Rep. Eric Massa says the allegations of sexual harassment that forced him to announce his resignation stem from an incident at a wedding reception in which he told a male staffer: "[W]hat I really ought to be doing is fracking you." Massa—an ardent supporter of single-payer healthcare and opponent of the current healthcare bill—admitted the statement was "inappropriate," but said Democratic leaders launched an ethics probe against him in an effort to convince him to resign before the vote on healthcare.

On his weekly radio address, the Navy veteran said he made the statement at a New Year's Eve wedding party for a staff member:

I sat down at the table where my whole staff was, all of them by the way bachelors ... One of them looked at me and as they would do after, I don't know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that.

And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, "Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you." And then [I] tossled the guy's hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn't right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes.

Massa said the staff member he addressed "never said to me that he felt uncomfortable," and claimed the complaint stemmed from another aide who witnessed the incident. "It was a third-party political correctness statement." According to Talking Points Memo, Massa accused Democratic leaders of trying to boot him from Congress before the healthcare vote because he had voted against the first bill. "Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots."