The Jeffrey Epstein files forced conversations that powerful people spent years and considerable money preventing. I watched those disclosures unfold with grim satisfaction; the truth surfaces regardless of the burial budget. But the architects of congressional oversight responded to that moment by doubling down on their own version of the same game. While Washington demanded transparency from everyone in Epstein's orbit, Congress kept its misconduct records locked behind taxpayer-funded settlements and procedural machinery designed to make secrets permanent. That is not oversight. It is a calculated double standard executed on the public dime.
Between 1997 and 2017, the Office of Compliance paid out more than $17 million across 268 settlements for workplace claims ranging from racial discrimination to sexual harassment. Every dollar came from a Treasury fund established by the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, meaning no lawmaker ever had to write a personal check. The fund operates exactly as the "slush fund" critics have called it: quiet resolutions, taxpayer liability, zero public accountability. The structure was designed to shield the powerful and leave victims wondering whether coming forward ever mattered.
The cases are instructive. Republican Representative Blake Farenthold settled a sexual-harassment complaint from his former communications director with $84,000 drawn from that fund, pledged to repay it, and never did — his attorneys advised against it, and he walked into a $160,000-a-year port authority job. Democratic Representative John Conyers faced accusations from multiple aides of repeated unwanted advances; his office settled for $27,000, routed through the congressional budget as "severance." Public funds. No accountability. No names. The pattern holds.
The most recent transparency battle was triggered by Republican Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas, whose sexually explicit messages to a former aide became public after she died by suicide. Gonzales voted to bury the very transparency measure that would have applied to him. On March 4, 2026, Representative Nancy Mace introduced H.Res. 1100, directing the Ethics Committee to release records of sexual-harassment investigations with victim information redacted. The House voted 357 to 65 to kill it, 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats voting together in a rare display of bipartisan self-preservation. Mace's summary was accurate: "Both parties colluded today to protect predators."
The selective standards sharpen the point. Democrats insisted that every Brett Kavanaugh accuser must be believed unconditionally. When Tara Reade filed a criminal complaint against then-Senator Biden, those same voices went silent. New York investigators documented that Governor Andrew Cuomo harassed at least 11 women, state employees subjected to unwanted touching and crude remarks. Barney Frank survived an ethics probe after a male prostitute lived in his apartment and ran calls from his congressional office, collecting a reprimand roughly equivalent to a parking ticket. "Believe all women" carries an asterisk sized by party registration.
Which brings us to the wreckage. On Sunday, Representative Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign for California governor, writing on X: "I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I've made in my past." The collapse was swift and total. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former staffer, hired at age 21, alleged Swalwell sexually assaulted her twice while she was too intoxicated to consent, beginning in 2019 when she worked in his office. CNN separately reported on four women alleging misconduct, including one who says he raped her in a New York City hotel room in April 2024. "I was pushing him off of me, saying no," she told CNN. "He didn't stop." Corroborating texts and medical records were reviewed by the Chronicle. Swalwell's attorneys responded with cease-and-desist letters sent to accusers in the middle of the night. He called the allegations "flat false." The woman leading the public charge is a Democrat who interned for Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). When your most credible accusers are from your own coalition, the opposition research defense collapses.
The legal exposure is now bicoastal. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has opened a criminal investigation into the 2024 hotel room allegation, urging survivors to contact its Special Victims Division. The Alameda County District Attorney's Office is separately evaluating the 2019 California allegation, ironically, the same county where Swalwell once served as a deputy district attorney. In Congress, Representative Anna Paulina Luna has filed a motion to expel him, forcing a floor vote next week. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-11), Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) all withdrew endorsements and demanded he exit the governor's race. Not one called for his resignation from Congress, though, the very institution where the alleged misconduct against a subordinate first occurred. Protect the House seat, sacrifice the campaign, and call it accountability. The calculation is transparent, and the irony is structural.
The misconduct story is not Swalwell's only open front. FBI Director Kash Patel is assembling decade-old counterintelligence files on his documented association with Christine Fang, known as Fang Fang, a Chinese national suspected of running a political intelligence operation for Beijing. Fang assisted with his 2014 fundraising and placed an intern in his office. His attorneys moved to block any release. Nothing sharpens a politician's focus on privacy quite like a federal counterintelligence file colliding with a criminal investigation.
The structural repairs are not complicated. Bar public Treasury funds from individual misconduct settlements and require members to pay from personal accounts, the standard applied to every private employer in America. Mandate disclosure of completed Ethics Committee files involving sexual misconduct after a member leaves office. Create an independent review body; self-policing by an institution with a structural interest in concealment is not accountability, it is stagecraft. I have spent 30 years advising fiduciaries legally required to act in others' interests. Congress operates on the opposite model. Real reform arrives only when the political cost of concealment exceeds the cost of disclosure. The Swalwell collapse including two DA investigations, an expulsion motion, a midnight cease-and-desist letter sent to a 21-year-old former staffer — may finally move that needle. Taxpayers have funded the silence long enough. The ledger is wide open.
Jay Rogers is President of Alpha Strategies and a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.