House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that her staff kept her out of the loop about a “rumor” that Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) made unwanted advances on a male staffer, even though Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had known about the allegations for weeks.
“I asked my staff. I said, ‘Have there been any rumors about any of this before?’” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “There had been a rumor, but just that. There was no formal notification to our office that anything happened. It was a one-, two-, three-person rumor that had been reported to Mr. Hoyer’s office, that they reported to my staff, which they did not report to me because, you know what, this is Rumor City. There are rumors. I have a job to do, and I’ve been doing that.”
Hoyer learned about an allegation of misconduct on Feb. 8, his office said Wednesday night. He purportedly gave Massa or his staff 48 hours to take the issue to the ethics committee, threatening to take it to the panel himself if they wouldn't. Hoyer’s office told Pelosi’s staff about the Massa situation within days of these allegations, but Pelosi says she didn’t know this was going on.
The first-term upstate New York congressman didn’t tell the speaker anything was up until Wednesday, Pelosi asserts.
“Mr. Massa called me yesterday and told me he had been diagnosed with cancer and that he may not be seeking reelection,” she said. “That was the first I heard of that.”
The speaker spent much of her weekly news conference on the defensive, testily pushing back against questions about ethics lapses and controversy over abortion provisions in the new health bill.
“Some of the issues that you reference in terms of the issues that transpired in the last few days, they’re behind us,” she said. “They’re behind us. We have a new acting chair of the Ways and Means Committee. That’s a very big change. So our members are strong. They know that we have to be stronger on our message as to what it is we’ve done.” - Politico Story
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