FOR nearly an hour on Monday night, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina gave an unprecedented speech on the House of Representatives floor accusing four men — including her ex-fiancé — of rape, sex trafficking and sexual misconduct against her and other women.
Mace, who is considering a gubernatorial run, also said that her likely Republican rival in that race, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, did not prosecute the men despite her giving his office evidence of their actions months ago.
“I’m going scorched earth,” Mace said as several other Republican women lawmakers sat behind her in a show of support.
“We’re talking about rape, nonconsensual photos, nonconsensual videos of women and underage girls, the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls,” Mace said.
In a lengthy statement released Monday night, Wilson’s office said it was “categorically false” that they had received evidence related to Mace’s allegations, that she and the attorney general had been at multiple events together in the preceding months and that she had Wilson’s personal cell phone number.
“At this time, our office has not received any reports or requests for assistance from any law enforcement or prosecution agencies regarding these matters. Additionally, the Attorney General and members of his office have had no role and no knowledge of these allegations until her public statements,” the statement said.
All four men, including Mace’s ex-fiancé, Patrick Bryant, denied the allegations when contacted by The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. The State Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, confirmed to the newspaper late Monday that there was an open and active investigation.
The 19th was unable to corroborate Mace’s account or reach the four men directly.
A section of the U.S. Constitution known as the “speech and debate clause” generally protects members of Congress from legal fallout related to anything they say on the floor about legislative activities. Mace said in a release that members’ statements on the House floor are “legislative acts” and therefore protected, the Associated Press reported. Her office did not respond to a request for comment on the speech or the allegations within it.
Mace is a third-term lawmaker who has made issues related to women and gender central to her political brand. She was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the state military college in South Carolina. She was also the first Republican woman elected to represent the state in Congress.
In the South Carolina statehouse, Mace, who generally opposes abortion, lobbied for the inclusion of exceptions for rape and incest in legislation that banned abortion after six weeks. Mace revealed at the time, in another speech on the statehouse floor, that she had been raped as a teenager. She also sponsored legislation that ended the shackling of pregnant women in prison.
During her speech on Monday, she displayed a poster board containing a phone number for a victims’ hotline.
In the U.S. House, Mace has introduced a bill to ban transgender women from using bathrooms on federal property that do not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. This followed a campaign to bar first-term Rep. Sarah McBride, the first transgender lawmaker in Congress, from using the women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill. Mace has said the efforts were necessary to “protect women and girls,” a common argument used by President Donald Trump and his administration to support their anti-trans measures.
She remains a strong supporter of Trump, a fellow Republican who has been accused by about two dozen women of sexual misconduct dating back to the 1970s. He has been found liable in court for sexual abuse.
