Did we learn anything new from that report?

Not really.

And I think even in our reporting pre the release of this report, I've sought to lower the temperature of what was going to come out of it because of what the inspector general could legally look at and review versus what he really couldn't.

I mean, you know, obviously Benton resigned July 3rd.

The inspector general's report was done July 1st.

Speaker Welch called for him to resign or face expulsion on July 2nd.

Benton resigns the 3rd.

Is that doing enough, though, to quell those who have been critics of him?

Rick, can you pick that up and maybe talk about what some of these allegations were against the former representative?

So we're talking about a now former Harry Benton staffer, 22 years old 23 years old one of her first jobs after leaving college looking forward to exploring a career in government and politics and works for benton and from day one she said she was basically a victim of benton's sexual harassment and this continued and such things from uh telling her to wear, you know, make sure you wear something underneath your clothes, to things like, by hiring you, I saved you from the pole, like the strip dance, the strip club pole.

I mean, just this constant harassment.

She finally is just starting to really break down and goes to talk to someone and say, what can I do? What can I do? She calls the chief of then chief of staff for Speaker Welch.

And the the chief of staff was listed on a form of, you know, who do you contact if you're a victim of sexual harassment? One of those is the chief of staff contacts them, then ends up sending a laundry list of harassment allegations, many of them mostly of a sexual nature.

Um, the chief of staff says, you know, you should file a, uh, you should file a complaint with the legislative inspector general.

She's young.

Rick, how has the speaker responded to this criticism, which has now come from both opponents and even a colleague or colleagues of his have been critical of his handling of this case?

Catch us up on what has occurred with him here in recent weeks.

Well, uh, with my colleague, uh, Jeremy Gorner, our, our state house correspondent, uh, we'd actually been working on a, uh, months-long investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Harry Benton.

And what we learned is that, uh, the actions that, uh, Speaker Welch took to, uh, remove him from the caucus and committee assignments, uh, came as a result of, came three years after the speaker was first informed of sexual harassment, uh, allegations that were raised by a former Benton staffer.

And we talked to the former Benton staffer, who was one of the first hires that Harry Benton made after becoming a state lawmaker, and she lasted six months on the job and detailed a lengthy list of, uh, harassment allegations against Benton, many of them of a sexual nature, uh, and, and, uh, was told by a friend that, "You should contact, uh, the speaker's office about this." And so, uh, she did.

She was given a list of options that is a standard form given to, um, anybody, uh, with a complaint involving harassment in the general assembly, and it contains a series of options on how to report complaints.

And option one was to call the speaker's chief of staff, which is what she ended up doing.

Option two, file a report with the, uh, legislative inspector general.

I guess I would have to ask the question, is Speaker Welch in some difficulty here with his caucus? 'Cause I'm sure there's people that are not happy with how this was handled.

I just want to.

This is a perfect question because I brought some diagrams.

Most people say Babylon is Rome and it's the Catholic Church.

That's a 500-year-old tradition taught in seminaries, Bible schools.

We've had four PhDs call us.

They've vetted our material and they said what we learned in Bible school and in seminary is wrong, Rick.

This is a revelation that we never saw this before in Scripture.

I learned it