Ethics panel to Conyers: We’ll be judge

THE HOUSE Ethics Committee launched a probe of Michigan Rep. John Conyers hours after he admitted to reaching a cash settlement with an ex-staffer who accused him of sexual harassment.

The Tuesday announcement followed a BuzzFeed News report that detailed a $27,000 payment to silence Conyers’ former employee, along with other accounts of inappropriate behavior toward female staffers.

A second report emerged later in the day chronicling the experience of another female staffer who tried to file a sex harassment suit against Conyers — the longest-serving member of the House, who was first elected in 1964.

A ballooning number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called for an ethics investigation into Conyers’ conduct following the BuzzFeed story published late Monday.

After initially denying the settlement early Tuesday, Conyers confirmed its existence but stressed that the allegations against him were false.

“In this case, I expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me and continue to do so,” the 88-year-old Democratic lawmaker said in a statement.

“My office resolved the allegations — with an express denial of liability — in order to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. That should not be lost in the narrative.”

BuzzFeed detailed affidavits from ex-staffers who said they witnessed Conyers requesting sexual favors from the one who filed the complaint. They also claimed in the affidavits to have seen him caressing the legs and back of other staffers in a sexual manner.

One former employee said one of her jobs was “to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources.”

The ex-staffer who received the settlement said in her complaint that Conyers repeatedly begged for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room, BuzzFeed reported.

In one instance, the woman showed up at his hotel room after he asked her to work alongside him for the evening.

But Conyers started talking about his sexual desires soon after she arrived — and even asked her to fondle his privates, her complaint says, according to BuzzFeed.

In another seamy encounter, Conyers made an unwanted request to the woman after she refused to stay in his hotel room while they traveled together for a fund-raising event. “Just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go,” he said, according to BuzzFeed.

The woman later agreed to the settlement in exchange for her silence after enduring a protracted process that critics say is designed to discourage victims from reporting abuses.

“I was basically blackballed,” said. “There was nowhere I could go.”

A second female staffer attempted to file a federal court lawsuit alleging that Conyers subjected her to unwanted touching “repeatedly and daily,” according to a BuzzFeed story published Tuesday evening.

From May to July of 2016, Conyers subjected the woman to a barrage of unwanted contact that included “rubbing on her shoulders, kissing her forehead, covering and attempting to hold her hand,” court documents show.

The woman abandoned the suit in March — a month after she filed it — after the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied her motion to seal the complaint, BuzzFeed reported.

Even before the new report, New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler and several other lawmakers called for an investigation of Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Conyers, who was active in the civil rights movement, co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969.