Your Favorite Politician May Be A Scumbag

Nine years ago, I was one of the Fox News women who spoke up about being sexually harassed by then-Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. Because I was among the very few on-air Democrats at Fox, I faced an avalanche of accusations that I was coming forward to destroy the nation’s most prominent right-wing network.

That was, of course, nonsense. I went public only once I had been rebuffed and penalized after asking Ailes’ successors for help. The moment I confided in someone about what Ailes had done to me, my career at the network was effectively over, even though Ailes himself was already gone. That’s how tribal allegiances work, even when people know better. It’s also why nearly every woman who spoke up about sexual misconduct at Fox never found paid work on television again. Many other women saw the cost and chose not to come forward at all.

What followed was even more difficult.

At the time, I was working as a political consultant for Phil Murphy, who was then running for governor of New Jersey as a staunch progressive. I had shepherded his campaign from inception through the primary, hiring most of his senior staff and consultants. For nearly four years, we were politically inseparable.

Several days after my Fox story broke, young female campaign staffers approached me to say that they were experiencing toxic behavior from Murphy’s senior male aides. Lobbyists came forward as well, accusing some of the same men of deeply unethical conduct. They asked for my help.

I had no reason to believe that Murphy, who said all the right things about the #MeToo movement publicly and had issued a written statement of support when I came forward about Ailes, would not take this seriously. But when I raised concerns about several men on his team, he stalled for weeks. When I pressed him, he asked to meet privately. Instead of addressing what I had reported, he repeatedly accused me of being disruptive to his political efforts — the very efforts to which I had devoted years of work.

Forty-eight hours later, he fired me.

Almost immediately, his campaign attorney, who still works for high-profile Democrats nationwide, called to remind me that I was bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement. He ordered me not to disclose anything I had seen, heard, or witnessed. More strikingly, he told me to destroy or return all campaign materials in my possession, which would have included any evidence of misconduct. In a daze, I agreed, until a lawyer advised me to ignore that instruction. Had I complied, I would have erased the very proof of what had happened.

That proof soon became critical.

Fearing I might violate my NDA and furious that I had tried to report their misconduct, men on Murphy’s staff began spreading the story that I had been “separated” from the campaign for undermining his election and working for “interests adverse” to his efforts. They never specified what those interests were, but strongly implied I was having a secret affair with one of Murphy’s political adversaries. It was a blatant lie and a predictable one. No matter how far women climb professionally, when all else fails, men will invent allegations of promiscuity to discredit them.

Months after Murphy’s inauguration, I received a call from a former campaign volunteer, a young woman now working in his administration. Through tears, she told me that she had been sexually assaulted by one of Murphy’s senior campaign aides right around the time when other women had approached me about their workplace environment. She had reported it to senior staff, who did nothing to help her. Her alleged assailant had been rewarded with a high-profile government job and she was terrified of encountering him at work. She asked for my help.

There was so much I could have told her: that I had warned Murphy something like this would happen; that I was living proof that reporting misconduct could backfire; that she wasn’t alone; that there was a pattern of behavior among men in his orbit; that other women had confided in me about toxic experiences by men Murphy continued to elevate.

But I couldn’t say any of it. Murphy’s attorneys continued to threaten legal action if I violated my NDA. All I could do was listen, offer sympathy and general guidance, and lie awake at night wondering how it had come to this.

It was the darkest moment of my professional life. A woman was begging for help, and I had to weigh whether helping her would mean being sued into oblivion by one of the most powerful and wealthiest politicians in the nation.

That was when I called my former Fox News colleague Gretchen Carlson and asked if she wanted to join efforts to fight workplace silencing mechanisms. Within months, we launched our non-profit, Lift Our Voices, and eventually spearheaded the only two federal laws to come out of the #MeToo movement.

Meanwhile, the young survivor grew desperate. After texting Murphy directly and being promised a response that never came, she was contacted by the same campaign attorney who had enforced my NDA and who assured her that her alleged assailant would be removed from public service. That, too, was a lie. He kept his job and received a pay raise.

