California Democrat Says His Alleged Actions Were 'Consensual.' These Attorneys Disagree.

"Consensual" is doing an awful lot of work in that sentence, and the lawyers on the other side aren't buying it. When your defense to a House Ethics Committee investigation is a single word that the alleged victim's own attorneys are publicly contradicting, you don't have a defense. You have a press release.

Gomez represents a Los Angeles district, and California Democrats have spent years lecturing the rest of the country about believing women, about power imbalances, about the courage it takes to come forward. Funny how quickly the framework gets shelved when it's their own guy in the crosshairs. Nobody expects Democratic leadership to strip him of committee assignments before the facts are in. But watch how differently this gets treated compared to how a Republican in the same seat would be handled by the same reporters and the same colleagues.

We're not the jury here and neither is anyone writing headlines this week. The Ethics Committee exists precisely so this doesn't get litigated by press statement. But Gomez reaching for "consensual" as his opening move, rather than letting the process actually run, tells you he already knows how this looks. That's not proof of guilt. It's just not the move of a man confident the facts are simply on his side.