit the company in 2013 and is now tracking Chinese censorship for China Digital Times from the United States. “There is nothing that could be compared to this. Although more serious political events have taken place in the past, the internet censorship was not that strict. I would expect them to use their full capacity to carry this out.” 

The Communist Party leadership regards any scandal involving its core members as a threat to its rule. Since Peng’s post came out, Beijing has sought to wipe it out from the country’s history by banning media coverage, requiring around-the-clock human efforts from social media companies, and, through a system of punishments, coaxing citizens into self-censorship. It has demonstrated the country’s ability to keep its cyberspace insular even as the case was making international headlines every day. 

The goal is to make Peng’s accusations taboo, just like the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, so even those who have read the post would avoid talking about it, letting the incident recede from memory and lose its significance as China’s biggest #MeToo case.

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