“She rebuffed him many times,” Ms. Lafferty said.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization tracking money in politics, Mr. Franks’s net worth sits at nearly $30 million, a figure based on required financial disclosures for House members. Mr. Franks’s wealth derives primarily from stock in Trinity Petroleum, where he was chief executive before he ran for Congress.
In an interview, Ms. Lafferty said that she had encouraged the woman to go to Mr. Ryan after meeting her and hearing about the episode last year. Ms. Lafferty, who said she contacted Mr. Ryan’s office about the episodes after the woman was “ready to go” with her story, was in Mr. Ryan’s office when the Franks aide met with several members of Mr. Ryan’s staff.
“I do think that they thought that she brought a credible story,” Ms. Lafferty said, one “that they needed to look into.”
Graphic
A list of men who have resigned, been fired or otherwise lost power since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke.
On Thursday, Mr. Franks said in a statement that he had discussed surrogacy with “two previous female subordinates” because he and his wife, who have struggled with fertility, wanted to have a child, and that he regretted if those conversations had “caused distress.”
He denied intimidating or coercing women, and blamed the media climate for what he felt would be an unfair investigation. Mr. Franks and his wife have two children, twins born by a surrogate.
Ms. Lafferty disputed the idea that Mr. Franks had not pushed one of the women to consider surrogacy.
“She is a strong person,” Ms. Lafferty said, “and she can handle a discussion of surrogacy. This was not a policy discussion. This was a request with a $5 million payout.”
The details surrounding Mr. Franks’s resignation were first reported in a pair of stories by The Associated Press and Politico.
Along with Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and John Conyers Jr., the House’s longest-serving lawmaker, Mr. Franks was the third member of Congress to step down this week amid multiple accusations of sexual harassment, abuse or indiscretions.
Representative Blake Farenthold, Republican of Texas, is under an Ethics Committee investigation regarding accusations that he had sexually harassed a former employee and “retaliated against her for complaining of discriminatory conduct.”
On Thursday, Mr. Farenthold rejected the idea of resigning and said that the news media had treated him unfairly. His behavior was the subject of an $84,000 settlement in taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment claim against him.
Before Friday, Mr. Franks was best known as one of the most socially conservative members of the House. In 2013, he came under harsh criticism for remarking that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low” during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He also founded the Arizona Family Research Institute, a nonprofit associated with Focus on the Family, a socially conservative religious organization.
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