‘Rapists should be hung’ – US lawmaker
A Republican member of US House of Representatives has called for rapists to be hanged, but insisted he wasn’t talking about fellow Congressmen who resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez announced on Monday they will step down from Congress following reported accusations by former staffers.
“Rapists should be hung, period. No questions,” Andy Ogles told influencer Benny Johnson when asked about the allegations against Swalwell, insisting, however, that he wasn’t talking about the California Democrat.
“I don’t want the Secret Service to come, I’m not talking about Eric Swalwell, I’m not threatening a member of Congress,” he added.
Last week, media reports detailed accusations of sexual assault by a former aide against Swalwell and cited three women who accused the lawmaker of separate instances of sexual misconduct. Swalwell, first elected to Congress in 2013, denied the allegations, claiming they were part of an effort to derail his campaign.
“They are absolutely false. They did not happen,” Swalwell said in a video on X on Friday, posting later that he was “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.”
Gonzalez, a Republican from Texas, suspended his re-election campaign last month after it was revealed that he had an affair with a staffer who died by suicide in 2025. Text messages said to have been extracted from her phone and provided by her widower to media appeared to show Gonzales soliciting sexual content from the woman, and her replying he was going too far. He recently confessed to the affair.
Amid the fallout, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Monday she believed misconduct in Congress was more widespread than publicly known.
“It’s a lot more prevalent. I think there’s more members of Congress that are guilty of things similar to Congressman Swalwell and Congressman Gonzales, and we just haven’t seen them, basically, get caught,” Greene, who left Congress in January, told CNN.
Greene also suggested the resignations may have followed private discussions between House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, describing it as a possible “one-for-one” arrangement.
