An aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., resigned last August to protest how the senator’s office handled her sexual harassment complaint against the senator’s top military aide, Politico reports.
The former aide spoke to Politico anonymously. She said she complained last July that one of Gillibrand’s closest aides, Abbas Malik, had frequently made unwelcome advances, as well as crude and misogynistic comments about women in the office and potential employees. She went on to resign three weeks later.
“I have offered my resignation because of how poorly the investigation and post-investigation was handled,” the former aide wrote in a letter to Gillibrand, with copies sent to the senator’s general counsel and chief of staff.
“I trusted and leaned on this statement that you made: ‘You need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is O.K. None of it is acceptable.’ Your office chose to go against your public belief that women shouldn’t accept sexual harassment in any form and portrayed my experience as a misinterpretation instead of what it actually was: harassment and ultimately, intimidation,” the woman wrote.
She did not receive a response from Gillibrand or her staff. Gillibrand’s office told Politico in a statement that the former aide’s letter “contained clear inaccuracies.”
Malik was kept at the time, but has since been dismissed following a new investigation into allegations of inappropriate comments in the workplace.
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