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First Karen Kraushaar got a payoff from the National Restaurant Trade Association, then immediately sought yet another pay off from her very next job at the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service – difference being that this time the INS was actually interested in investigating a claim rather than quietly paying off some one before they knew the truth of the allegations. During the investigation, Kraushaar slunk away and went to work for the Treasury Department.
When she filed her second claim in consecutive jobs, Ms. Kraushaar demanded a settlement of thousands of dollars, a promotion on the federal pay scale, reinstated leave time and a one-year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Ironically and notwithstanding her demands for pay and promotion at the time she made her claims. Ms. Kraushaar now characterizes her INS claim as “relatively minor.”
When Kraushaar filed her immigration service complaint against supervisors in late 2002 or early 2003, she turned to Joel Bennett, the same Washington lawyer who handled her earlier sexual harassment complaint against Cain. Given her attacks on Mr. Cain, conveniently timed more than a decade after they allegedly occurred, Ms. Kraushaar’s memory is a bit spotty – Kraushaar says she does not remember details about the complaint against the INS and did not remember asking for a payment, a promotion or a fellowship. That is pretty sad considering she filed pretty serious charges against two men that could have impacted or ended their careers – to me this shows that Kraushaar cares very little about the impact of her own actions on others, while blithely casting allegations about in order to further her own career. Her lawyer declined to discuss the case saying he considered it confidential.
Kraushaar went on to say “The concern was that there may have been discrimination on the job and that I was being treated unfairly,” Kraushaar said. MAY HAVE BEEN? Not sure what it looks like? Not sure that you were subject to it? Sounds more like someone trying to use a cloud of allegation as a tool for professional advancement.
Too bad the legal system is designed for lawyers to abuse anyone with this kind of bs
OK, here are Geoff’s apparent lies, dodges, and misrepresentations:
(1) What constitutes a “habit”? Doing something twice? Is that how you, Dear Reader, define it?
(2) Calling a “settlement” a “payoff.” I’ll bet Geoff (and others in his firm) have been involved in settlements before; were they all “payoffs”?
(3) “Immediately sought another payoff” — same criticism, but also: does the word “immediately” have any meaning? Is it possible that the time between them was mediated by, oh, another act of sexual harassment?
(4) “difference being that this time the INS was actually interested in investigating a claim” — that’s interesting, has anyone else heard that NRtA was not even “actually interested in investigating [her] claim”? And if so, why would that be? Had they learned from experience what they were likely to find?
(5) At any rate, is there evidence (outside of Geoff’s fever dreams) that being “actually interested in investigating a claim represented a “difference”?
(6) She “slunk,” did she? Or did she … get a new job? Did she perhaps get a new job because she didn’t like the discrimination or harassment faced at the old one? Does Geoff know? There’s no indication that he does.
(7) Geoff knows — and may be counting on your not knowing — that “thousands of dollars” (i.e. as low as $2000) is not a large claim. You can be in California’s small claims court up to $7500. He also knows that demands will often exceed expectations — actually, I’d love to hear him deny knowing this! If she was not promoted when she would have been but for her gender or as retaliation for her not responding the right way when some male supervisor shoved her head into his crotch, thus derailing her career advancement, then a year at Harvard’s program might be a perfectly legitimate demand to make. (Geoff probably knows this too.) Of course, this may have been her attorney’s bargaining position rather than her initiative.
(8) Geoff claims that she says — I don’t know, as there’s no link, but let’s presume it’s true — that her claims were “relatively minor.” Well, relative to what? Relative to having one’s head forcibly pushed towards someone’s crotch, they may be minor — but that does not make them minor in absolute terms.
(9) Her complaints against Cain are “conveniently timed”? Well, I suppose that getting the word out on someone’s (alleged) history of sexual harassment before they are elected to the most powerful position in the world is “convenient” for all of us. She had a settlement, after all; she was supposed to stay quiet all these years.
(10) Her memory is a bit spotty, Geoff alleges, hoping he won’t think of Rick Perry or of Herman Cain’s own memory of those years. In fact, she doesn’t think that this happened at all. Well, by all means, let’s see the complaint and find out! If she was right, there’s no problem, and if she was wrong, there’s no shame. Let’s see it!
