Blake Farenthold: ‘Duckie Pajamas’ GOP Rep Blames ‘F-tards’ For Sexual Harassment Scandal That Ended Career

Blake Farenthold, a Republican from Texas, served in the United States House of Representatives from 2011 until April of this year when he resigned amidst a whirlwind of sexual harassment accusations, and revelations that he had paid $84,000 of public funds to settle a sex harassment lawsuit against him dating from 2014, according to a report by the Huffington Post. But in a recent court deposition for a case involving the job he has held since leaving Congress, the 56-year-old Farenthold refused to blame himself for his political downfall — instead, finding a number of other culprits.

Among those Farenthold blames for his sexual harassment scandal are women in the #MeToo movement, and “f-tards,” according to a new report by the Huffington Post. In the deposition, Farenthold — who has a net worth of nearly $6 million, according to the watchdog site Open Secrets — also said that he has not reimbursed the $84,000 in taxpayer dollars he used to pay off the sexual harassment lawsuit because to do so would be “illegal.”

According to Huffington Post reporter Jennifer Bendery, Farenthold’s claim that repaying the U.S. Treasury would be illegal is “nonsense.” Any citizen is free to donate money to the treasury, she reported.

Farenthold was known as The “duckie pajamas congressman,” according to the New Republic, due to a photo of him that circulated on social media, seen below, around the time the sexual harassment scandal became national news.

This is GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold, the congressman who reached a secret $84,000 sexual harassment settlement paid with taxpayer funds.

Who’d have ever thought? pic.twitter.com/1p2JJWPHO7

— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) December 1, 2017

In the lawsuit brought by his former communications director, Lauren Greene, she charged that the Texas Republican fired her from her job after she complained about lewd and inappropriate comments that he made to her in the workplace, including giving her the unsolicited information that she regularly appeared in what he called his “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams,” Politico reported.

But in the August 1 court deposition reported by Bendery, Farenthold says that the end of his political career was caused not by his own actions but, in part, by what the court transcript refers to as “F-tards.”

According to excerpts of the transcript posted on Twitter, when asked by a lawyer to define “F-tards,” Farenthold replied, “the word speaks for itself.” Pressed further, the disgraced politician said the term means the same thing as “a**.”

He also said that by resigning from Congress, he “took a bullet for the team,” and that he may not have resigned if not for the #MeToo movement, according to the political site Think Progress.

“I believe the public attention to the Me Too movement created a public environment where it would be much more difficult for the members of the Ethics Committee to separate politics from the facts,” he said in the deposition, adding that he sees himself as a “scapegoat.”