Rep. Franks has resigned after asking office staffers to act as surrogates. Due to medical issues, Franks' wife needed surrogates. That's how his previous children were born.
Asking staffers may have made them uncomfortable. And might have been inappropriate. But if this is all there was, it's not by any stretch of the imagination, sexual harassment.
Here's Politico's sleazy spin.
Female aides fretted Franks wanted to have sex to impregnate them
The sources said Franks approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility issues for years. But the aides were concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization.
This is sleazy nonsense.
1. If Franks was serious about this, and considering how his previous children were born, he was, then this would have been in vitro. Anything else is a ridiculous idea.
2. If Franks had actually suggested sleeping with them, they would have known. So he didn't.
Politico is trying to smear Franks without having a shred of evidence in support of its accusation. This is a shameless new low.
Here's the closest thing to sexual harassment that Politico has.
A former staffer also alleged that Franks tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they’re in love with someone, the sources said.
We don't have the account of the aide. Instead we have a staffer talking about an exchange between Franks and another woman. But do we even have the account of the staffer? Or do we have the account of the sources quoting the staffer about the aide?
The exchange is also rather strange. Franks has a woman read an article. This seems like the flimsiest claim ever. And it's easy to imagine this being very misinterpreted especially when you start playing broken telephone.
Presumably the same sources who brought down Franks could have gotten access to the aide. It doesn't seem as if she was interested. So instead we have three chains of broken telephone. The sources say the staffer said what Franks said to the aide.
And the media wonders why no one to the right believes anything that it prints.