In this case, [the staffer] was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers’s taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would “rehire” the woman as a “temporary employee” despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.

Though several additional staffers corroborated the woman’s account and said that Conyers acted similarly around other women, and two even told the O.O.C. that they believed Conyers had used congressional resources to carry out extramarital affairs, the O.O.C. did not reprimand him. “It is a designed cover-up,” said law clerk Matthew Peterson, who represented the staffer during the complaint process. “You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It’s like being abused twice.”

In the past week, documents released by the office have shown that the O.O.C. has paid out over $17.2 million in taxpayer money over the course of 20 years to cover 268 settlements on Capitol Hill, including sexual-harassment allegations. Conyers’s settlement did not come from that designated fund, but already the documents have sparked speculation as to what other cases have passed through the office. And even those cases reportedly represent just a small fraction of incidents that occur on Capitol Hill—Speier told CNN last week that 80 percent of the people who came to her office with stories of harassment in the past few weeks had chosen not to report the incidents to the O.O.C.

In a statement, Conyers acknowleged that he had settled the complaint, but “expressly and vehemently” denied the contents of the allegations. “My office resolved the allegations — with an express denial of liability — to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. That should not be lost in the narrative,” he said. (The statement did not deter Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from calling for an ethics probe into the allegations, though she had previously denied knowing about the settlement.)

The wave of stories is cresting outside Washington as well, with a handful of lawmakers in state capitols facing similar allegations. California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra has been accused by six women of making unwanted sexual advances (Bocanegra has said he will resign his seat at the end of the session in September and that he has suspended his reelection campaign); Florida State Senator Jack Latvala, who is running for governor, faces allegations of inappropriately touching six women (Latvala has denied the charges); and the Florida Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Bittel resigned last week over charges that he had created a hostile work environment for both male and female staffers—“I apologize for all who have felt uncomfortable during my tenure at the Democratic Party,” Bittel said in a statement. But according to Axios’s Mike Allen, this is just the beginning. Allen has received tips that various reporters are “looking into specific congressmen” with spotty reputations, he wrote. “Every sign is that for the East Coast, there's lots more to come.”