California Democrat Jim Costa, the longtime Fresno congressman, was the subject of a congressional ethics investigation in 2023 after a former staffer alleged he made unwanted advances toward two young female interns at events hosted by a California nonprofit, the New York Post reported. Both the Office of Congressional Conduct and the House Ethics Committee ultimately dismissed the matter.
The complaint, filed in early 2023, alleged Costa behaved inappropriately toward a 22-year-old intern at a nonprofit event in 2020 and toward a Senate intern at a similar event in 2021. Costa was 67 at the time of the first alleged encounter. His office said he cooperated fully and that the Ethics Committee voted unanimously to dismiss.
That the probe happened at all, and that it stayed buried until now, raises a familiar question about how Congress polices its own. The dismissal means the public never had to know. And Costa's constituents in Fresno were left entirely in the dark.
The woman who filed the complaint, now a lobbyist, told NOTUS that Costa approached her as she was leaving the nonprofit event in 2020. She said he asked why she was going home and insisted she stay and dance. When she declined, she said, Costa pressed the point.
"I was like, 'I've already danced.' He's like, 'Well, I didn't dance with you.'"
She said Costa then asked her to do the "shimmy" in the checked bag area. The encounter grew uncomfortable, she said.
"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."
She alleged Costa later offered to help her career, gave her his personal phone number, and asked her to dinner. The woman said she understood what the invitation meant.
"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 said Costa also asked her to send her resume to his chief of staff. She eventually did, she told NOTUS, because she believed refusing would damage her prospects.
"If I didn't do these things, my career would be ruined."
The next day, she said, she bumped into Costa again. He allegedly asked why she had not texted him and whether she had a boyfriend. The pattern she described, persistent attention from a powerful, much older lawmaker directed at a junior staffer, is the kind of conduct that congressional ethics rules exist to catch.
The same woman said that roughly a year later, in 2021, she spotted Costa at another event hosted by the same California nonprofit. This time, she said, he was dancing with a different young woman, a Senate intern. The pattern of misconduct allegations sweeping Congress has drawn increased attention to how such encounters are handled.
She described the scene in detail to NOTUS:
"She very uncomfortably and awkwardly said yes. At which point he started spinning her around, like, touching, dancing."
The first woman said the situation drew stares and that people were taking photos. She said she turned to a male staffer and coordinated an intervention.
"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 Senate intern later cried in the bathroom at the event. When confronted about the dancing, Costa was reportedly left flabbergasted and left the event. The second intern's name has not been made public.
Costa's office shared a statement saying he took the complaint seriously and cooperated with the review. The office said the Office of Congressional Compliance recommended dismissal and that the House Committee on Ethics unanimously voted to dismiss the matter. His office added that "all ethics complaints should always be taken seriously" and that the results "speak for themselves."
As Breitbart reported, NOTUS noted that investigations by the Office of Congressional Conduct, formerly the Office of Congressional Ethics, are normally made public unless both the OCC and the Ethics Committee move to dismiss the case. That is exactly what happened with Costa. The dual dismissal kept the entire matter out of public view for years.
There is a notable discrepancy in the naming: Costa's office referred to the "Office of Congressional Compliance," while the article and other reporting refer to the "Office of Congressional Conduct." Whether that reflects a name change, an office distinction, or simple imprecision is unclear.
What is clear is that the process worked in Costa's favor. The complaint was filed, reviewed, and closed, all without voters ever learning it existed. The quiet investigation of North Carolina Democrat Alma Adams over an alleged relationship with a staffer followed a similar trajectory, raising broader questions about whether the ethics apparatus functions as a shield for incumbents rather than a check on their behavior.
The intern allegations are not the first time Costa's personal conduct has drawn scrutiny. In 1986, when Costa was a 34-year-old state assemblymember, Sacramento police reported that he and a 19-year-old woman traveling in a state-leased car allegedly approached another woman and agreed to pay her $50 for an act of prostitution.
Costa acknowledged the incident at the time.
"I made the mistake. I accept full responsibility for my error in judgment on last Saturday."
That episode was nearly four decades ago. But it establishes a pattern of allegations involving Costa and younger women, allegations that have surfaced at different stages of his long political career, and that in both cases ended without lasting professional consequences.
The broader context in Congress is hard to ignore. Fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress this year and dropped his bid for governor after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Swalwell denied those claims. The ethics trial faced by indicted Florida Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick over an alleged FEMA fraud scheme shows that serious accountability actions are possible, but they remain rare, and the system still favors quiet resolution over public transparency.
The texts reviewed by NOTUS, the accounts from the former intern and the male staffer, and the formal complaint filed with congressional ethics officials all paint a picture of a veteran lawmaker whose conduct toward young women in professional settings prompted enough concern that colleagues intervened physically at an event and a former staffer filed a formal ethics complaint.
The ethics bodies concluded there was not enough to proceed. Fair enough, dismissal is a legitimate outcome. But the secrecy that followed is harder to defend. Voters in Fresno had no way to weigh this information when deciding whether to return Costa to office. The system's design ensured that a dismissed complaint simply vanished.
That is not accountability. It is insulation. And when the same institutional structure that allowed an indicted Democrat to resist removal also keeps dismissed misconduct complaints permanently sealed, voters are left wondering whose interests the ethics process actually serves.
Costa's office says the results speak for themselves. Perhaps they do, just not in the way his office intends. A 67-year-old congressman allegedly pressing a 22-year-old intern to dance, dine, and text him, then doing something similar enough a year later that bystanders had to physically intervene, is conduct that deserved public sunlight regardless of the committee's final vote.
Congress has built an ethics system that works best for the people it is supposed to oversee. The rest of us just have to take their word for it.