(11) For Geoff, not remembering details “is pretty sad considering she filed pretty serious charges….” What rot, as I would say if I were British. It’s the rare plaintiff, I would venture, who remembers all the details of the complaint (written by her attorney, not her) fifteen years previous. I’ll bet that Geoff’s clients (or those of others from his firm) don’t remember the details of their own sworn statements of even five years ago. Of course Geoff could check on this and get back to us, because he apparently thinks it notably strange that “her lawyer declined to discuss the case saying he considered it confidential.” As if that us suspicious behavior.
(12) Throwing any possibility of eventually become a judge into the waste bin, Geoff says that to him “this shows that Kraushaar cares very little about the impact of her own actions on others, while blithely casting allegations about in order to further her own career.” First: blithely? Second, to further her career rather than to get justice? Third, mild sociopathy is really what Geoff infers from failing to remember details of a complaint filed 15 years earlier? Really, Geoff? Really? Say it ain’t so, Geo!
(13) And if my top had not already been blown, this would have done it all by itself:
By this whiskers of both Shepard and Mullin, this is madness! Geoff, Geoff — why do you think they call them “allegations”? Why do you think we engage in this little thing called “discovery”? Do you think that we always start with more than a “may have”? With as little as “reason to suspect”? If there is a conspiracy, if there is action that may or may not be retaliatory, do you think we’re supposed to wait to bring the matter up until we’ve already, somehow, proven it? If I believe that a client was fired because the company believed that she was going to have expensive medical care and drive up their insurance rates, do you think that I can start out with definitive evidence — say incriminating e-mails — of this, or that I start with a “may have been” and then go try to find them?
[Deep breath. Try to remember what number I’m on.]
(14) “Sounds more like someone trying to use a cloud of allegation as a tool for professional advancement.” Well, Geoff has a point there, but — rereading his poison pen letter against her — about himself rather than about Kraushaar.
This is attack embarrassing and shabby. Perhaps Geoff himself is sincere here — more’s the pity, if so, but unlike him I will not jump to conclusions as to motivation — but in his form of attack this is how lawyers try to make the world safe for their clients, companions, and collaborators to extort sex from women, to rape women, to retaliate against women for resisting extortion, and to keep men in positions of power. They do so by making any woman know that if she complains she’s going to have her reputation dragged through the mud even if the accusation against her boils down to “she filed a second court claim later and sought redress for injustice.”
When Geoff complains about my harsh treatment of him in this comment, re-read this post. I think that I come by my utter disgust honestly. (P.S.: next time put in a link.)
I debated even responding to this mess, but I feel like I have to make a least a few comments to your diatribe.
1) By making her statements (whether or not true – unfortunately I feel that their truth or falsity is irrelevant because the damage is done), she has seriously impacted and probably derailed the Cain campaign. There has been no determination that what she is saying about ANYTHING is true but nonetheless Mr. Cain’s life is forever altered.
2) Working in the employment field Mr. Diamond, you know that there are folks out there that “job seek for a settlement” with little interest in really working but rather creating a claim against an employer that will be deemed simpler to pay off rather than to litigate. One of the ways that you can tell if someone is “job seeking for a settlement” is if they have a history of making claims, ESPECIALLY if they have walked away from those claims when they did hit the quick score.
3) While she can “remember” every tiny detail of what happened with Mr. Cain on a second by second basis, she can only remember the vaguest details of her next and unsuccesful claim against the INS. No quick score, no memory. “What rot, as I would say if I were British. It’s the rare plaintiff, I would venture, who remembers all the details of the complaint (written by her attorney, not her) fifteen years previous.” And yet she remember every detail and nuance of her encounter with Herman Cain.
I know it is diffiuclt for some to accept that we need to be personally responsible for our own actions, but I think that it is every bit as wrong to ruin soemone’s life through false accusation than it is to ruin theirlife in other ways. Today, the false accuser skates by and “political crrectness” prevents shedding even the faintist flicker of life on these life wrecking tactics.
1) Let’s reduce it to two possibilities: it happened or it didn’t happen. Do we agree that, if it happened, she was right to come forward before this man was nominated for the Presidency? (She could have, for example, come forward right after the convention.)
If it didn’t happen, we have to wonder why the (non-nuisance level) settlement, but of course that is not proof that it happened. You know or should know that a settlement at that level does not generally come about when there’s no basis for it at all. That’s why I was originally interested in whether “five figures” meant $10,000 — still possibly in “nuisance territory.”
