Herman Cain's problems
aren't "done" just yet (Jason Reed/Reuters)
Contrary to the
insistence (read: wishful thinking) of the Herman Cain camp, the story of him sexually harassing multiple former employees is not "done" just yet.
Haley Barbour—who knows a thing or two about bad PR—offered some friendly advice to Cain:
If you have a confidentiality agreement that keeps the public from finding out something that the public is interested in knowing the facts, you ought to go on and get the facts out.
That seems like perfectly reasonable advice, given that some of Cain's defenders, like Sen. Rand Paul, have said that it's oh-so-unfair for Cain to have defend himself against anonymous accusations. (Of course, the accusers are not anonymous to Cain. And if Cain has trouble keeping track of all the "anonymous" women who've accused him of sexual harassment over the years, his problems are far from over.)
But fortunately for Cain, one of the women is willing to come forward, out of the fog of anonymity, if Cain and/or the National Restaurant Association is willing to waive the confidentiality requirement of her settlement agreement. Yesterday, her attorney explained why:
“Naturally, she’s been very upset about this since the story broke last Sunday, because Mr. Cain has been giving the impression she came out and made false allegations,” Bennet said on “AC360.” “That’s certainly not true, and she’s still deciding once we hear from the Restaurant Association what she’ll do, if they’ll waive the confidentiality. Until they do that, she’s not going to speak out.”
Waiving those confidentiality requirements certainly seems like the perfect solution for everyone, allowing Cain to set the record straight and clear his good name, proving once and for all just how "baseless" the accusations were.
But not so fast, says Cain:
Herman Cain, in an appearance on Fox News, insisted that he couldn't answer whether he would ask the National Restaurant Association to waive a confidentiality agreement with a former employee who had accused him of sexual harassment in the 1990s.
"There are legal implications if the Restaurant Association waives that. I just found out about this today; there are legal implications" involved, he said, adding, "We can't answer that right now. It's too soon."
Funny that all of a sudden there are legal implications involved now that his accuser is willing to come forward. Why, it seems like it was only yesterday that Cain was explaining why this wasn't even a "legal" situation at all:
"[W]hen I first heard the word settlement, I thought legal settlement. ... There was an agreement. So I made an assumption about the word settlement that was legal. ... Remember, this happened 12 years ago and so all day in the middle of my regular schedule, I'm trying to piece the pieces together."
He added, "I didn't intend to contradict myself it's just been difficult trying to recollect the pieces 12 years ago. ... It wasn't intended to be Clintonian. It was simply using the word agreement, which is business [agreements] that I have run. ... That was the perspective from which I got around to that after trying to recall what was happening 12 years ago."
So you can see how Cain would be confused, because clearly what happened 12 years ago was a business situation, not a legal situation. If only he'd been asked about any business agreements with any former employees who accused him of sexual harassment, well, this whole misunderstanding could have been avoided.
But now that Cain has an opportunity to reveal the details—which will of course exonerate him because, as he's told us, these charges were "baseless" and "ridiculous"—Cain's suddenly donning his legal cap, and thinking that maybe Haley Barbour's advice to "get the facts out" might not be such a smart business plan for the pizza man after all.