Only when Murphy’s press office learned that The Wall Street Journal was preparing an explosive story did they act to push her alleged assailant out. It was not because they were concerned about her but because they were concerned about a brewing national news story that would splatter on the governor and result in potential follow-ups that would blow the lid off how Murphy and his team treated women more broadly. This would not be a great look for a politician who painted himself as a progressive champion of women.

Still, after that story ran, the retaliation against the survivor was swift. She was sidelined professionally, then effectively driven out of state government altogether. Two Murphy-appointed prosecutors declined to pursue her case, despite the fact that she had reported her assault to the police immediately and had gone to a hospital for a rape kit. Publicly, Murphy expressed concern to the press about her well-being. Privately, his aides and political supporters smeared her — viciously, persistently, and with the full weight of the governor’s office behind them.

The people doing the smearing were Democrats. Some had championed Christine Blasey Ford during Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings. Many branded themselves feminists, even embedding “Equality” in their social media handles. But when confronted with misconduct within their own party, they fell silent — or worse, actively undermined the women speaking out.

Even as I was advocating across the country to ban NDAs, Murphy was enforcing mine to prevent me from helping this survivor or speaking up about my own experiences. Even as he signed legislation restricting such agreements, his lawyers insisted that it wasn’t retroactive. Even as he publicly encouraged women to speak out, his legal team sent me subpoenas and threats, insisting that my gag order covered “any knowledge or information of any type whatsoever.”

Only after years of sustained pressure did Murphy finally release me from my NDA. By then, the retaliation had already limited my ability to work in my home state. I have never regretted standing up for less powerful women but the professional and emotional cost has been immense.

Which brings us to now.

On Friday, four women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Rep. Eric Swalwell, who is running for governor of California. And once again, too many self-described progressives are reacting not by listening, but by attacking the accusers.

They are doing this because Swalwell is a Democrat, because he opposes Trump, and because he publicly shares their values — including on #metoo issues.

Suddenly, those same voices are invoking “innocent until proven guilty” — a legal standard, not a moral or political one. Suddenly, they are asking why these women waited so long, ignoring that survivors like E. Jean Carroll, Anita Hill, and Christine Blasey Ford also waited years or decades. Suddenly, they are suggesting these women are MAGA operatives or political pawns.

There is a very simple reason why this story is coming out now: at least some of the women likely do not want to see a sexual assailant ascend to the governorship of the most populous state in the nation. The exact timing is not dependent on them but on reporters who probably took weeks, if not months, to report out a story that had to be vetted by a team of attorneys. If these women were MAGA plants (and they are not), they would have waited until Swalwell was the Democratic nominee to tank him. They would not have culled the Democratic field, which only helps a Democrat ascend to the general election in California’s jungle primary.

Still, much of the vitriol has focused on one particular woman, a former Swalwell staffer who had sex with Swalwell, despite allegations that he got her so intoxicated that she blacked out and later woke up in his hotel room with no memory of the encounter. There are questions about why she put herself in a position to be raped a second time after she went out for drinks with him five years after the first incident. Would these questions be asked of a domestic violence survivor who returned to her abusive partner over and over again? Is it remotely possible that this woman, who first went to work for Swalwell when she was 20 and he was almost twice her age, was groomed by him from the jump? Even setting that aside, Swalwell himself does not deny that he had sex with an underling, raising serious concerns about abuse of power and violations of House rules that prohibit sexual relationships between members of Congress and their reports.

Before rushing to defend him, consider this: what makes Swalwell more credible than the women accusing him or more credible than his own senior staff members, who have publicly sided with those accusers? If we believe that character matters in our leaders — and Trump’s tenure should underscore exactly how important character is — it should matter every time, and not just when it’s politically expedient.

So much of our lives politically are tied up in our identity. If you are a Democrat, you believe that fellow Democrats will have your back when you finally speak up about some of the worst things that ever happened to you. Instead, you find that purported allies question your motives, dismiss your pain, and denigrate your account. If you don’t behave in deeply rational terms because you are traumatized, they exploit the inconsistencies. If you do, they make something up to challenge your credibility anyway.

Is it any wonder we have a sexual misconduct epidemic in this country? Who, other than the very bravest women, would risk speaking out after seeing what happens to those who do?