The fall of congressional creeps

It was late at night when my phone beeped. "I completely understand," my cousin messaged, along with a video. We don't live in the same state but we talk nearly every day, hashing out this world's craziness together and this week has been especially intense. I expected a political commentary, not an octopus, but as it turned out she spoke much more to the moment at hand. I knew it was a female because there she was at the bottom of the sea, squared up with a male octopus, picking up shells and whatever she could reach with her tentacles and hurling them at him. It wasn't new footage. Scientists noted this behavior back in 2015 among both male and female of the species but they quickly figured out it was much more common among the ladies. And while they thought at first it was often "den-building" activity — housework, of course — the more they studied, the more they noticed that "in quite a few cases," the females would hurl objects at other octopuses harassing them, invading their "personal space," and "attempting to mate" with them. We did not draw a parallel to the headlines, when then-U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell quit the governor's race and resigned from Congress amid a deluge of accusations of sexual assault and misconduct allegations. Swalwell, a California Democrat, said he was deeply sorry for "mistakes in judgment" he'd made in the past, but vowed to fight the "serious, false allegation made against" him. About an hour later, another embattled congressman, Republican Tony Gonzales of Texas, also announced his resignation. He brought God into his: "There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all." He didn't mention the extramarital affair with the staffer who later died by setting herself on fire, or the accusations of sexually explicit messages sent to a campaign aide in those "seasons." In the fallout, there has been a lot of talk about which party takes care of its dirty laundry quicker. On one hand, Swalwell's fall from grace was a plane shot out of the sky: He was the frontrunner to lead the country's most populous state and by Monday it was over. Gonzales batted away efforts to rein in his scandal for months. He finally dropped his reelection bid last month after coming in second in the primary. According to reports, calls went out among female lawmakers of both parties in the wake of the swift Swalwell action: this one out, that one out. The resignations rendered expulsions unnecessary. To me, this argument is valid and surreal at the same time, with Mount Epstein looming over D.C., how on Earth can we point the finger at party lines when the occupant of the White House is mentioned in those files more than 38,000 times, and only one person, a woman, is doing time for it, despite overwhelming evidence of a massive child sex-trafficking operation with more than 1,000 victims defies logic. My mind screams: Do women mean this little to you? As women — and more so, as mothers of young women — let me tell you why we understand the octopus. Predatory men do not wake up like this one day. They rarely take people by surprise. If you are working with one, overwhelmingly the chances are you know it. Why was nothing done to address it? After Swalwell resigned, some former colleagues, including former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, have said the allegations were not unexpected. "Every member in Congress knows not to let any young staffer around Swalwell or Matt Gaetz, it's not a secret there," McCarthy said on ABC's "This Week." Gaetz, the former Republican congressman from Florida, resigned in the fall of 2024, the same day Donald Trump announced him as his pick to be attorney general. Gaetz was under investigation at the time, and the House Ethics Committee later released a report that found "substantial evidence" he committed statutory rape and prostitution. Gaetz denied the allegations, but Trump was well aware of what would come out in that report and saw no problem with him as the head of the Department of Justice. Speaks volumes, doesn't it? The rage my friends and I feel is almost indescribable these days. "62 million," my friends message me. So many messages, with just that incomprehensible number. It's the number of views racked up in February for a website that hosts an "online rape academy," exposed in a months-long CNN investigation last month. Users upload content marked specifically in a "sleep" category. The men find each other in chat groups and swap tips, photos, and videos, even livestreams, monetizing the abuse for cryptocurrency. Messages revealed they share information — even sell kits — about drugs that leave the system fast and are thereby less detectable. Again and again, they post their worry of overdosing their victim and catching a murder charge, but no concern about the sexual abuse and degradation. I can't forget how former Attorney General Pam Bondi refused even to look into the eyes of Epstein's victims as she sat before the House Judiciary Committee in February. Her replacement, Todd Blanche, has said the files "should not be a part of anything going forward." The message to victims could not be clearer. Justice, like their innocence, is a commodity: sold to the highest bidder. Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.