In any event, had Cain not started to attack the woman’s honesty and such after the rumors first came out, she would not have had to push back to defend herself. (I refer you to my early diary defending Cain, when that seemed much more viable.) Cain has been hurt by this handling of the situation, which has been horrible and (to most people’s eyes other than Republicans) disqualifying. Like many Democrats, I’m disappointed in this; I wanted him to be nominated so we could enjoy a national version of Obama-Keys 2004.
2) To the extent that this happens at all, she would not fit the profile. She has apparently been a long-term federal employee, two claims does not make a “pattern,” and $45,000 is not “the quick score.”
3) My intuition is that what she faced at the second job may have been something like a failure to promote for discriminatory or retaliatory reasons. This does happen — a lot more often, I’d say, than your mythical successful serial settlement scorer — but is hard to prove. On the other hand — and I admit that I haven’t heard the details of her assertions, unlike Ms. Bialek’s — if Cain did something along the lines of sticking his fingers up her dress to make contact with her vagina and then forcing her head towards his (my guess is) still-clothed erect penis — that seems pretty memorable doesn’t it? I can review why that is for you if you’d like.
Yes, you and I are bound in our rejection for false accusations. The difference between us is that I didn’t write this essay, which seems stuffed with them.
1) If any of these alleged incidents is true, is Mr. Cain’s life the only one that’s been altered?
2) Claiming this about Ms. Kraushaar, as Greg points out, based on 2 incidents, is at least a LITTLE credulous.
3) Is forgetting the details of an unwanted sexual advance by a professional colleague something easily done?
anon, following the dictates of political correctness, you assume the women are telling the truth and Mr. Cain is lying. Obviously if any of the allegations are true then 1) Mr. Cain is guilty of both sexual harassment and of lying, 2) the women have been abused and I would hope all would be done to help them recover. If all of the allegations are untrue, 1) the women are political operatives destroying a former colleague and 2) they are lying. Unfortunately, under the circumstances there is a terrible price paid by Mr. Cain if the women are lying and little or no impact on their lives even though they have unfairly destroyed someone. Further, there is really little impetus on behalf of the women to actually find out if the allegations are true, they have what they want, they have already inflicted the desired damage.
I didn’t assume that the women are telling the truth at all. See that word “alleged” that I put in there? I merely provided the flip side of the “coin” that you presented. Yes, there really IS two sides to that coin.
I certainly want to know if the allegations are true. Let the allegations and defenses come forth! Does anyone really want them kept secret?
Heh-heh, that was a trick question. One person certainly does.
MSNBC declares Cain has to PROVE himself innocent!! bizarro world. This is all Obama crap but thank you since now we will get Newt !! His baggage is already out there but go ahead and run a campaign based on it while Newt talks about issues. W/O a telepromptor Obama gets his clock cleaned in a debate with Newt.
Trust us, we Democrats would rather run against Cain than Romney. This is coming from fellow Republicans, as far as it’s coming from anywhere besides just the women, truthful or not.
Although running against the NEWT would be fun too! Throw a rock in a crowd and you won’t find ANYBODY who actually likes the fat little fuck.
Newt vs. Obama would actually be an interesting campaign. Newt lies and distorts as much as possible just to stay in practice, but he can actually talk about issues. It would present an interesting contrast. As a fan of politics, aside from my own interest in having Republicans run a candidate with an evident political death wish and no clear desire in becoming President, it’s a match-up I’d like to see. I think that deadwhitemale’s — that’s too long, let’s call him “deady” — analysis of Newt’s already maxing out on the sleaziness meter so being impervious to falling further, is pretty much dead-on.
Welcome to the world of the Politically Correct where the accuser is believed until proven a liar – and if if proven a liar shrugs their shoulders and moves on without consequence. Actually challenger the veracity of the accuser automatically makes you a woman hater.
Oh, stop it, Geoff; that’s not true. I still don’t know that the accusations are true, although the more that show up (and the circumstances behind them) make it increasingly less likely that there’s no fire creating the smoke. It’s Cain’s response — and, frankly, yours — that are the big problem now.
I’m still waiting for you to explain why doing something twice makes it a “habit.”
“Oh, stop it, Geoff; that’s not true. I still don’t know that the accusations are true” and yet you have no problem with casting aspersions at Mr. Cain [“he more that show up (and the circumstances behind them) make it increasingly less likely that there’s no fire creating the smoke”] and yet are horrified if any merely questions the credibility of the accuser. I wonder if you really don’t see the hypocrisy? I honestly think that Political correctness has you programmed to NOT be able to see your terribly inconsistent position.
