Speaking to a Michigan radio station, the 88-year-old Conyers was defiant in both maintaining his innocence and defending a legacy he insisted “can’t be compromised or diminished.”

“This too shall pass,” Conyers, speaking from a hospital, told host Mildred Gaddis. “And I want you to know that my legacy will continue through my children.”

Aiming to help that process along, Conyers endorsed his son, John Conyers III, to replace him, setting up a potential family showdown for the seat, as the lawmaker’s great-nephew, Ian Conyers, told The New York Times recently that he also plans to enter the race.

"I recognize that in this present environment, due process will not be afforded to me," Jackson Lee read aloud.

Publicly, Democratic leaders had maintained that Conyers’s fate should hinge on the outcome of an Ethics Committee investigation launched in the immediate wake of the allegations, and Pelosi had initially defended Conyers while casting doubt on his accusers. After heavy criticism, Pelosi changed her tune, and last Thursday she called publicly for his resignation.

“Zero tolerance means consequences — for everyone,” Pelosi said. “No matter how great the legacy, it’s no license to harass or discriminate.”

Pelosi’s announcement broke a dam of silence among a long list of Democrats who had also wanted Conyers out, but were nonetheless arguing publicly that he should be afforded rights of defense before the Ethics panel.

Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), had privately urged Conyers to resign even before Pelosi’s announcement, warning Conyers directly that his situation would be likely “to get worse” if he remained in place to fight the charges.

“I spoke to him, and I said to him … 'I think it’s in everybody’s best interest if you were to step aside,’” Clyburn told The Hill recently.

On Tuesday , Clyburn said he’s pleased that Conyers took his advice.

“He’s doing what I asked him to do, so it’s fine with me,” he said.

“He is the only person in this body that that has happened to,” she said. “If you remember there was an effort even last year to have him [lose] his chair of the committee. And I think that this is just a continuation of that.”

Hoyer, addressing the seeming discrepancies in the Democrats’ response to the various harassment cases, urged the adoption of reforms to guide the process in future cases.

“It's complicated. It's muddled. We need a process, open, transparent and timely, to make a determination,” he said.

By congressional standards, Conyers’s fall came swiftly. But in the eyes of the Democratic leaders scrambling to mitigate the political fallout and shift the discussion back to the Republicans’ tax bill, it was a tortuous 14 days of mixed messages and ever-growing desperation to push him out.

Allegations first emerged as part of a Nov. 20 BuzzFeed News report revealing that Conyers had paid out a $27,000, taxpayer-funded sexual harassment settlement in 2015 to a former staffer who said she was fired because she refused the congressman’s sexual advances.

Other former employees also alleged that Conyers made requests for sexual favors, inappropriately touched staffers and used congressional resources to transport women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs.

Attorney Lisa Bloom on Monday revealed the allegations of another accuser, Elisa Grubbs, who said in an affidavit that Conyers touched her inappropriately in a church while she was working for him. She also alleged that Conyers exposed himself to her in his home in a separate incident. Grubbs notes in the affidavit that she is the cousin of another Conyers accuser, Marion Brown, and says she saw Conyers touch Brown inappropriately.

Even some of Conyers’s closest allies said the decision to step down was probably the right one.

“I would think that had he continued in the House, that would be a news story that would distract from … the Democratic agenda.”

Conyers’s decision to bow out marks an ignominious end for the iconic liberal lion of Detroit — a veteran of the Korean War who had served under 10 different presidents and voted on some of the most significant legislation of the last century, including the creation of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Water Act and ObamaCare. Along the way, he gained prominence as a vocal Vietnam War protestor, helped found the CBC and rose to chairman of the House Oversight Committee before taking the reins of the Judiciary Committee for two terms beginning in 2007.

Lofgren might not be the only challenger. Jackson Lee, who sits right behind Lofgren on the panel, said recently that she's not ruling out a bid in the event the seat is vacated. She declined, however, to comment further following Conyers’s resignation.

“The dust needs to settle,” she said.

Cristina Marcos and Max Greenwood contributed to this report.

Updated 4:45 p.m.