Podcaster and former Trump administration official Katie Miller is being criticized online after she partially blamed female congressional staffers for facing widespread sexual harassment in Washington.
On Tuesday, CNN described allegations from more than a dozen current and former staffers who said they faced harassment around the capital but largely declined to report it to authorities out of fear of facing personal or professional backlash.
On X, Miller, who is married to influential White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, laid some of the blame for these alleged incidents on the women themselves.
“Capitol Hill has a culture filled with alcohol and late nights, where congressmen, senators, and senior staff regularly attend parties with junior staff and interns—all free, paid for by corporate America!” she wrote. “If a young female attends any of these functions, she knows the culture full well and subscribes to the debauchery that ensues.”
“When it became politically untenable for Members of Congress to live in Washington, DC and away from their home districts thereby leaving their families and spouses behind it opened up an after hours culture that leads to late nights with all staff regardless of rank who work on the Hill,” the Katie Miller Podcast host added. “The failure to move and live as a family unit directly leads to this behavior - on both sides.”
Commenters quickly took issue with Miller’s argument.
”Is Katie Miller suggesting women working on Capitol Hill should expect to be sexually harassed when attending work functions?” one X user wrote. “Does that make it okay?”
No woman “subscribes to anything simply by attending a function,” another user added. “Sounds an awful lot like victim blaming or boys will be boys justification. Shame on you.”
The Independent has contacted Miller for comment.
The CNN report in question detailed a litany of concerning allegations, including a congressman asking a young female staffer from another officer for a threesome and a congressional chief of staff propositioning a job-seeker for sex and offering to Venmo her money in exchange for “owning” her.
“We’re not silent because the harm wasn’t serious enough — we’re silent because we know we work in an environment where silence feels safer than speaking,” a staffer told the outlet.
“The risk of professional exile – be it from being labeled a ‘problem staffer’ or cast as the center of drama — has always felt more immediate and certain than the possibility of accountability.”
Katie Miller’s previous bosses have both been accused of sexual harassment themselves.
A jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, a verdict that he appealed to the Supreme Court last year. At least 18 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, which he has uniformly denied.
The Republican’s first campaign was rocked by leaked audio in which he bragged about sexually harassing women, though Trump described the comments as empty “locker room talk” rather than admissions of any wrongdoing.
After leaving the Trump administration last year, Katie Miller briefly worked for billionaire Elon Musk. A SpaceX flight attendant accused Musk of exposing himself and propositioning the worker for an erotic massage.
Musk has denied the allegations, calling them “wild” and “utterly untrue.”
