Fact check: False claim about Adam Schiff's involvement in sexual harassment settlement resurfaces

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Rep. Adam Schiff used taxpayer money for a sexual harassment settlement in 2013

A Jan. 8 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) features a picture of Rep. Adam Schiff, claiming the California Democrat used taxpayer dollars for a sexual harassment settlement with a 19-year-old male in 2013.

"BREAKING: Congressional Sources Confirm Representative Adam Schiff Used Taxpayer Money To Settle A Sexual Harassment Claim With A 19 Year Old Boy Back In 2013," reads text within the post.

The post garnered more than 500 likes in two days. Similar versions of the claim have been shared on Instagram.

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Our rating: False

There is no evidence to support this claim, which has circulated since 2018. It has been repeatedly shared alongside a fabricated article about the supposed settlement and a 2017 CNN article about money Congress paid out in legal settlements, which doesn't mention Schiff.

Claim is both dated and wrong

The screenshot labels the Schiff claim as "breaking," but identically worded claims have been circulating since 2018. At no point in that span has anyone provided evidence supporting the claim.

The claim was shared then on Twitter, alongside a 2017 CNN article about funds paid to settle cases involving members of Congress and their staff.

At the time, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, which handles Congressional harassment complaints and was formerly known as the Office of Compliance, said it had paid settlement victims more than $17 million since its creation in the 1990s. This settlement money came from taxpayers, but the settlements were not limited to sexual harassment, according to the article. Cases related to race, religion and disability were also included.

Schiff was not mentioned in the CNN article.

The bogus claim appears to have originated from a 2018 article published by a website called TheNetSpies. The website says its stories include satire, and many articles are clearly fabricated or satirical in nature, such as assertions that California banned farting or that Black Lives Matter demanded the removal of white Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

The article references information supposedly provided by then-Los Angeles Times Assistant Managing Editor Christina Bellantoni, whose name is misspelled in the article. It includes a picture of a beaten Black man who it claims Schiff abused, identified as "Will Bottoms."

But Bellantoni, supposedly the source of the article's information, debunked the claims on Twitter soon after the article's publishing.

"This is some very seriously fake news," Bellantoni's tweet reads. "Clue No. 1: A website you’ve never heard of citing an LAT story that doesn’t exist."

And the man pictured is actually Taj Patterson, who was beaten by a gang of 15 to 20 men in Brooklyn in 2013, according to an article published by NBC New York.

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A spokesperson for Schiff told USA TODAY the claim is baseless.

"This is another false and deranged QAnon conspiracy theory designed to smear public servants like Congressman Schiff," the spokesperson said via email.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment.

PolitiFact previously debunked the claim when it was circulating in 2019.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Posts falsely link Adam Schiff to harassment settlement