Longtime TV host Greta Van Susteren told Newsmax TV she is "appalled" by the practice of using taxpayer money to settle sexual misconduct lawsuits on Capitol Hill.
Van Susteren sat down with John Bachman to discuss her new bestseller "Everything You Need to Know About Social Media Without Having to Call a Kid" and said she is furious that public money is used in such a way.
"That lights my hair on fire, I'm actually appalled by it, but I'll give you another one," she said. "Even the corporations, when they're paying these sexual harassment settlements or judgments, if they're paying it on behalf of someone who's committed some bad conduct, that's shareholder money.
"That's not their money, but shareholders don't invest in companies to pay for bad personal conduct. The person who does that bad personal conduct is the one who should have to compensate and pay."
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Van Susteren added that making the payments in secret "bothers me even more."
She called the current sexual harassment scandal story a “toxic situation” but cautioned that there should be due process for all accuses and “fairness for both men and women.”
Regarding Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who was accused of sexual misconduct by several women, Van Susteren said she would have preferred that he go through the Senate's internal process — namely, an ethics investigation — instead of announcing his intent to resign because of the allegations.
"Let him go through the ethics process, let his colleagues in the Senate decide whether or not they want him to be a sitting member of the U.S. Senate, and then it would be a matter for the voters back in Minnesota," she said.
"I'm big on process. I'm big on fairness and I think that we've got to look at each case individually, weigh the facts, and I think to the best we can to be fair to both men and women in this very, very toxic situation where everyone is very upset, understandably so, is that we have to be fair to both men and women and probably the easiest way we can be fair is that we focus on the facts and if we also go through the process and we also don't bury our head in the sand when these allegations have occurred because apparently this has been going on for a lot of women and people just put their heads in the sand and ignored it."
She added that the justice system relies on facts, so it's important to let them play out in a legal setting rather than letting the court of public opinion decide the fate of the accused.
"It's not about taking sides, it's about looking at the facts and giving everyone a fair shake," she said. "That includes the men and the women."
Several women have also accused President Donald Trump of varying degrees of sexual misconduct, and a tape of him talking about sexually assaulting women surfaced before last year's election.
Van Susteren said opening an investigation into the claims against Trump might not be the best thing for the country.
"He was elected after that tape was made public, not before, and so a lot of people for whatever reason, they elected to vote for him anyway," she said. "So I'm not sure what the Democrats, where they're headed with this, I don't know what purpose it serves … I certainly don't like [Trump's comments], but I don't know what in the world an investigation is going to do for us, how that helps us or how to advance anything."
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