Katie Hill Speaks Out on Scandal, Resignation

'I strongly feel that I made the right call,' she says
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 20, 2020 1:55 PM CST

Nearly four months after she resigned from the House of Representatives amid a sex scandal and nude photo plot she blamed on her abusive ex-husband, Katie Hill is speaking out. "I strongly feel that I made the right call in stepping down, for several reasons," Hill told George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired Thursday on Good Morning America. "One of which is that I—I did not want to be a liability to my colleagues." Hill, one of the first openly bisexual members of Congress when she was elected in 2018, admitted to having a relationship with a female campaign staffer before she was elected, but denied and continues to deny allegations that she had a relationship with a congressional staffer, which would have violated House rules. She believes her ex started that rumor, which the House was planning to investigate.

Despite the fact that her relationship with a campaign staffer violated no rules, Hill says it was inappropriate. "You're truly in the trenches with these—this very small team," she says. "Where I think I made the biggest mistake was not setting those boundaries from the very beginning" in terms of employer-employee relationships. As for the nude photos of her and the staffer published online, which she believes her ex leaked, she says it's problematic to call it "revenge porn": "It implies A) that there's something to be taking revenge for, right? That the woman maybe did something wrong in the first place. And pornography also could imply that ... it was consensual, and it's not." Hill, who has started HER Time, which supports female candidates for political office, says she believes her sexuality played a role in "sensationalizing" the scandal that surrounded her. (Hill said in December that at the height of the scandal, she considered suicide.)

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