California Democrat Jim Costa, a longtime congressman from Fresno, was the subject of a congressional ethics probe in 2023 after two young female interns accused him of making unwanted advances, allegations that ethics bodies ultimately dismissed but that paint a troubling picture of how powerful men in Washington operate around junior staff.
The allegations, first reported in detail by the New York Post, span incidents in 2020 and 2021 involving two separate interns. A complaint was filed with congressional ethics officials roughly three years ago. The Office of Congressional Compliance reviewed the matter, recommended dismissal, and the House Ethics Committee voted unanimously to close the case.
Costa's office said the congressman "fully cooperated" with the review. A source familiar with the process told NOTUS that lawmakers "didn't find enough evidence to proceed." And that, apparently, was supposed to be the end of it.
But the details that emerged tell a story that deserves more scrutiny, not less.
The first woman was 22 years old at the time. Costa was 67. She said the congressman approached her at an event hosted by a California nonprofit as she was leaving. He asked her to dance. She declined, repeatedly.
In her own words:
"I was like, 'I've already danced.' He's like, 'Well, I didn't dance with you.'"
She described the encounter as physically uncomfortable, saying Costa kept leaning forward as she tried to pull away:
"Every time I leaned back, it seemed like he got farther forward. So I was grateful that I could do a back bend. It was a very uncomfortable situation."
Costa allegedly asked her to "shimmy" and the two did so in a checked bag area. He then offered to help her career and gave her his personal phone number. She later said he asked why she had not texted him and whether she had a boyfriend.
She described the career offer in blunt terms:
"He just said 'I would love to help you with your career. Let's get dinner.' Which when it comes from a powerful man, does not mean I want to help you."
She added: "I'm not dumb. I knew what it meant."
The woman, now working as a lobbyist, said she sent her resume to Costa's chief of staff because she believed her career depended on it. She told NOTUS she felt that "if I didn't do these things, my career would be ruined."
The same woman said she witnessed Costa engage in a similar dancing encounter with another intern, this time a Senate intern, at an event hosted by the same California nonprofit roughly a year later, in 2021.
She described the scene in detail, saying the younger woman "very uncomfortably and awkwardly said yes" to dancing, at which point Costa "started spinning her around, like, touching, dancing." Onlookers stared. People took photos.
The first woman said she coordinated with a male staffer to intervene:
"Everyone was staring. A lot of people were taking photos. At which point, I looked at [the male staffer] and said, you go grab her hand and I will grab his."
The male staffer told NOTUS that the second intern later cried in the bathroom at the event. When Costa was confronted about the incident, he was reportedly "flabbergasted" and left.
That a sitting congressman's behavior at a public event was conspicuous enough for bystanders to take photos and for staffers to physically intervene raises obvious questions about what "not enough evidence to proceed" actually means in Congress.
Costa's office offered a carefully worded statement affirming that "all ethics complaints should always be taken seriously" and that the results of the review "speak for themselves." That framing, cooperated, dismissed, case closed, is familiar to anyone who has watched Washington's self-policing apparatus in action. The Office of Congressional Conduct and the House Ethics Committee have long faced criticism for operating as a shield rather than a sword when it comes to holding members accountable.
This is the same institution that House Democrats have used selectively to target political opponents while quietly closing ranks around their own. The pattern is not new. But it remains worth naming every time it surfaces.
The dismissal does not erase the accounts of two women who described unwanted physical contact, career pressure, and emotional distress. It does not explain away a public scene so alarming that colleagues felt compelled to step in. And it does not address the fundamental power imbalance between a veteran congressman and interns barely out of college.
The 2020 and 2021 allegations are not the first time Costa's conduct toward women drew official attention. In 1986, when Costa was a 34-year-old state assemblymember, Sacramento police reported that he and a 19-year-old prostitute approached another woman and allegedly agreed to pay her $50 for an act of prostitution.
Costa acknowledged the incident at the time, saying: "I made the mistake. I accept full responsibility for my error in judgment on last Saturday."
That was nearly four decades ago. The political class treated it as a youthful indiscretion, and Costa went on to build a long career in California politics. But the 1986 episode and the 2020, 2021 intern allegations, taken together, suggest a behavioral throughline that ethics committees are ill-equipped, or unwilling, to address.
Meanwhile, House Democrats have shown no shortage of enthusiasm for investigating and publicly shaming political adversaries over far less substantiated claims. The contrast between that eagerness and the quiet disposal of a complaint against one of their own members speaks volumes about institutional priorities.
Costa's case lands in a broader context of Democratic members facing misconduct allegations. California congressman Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress this year and dropped his leading bid for the governorship after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Swalwell denied those claims.
The party that has spent years positioning itself as the champion of women's rights and workplace safety has a growing list of members whose personal conduct does not match the branding. That disconnect is not lost on the public, even if it rarely leads to consequences inside the Capitol.
Democrats have been busy this session with other priorities, from introducing 25th Amendment legislation to pursuing politically motivated investigations. Whether any of that energy will be redirected toward accountability within their own ranks remains an open question.
The broader Democratic caucus has also embraced increasingly aggressive tactics aimed at the executive branch, even as cases like Costa's get filed away and forgotten.
Several questions remain unresolved. The exact texts NOTUS reviewed between Costa and the first intern have not been made fully public. The names of the two interns and the male staffer who intervened have not been disclosed. The specific venue and city where the nonprofit events took place remain vague. And the precise filing date of the ethics complaint is unclear.
Most critically, the standard the ethics bodies applied in dismissing the complaint has not been explained. "Not enough evidence to proceed" is a conclusion, not an argument. It tells the public nothing about what evidence was weighed, what testimony was heard, or whether the process was designed to reach a meaningful result in the first place.
Costa remains in office. The interns moved on. The ethics system did what it almost always does, absorb the complaint, process it quietly, and produce a result that protects the institution more than the people who brought the grievance.
Washington has a way of making uncomfortable stories disappear. The least voters can do is refuse to let them.