“merely questions the credibility of the accuser…”
That’s how you would characterize this scabrous post?
Some FACTS Geoff left out;
From the AP;
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-accuser-filed-complaint-next-job-080946066.html
Fact; Karen Kraushaar has only made sexual harassment charges ONCE, the other employment claim THREE YEARS LATER was over employment discrimination;
“…complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email…”
Fact, Karen Kraushaar had a good employment record;
“Ms. Kraushaar’s assistance was invaluable and her performance extraordinary,” wrote Robert A. Wallis, the immigration service district director in Miami. Kraushaar provided seven such letters of recommendation to show that her performance was commendable while working at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the restaurant association and the immigration service.”
Fact, Karen Kraushaar is NOT THE ONLY one who has made claims against Herman Cain;
“Sharon Bialek, a Chicago woman who once worked for the restaurant association’s education foundation, accused Cain in a nationally televised news conference this week of groping her and attempting to force himself on her inside a parked car after they had dinner in 1997. Another woman told the AP that Cain made unwanted sexual advances to her while she worked for the association, and a pollster said he witnessed Cain sexually harass another woman after an association dinner.”
The fact is. Geoff, that the more different accusers there are, the more likely there is to be something real behind their accusations. That is not “casting aspersions”; it’s just common sense derived from common experience. I haven’t convicted Cain of anything.
As for my “horror” at your “merely question[ing] the credibility of the accuser,” I think that my comment above stands on its own. You can challenge her credibility all you want — ain’t what you did, it’s the way that you did it. You turned two employment complaints into an assertion of a “habit,” in your headline, and then you went downhill from there. There’s nothing hypocritical or “PC” about distinguishing between legitimate questions and illegitimate slurs. You have, in a “lawyerly” fashion (not a compliment here), engaged in the latter.
Herman Cain’s lawyer warns other potential accusers from coming forward.
Appalling is about the only word I can think of to describe that.
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-attorney-lin-wood-1220511.html
Bluster.
But I do hope that they’ll wait until Cain is nominated. heh-heh.
Greg, isn’t a lawyer making a statement like that even a LITTLE unethical?
“Hope” here is not really “urging,” eh?
Really, and Gloria Allred being hired was different in what way . . oh yeah, its not.
What we all need after this fevered discussion is a little ice cream:
(hat-tip Cal Buzz, whom I can’t figure out how to RSS-feed)
Booo! It should have been HarassMint Black Walnut (the flavor Cain claims to be.)
Yeah, nothing there assuming guild by unproven accusation. Your Hobbesian cartoon is far more offensive then anything that I have written.
You liberals have no sense of humor.
It’s not “assuming guilt,” except as the premise for a joke.
If you want to start criticizing this sort of thing, get busy with talk radio and cable news.
I’ll do you the favor of not comparing this to what you’ve written.
And finally: Hobbesian? Really? This cartoon?
oh willis dont forget when the lady drew the obama =-monkey cartoon they had a cow . but BLACK MINT CHOCOLATE .WITH CAIN ON IT IS OK TO THE LIBS… WHAT A GIANT SACK OF HYPOCRITS
I know, I know, why can’t hypocrit libs remember it’s BLACK WALNUT he calls himself!
Nothing Mr. Willis has written here exculpates Cain. Both are grasping rather desperately at straws.
I think Cain was grasping desperately at any female within reach.
And Willis, why are you so desperately trying to defend this buffoon.
What’s next? Are you going to attack Sandusky’s accusers?
Only if Sandusky is a Republican.
A little Googling around reveals that he and Paterno are very Republican.
yes and the guy who shot at the white house yesterday was a dem .
Are you just saying that or have you heard a report? (By the way: he was arrested yesterday, that’s not when the shots took place.)
If he’s a Democrat, he has a funny was of showing it. (If he’s a Republican, he has an unfunny way of showing it.)
NO IT WAS A COMEBACK TO THE PATERNO , but if a dem shoots at the whitehouse oh its ok it was a funny way of showing it . if a rep does it OMG HOW HORRIBLE UNFUNNY .. LOL
Great Juan,
You have a hard time accepting the facts.
Are you copping to lying or to illiteracy?