Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) this week will meet with women who have alleged a culture of harassment and gender discrimination at his 2016 presidential campaign, Buzzfeed News reported.
Sanders’ office arranged for the women to travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with the senator and members of his staff on Wednesday. The trip and hotels for the women were covered by Sanders’ campaign fund, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting who spoke to Buzzfeed.
The meetings will be orchestrated by an outside consulting group that provides training on “workplace inclusion and diversity,” in Buzzfeed’s words. Several male and female former employees of the 2016 campaign sent a letter to the senator last month, requesting a meeting to discuss the “issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle.”
Both Politico and The New York Times have reported on women’s allegations of sexual harassment, assault and a pervasive climate of sexism while working on Sanders’ 2016 presidential run. Sanders has apologized and said that his campaign will “do better next time. Yet tthe Vermont senator was criticized for his initial flippant response to the allegations, when he said he was “a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case.”
