A powerful Washington DC lawyer reportedly said she was berated by Congressman John Conyers while working for him and was once summoned to his office where he was not wearing pants.
Melanie Sloan, a noted government ethics attorney, was on Conyers’ staff in the 1990s and said the Michigan congressman was abusive, according to The Washington Post.
Sloan said she took her complaints to House leadership but to no avail.
“There was nothing I could do to stop it,” Sloan said.
“Not going to leadership, not going to my boss, not going to a women’s group, not going to a reporter. I was dismissed and told I must be mentally unstable.”
Sloan recalled one particularly troubling moment when Conyers — now under scrutiny for sexual harassment complaints — summoned her to his Rayburn House Office Building office.
She walked in and Conyers was in his underwear, according to the lawyer.
“I was press taken aback to see my boss half-dressed,” Sloan told the Washington Post.
“I turned on my heel and I left.”
Conyers’ lawyer Arnold Reed denied Sloan’s allegation: “Representative Conyers has never done anything inappropriate to Melanie Sloan.”