Frankel seeks Trump inquiry

Sexual harassment allegations warrant investigation, she says

Congresswoman Lois Frankel is at the center of an effort by congressional Democrats to use heightened national concern over sexual harassment as a weapon against President Donald Trump.

Voters were saturated with news about the allegations against Trump during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign. But Frankel, who represents most of Palm Beach County, said his past conduct involving women deserves renewed and intensified scrutiny now that the country has had an awakening over the prevalence of sexual impropriety by powerful men and the effects it has on victims.

“This is about responding to circumstances of today. The time has come, the #MeToo movement. Something that might have been ignored six months ago, a year ago, six years ago, 20 years ago is no longer being ignored,” Frankel said in a telephone interview.

Some see political opportunism in the efforts by Frankel and other Democrats who hope that, with the rise of the #MeToo movement, their voters could get riled up and motivated to vote in 2018 out of animus toward the president. Frankel and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, introduced legislation last week that would require sexual harassment cases involving representatives, senators and their

staffers to automatically go to a congressional ethics committee.

The fact that Trump is president doesn’t mean the case against him should be closed, Frankel said. “A lot’s changed. Didn’t Harvey Weinstein pay dozens of women millions of dollars, and didn’t he think he had escaped it all?”

In October, Weinstein, a Hollywood mogul, was brought down by New York Times and New Yorker disclosures about decades of sexual harassment and assaults of women over whom he held power. Use of the social media hashtag #MeToo has exploded in the aftermath of the Weinstein case, with many women sharing their stories of abuse. In recent weeks, several members of Congress have resigned or said they intend to do so after various accounts of sexual improprieties.

Weinstein’s downfall came a year after Trump dismissed stories told by multiple women of unwelcome advances, including forced kissing, unwanted touching and groping. At the same time people heard Trump’s voice on the now-famous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged he could get away with whatever behavior he wanted toward women, including grabbing their genitals without consent, because he was a star.

Trump has consistently denied the allegations of inappropriate behavior. “These stories are all fabricated. They’re pure fiction and they’re outright lies. These events never, ever happ e n e d ,” Trump said during the campaign. On Dec. 12, Trump objected on Twitter to what he called “the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met. FAKE NEWS!”

A letter signed by more than 150 Democrats demanding an investigation into the Trump allegations by the House Oversight Committee contains graphic details:

“Natasha Stoynoff recounted how the President pushed her against a wall and forced his tongue down her throat. Jill Harth described how the President attempted to get up her dress. Kristin Anderson detailed how the President touched her genitals through her underwear. Mariah Billado, Rachel Crooks, Tasha Dixon, Jessica Drake, Cathy Heller, Samantha Holvey, Ninni Laaksonen, Jessica Leeds, Temple Taggart McDowell, Mindy McGillivray, Cassandra Searles, Bridget Sullivan, Karen Virginia, and Summer Zervos also offered alarming accounts.”

Frankel said the accusers should be taken seriously. “Based on my experience in life, all my years I’ve been alive, I don’t think, for the most part, victims don’t make these things up,” she said.

House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., rejected the request for an investigation of Trump. But Frankel said the House Democratic Women’s Working Group, of which she is chairwoman, would keep pursuing one.

Frankel hasn’t called on Trump to resign over the sexual harassment allegation but did vote Dec. 6 to start impeachment proceedings. All Republicans and most Democrats voted against the impeachment move.

“Would I have an objection if he resigned? For many, many reasons I would have no objection, which includes not only these allegations of sexual harassment, but many other reasons. I question his fitness. I’d even throw him a party if he wanted to go,” Frankel said.

Frankel, 69, was first elected to office 31 years ago, serving in the Florida House of Representatives, mayor of West Palm Beach and the U.S. House, where she’s serving her third term. Frankel said no woman of her generation faced a discrimination-free environment, but she doesn’t recall being a victim of any kind of harassment of the scale that’s now making headlines. “I’m at a certain age I don’t remember everything that happened in my youth.”

The congresswoman demurred on an issue that’s become increasingly sensitive for Democrats as the #MeToo movement has grown: whether their party was too quick in the 1990s to dismiss women who accused President Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual encounters. “I don’t know that quick is the right word, but I would say it reflected the time and place we were in. So instead of me being critical, I think if it happened now there would probably, there would be a different response,” she said.

Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University, said it shouldn’t be viewed as “entirely a political ploy. It seems to be a large movement that has swept up a lot of people in a number of industries, not just politics.”

William Leap, a retired American University anthropology professor who is now affiliated with FAU’s Center for Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, said Frankel’s push “keeps the conversation alive that says these issues are important and people need to be made aware of them.”

Frankel’s comments about Trump are “kind of comical,” said Margi Helschien, a former president of the Boca Raton Republican Club; president of the group America Connected, which spreads the word about “the greatness of America” – and a constituent of the congresswoman’s.

“She’s going around saying things that don’t have any merit,” Helschien said. “I think even she doesn’t believe this. I think she’s trying to get some reaction and get something going, because obviously they have nothing else to talk about.”

Helschien underscored the fact that voters were aware of the allegations against Trump, and he won the election. “Everybody knew about it at the time. I’m not saying that’s some way I would have behaved,” she said, but “it’s something that was already looked into.”

Karen Jurgens, who lives west of Boca Raton, attended an October 2016 Trump campaign rally near West Palm Beach, at which the candidate spent most of the event rejecting the allegations. At the time, she said she wanted to show that she and other women “are for him, regardless of the allegations.”

She said nothing has happened in the 14 months since to change her mind. “I don’t think there’s anything to it. I just think they’re reaching for straws — anything to steer the public away from his achievements as president,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe the allegations. “I still think he’s a very good man. And I would vote for him again.”

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