Rep. Nancy Mace on Monday published the names of six former House members she says tapped a congressional settlement fund to quietly resolve sexual harassment allegations, and told voters the tab landed on them. The South Carolina Republican posted the names and dollar amounts on X after reviewing what she described as roughly 1,000 pages of documents produced by a subpoena she issued to the House Oversight Committee in March.
The names span both parties and stretch back nearly two decades. Three of the former lawmakers Mace identified, Blake Farenthold, John Conyers, and Carolyn McCarthy, have died in recent years. The rest, including former Reps. Rodney Alexander, Eric Massa, and Patrick Meehan, left Congress long ago. But the settlements they allegedly secured were paid with public money, and until now the specifics had never been laid out in one place by a sitting member of Congress.
Mace's post on X listed individual cases and settlement amounts, as the Daily Caller reported. Former Louisiana Republican Rep. Rodney Alexander was listed with a $15,000 settlement in 2007. The office of former New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy appeared with two cases resulting in one $8,000 settlement in 2009.
Former New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa was tied to three separate settlements in 2010, $85,000, $20,000, and $10,000, totaling $115,000 for a single lawmaker. Former Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers appeared with a $50,000 settlement in 2010, with a second entry in 2014 that was cut off in the post. Former Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold was listed at $84,000 in 2014. Former Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Patrick Meehan was also named.
Just The News reported that the total across the cases Mace identified came to roughly $338,000, all of it drawn from a taxpayer-backed fund. The outlet noted that a 2018 law ended the use of federal money for such settlements, and no taxpayer-funded payouts have been made since 2017.
Mace said the documents she obtained cover only the last 22 years. Everything before 2004, she claimed, was destroyed.
As she wrote on X, in a post flagged by the Washington Examiner:
"Nine members. One thousand pages. All records prior to 2004 were destroyed, which tells you everything you need to know about how long this has been buried."
The Examiner reported that Mace's subpoena actually identified nine former members of Congress, though the Daily Caller's account focused on six names visible in her post. Mace also wrote that taxpayer dollars "were used to silence victims of sexual harassment by Members of Congress."
That claim, that public money quietly bought silence for powerful men, is the center of gravity here. The settlements were processed through a Treasury-backed fund managed by what was then called the Office of Compliance. National Review noted that the office paid more than $17 million across 268 settlements since the 1990s, covering not just sexual harassment but also discrimination and other workplace claims. The sexual harassment cases Mace surfaced represent a fraction of that total, but one that Congress worked hard to keep quiet.
Mace's push for transparency did not begin in a vacuum. It followed two high-profile sex scandals that rocked the House over the past year and ended with a pair of resignations on April 14.
Former Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales came under scrutiny after one of his district staffers died by suicide, setting herself on fire. A series of text messages released by the woman's widower alleged that Gonzales and the staffer had carried on an affair, a claim Gonzales later admitted to. He resigned from the House on April 14.
The same day, former California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell also resigned. Swalwell had dropped out of California's gubernatorial race after several women levied accusations ranging from sexual misconduct to rape. He denied all of the allegations. But the political damage was done, and his departure followed weeks of mounting pressure.
Swalwell had earlier tried to frame the accusations as politically motivated, a defense that drew sharp criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Those twin departures gave Mace the opening to subpoena the Oversight Committee in March. What she got back was a thousand pages of settlement records that Congress had never voluntarily disclosed.
Mace has been blunt about where blame lies: everywhere. She told Fox News that both parties have shielded their own members from exposure.
"What happens is both parties will protect the other because they don't want their skeletons out there."
She also called for a broader reckoning.
"I think there should be an avalanche of resignations. I want every single predator that's in Congress now to be forced to resign. I don't care how long it takes. If we can do it fast, let's do it now, regardless of party."
That bipartisan resistance is not hypothetical. National Review's Jim Geraghty pointed out that after the Gonzales scandal, Mace introduced a resolution requiring the House Ethics Committee to release all sexual misconduct or harassment reports involving members or staff. Most House Democrats and most House Republicans voted against it.
Read that again. A solid majority in both caucuses chose to keep the records sealed. Geraghty wrote: "In this case, a solid majority of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the public should not know about all the sexual misconduct or harassment reports involving members or their staffers."
That vote tells you more about the culture on Capitol Hill than any single scandal ever could. The institution closed ranks, not along party lines, but along institutional ones.
The settlement disclosures are only one front in Mace's broader accountability campaign. She has also been pressing for the expulsion of Republican Florida Rep. Cory Mills, who has faced allegations about his military record, business dealings, and domestic violence. Mace previously led a successful vote to censure Mills and has since pushed a resolution to remove him from the House entirely, a move that drew a sharp counterattack from Mills himself.
Mace has not softened her language on the matter. In a post on X, she wrote:
"If you're against men beating women, stolen valor, and corruption, you should be voting YES on my resolution to expel Cory Mills. And if you vote no, go home and explain to your constituents why that behavior is acceptable. We are setting the standard that corrupt dirt bags who hurt women and harm the reputation of real war heroes don't stay in Congress. Anyone else who behaved like this would be sitting in jail."
The Mills fight and the settlement disclosures share a common thread: Mace is arguing that Congress has built a system designed to protect its worst actors and punish anyone who tries to force sunlight in.
The broader pattern of ethics trouble on Capitol Hill has not been limited to sexual misconduct. Other members have faced their own reckonings in recent months, including a congresswoman who resigned minutes before an ethics panel was set to recommend her expulsion.
Mace's disclosures raise as many questions as they answer. The full list of nine former members she identified has not been entirely detailed in public reporting. The truncated post on X cut off after "2014: John...", leaving at least one entry incomplete. The specific documents behind the settlement figures have not been published.
And then there is the matter of the destroyed records. If everything before 2004 was wiped out, no one will ever know how many settlements were paid, to whom, or for what, during the decades when Congress operated with even less oversight than it has now.
Mace summed up her position in two sentences: "Accountability is not a threat. It is a promise."
The question is whether the institution she serves in will let her keep it. So far, the House's bipartisan answer has been a firm no, which tells taxpayers everything they need to know about who Congress is really protecting.