Rep. Katie Hill condemns right-wing double standard in final House speech
Hill slammed the Republican-led revenge porn campaign that led her to resign.
Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) delivered an impassioned final speech on the House floor on Thursday, in which she condemned the right-wing sphere that distributed and published nude photos of Hill that were taken “without her knowledge or consent” in order to ruin her political career.
Hill announced her resignation from Congress over the weekend, after nude photos of herself with a female campaign staffer were published by operatives who worked for the campaign of her 2018 opponent, former Rep. Steve Knight.
The House Ethics Committee was looking into reports of an inappropriate relationship with her staff. However, Hill said she was resigning not because she did anything wrong, but because she feared more intimate photos of herself would leak, and she did not want to be subjected to that pain.
“I’m leaving because I didn’t want to be peddled by papers and blogs and websites used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I’ve ever seen, and the right-wing media to drive clicks and expand their audience by distributing intimate photos of me taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent, for the sexual entertainment of millions,” Hill said, condemning the “misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures.”
Hill also bashed the double standard that a man like Donald Trump — who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by numerous women, and has been caught on tape talking about grabbing women’s genitals without their consent — sits in the White House.
“A man who brags about his sexual predation, who has had dozens of women to come forward to accuse him of sexual assault, who pushes policies that are uniquely harmful to women, and who has filled the court with judges who proudly rule to deprive women of the most fundamental right to control their own bodies sits in the highest office in the land,” Hill said.
Publishing nude photos against someone’s will in order to do them harm is a crime in a number of states, as well as Washington, D.C. Hill has said she is pursuing all of her legal options going forward.
Hill’s southern California House seat is still rated a “likely Democratic” contest by political handicapping outlets, despite the GOP’s hope to pick it up by exploiting Hill’s personal sex life.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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