WASHINGTON — Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has lost four staff members following accusations of sexual assault by two women, according to multiple reports.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Washington Post report two of his three state staffers have resigned, as well as the director and the fundraiser of his political action committee, effectively leaving the lieutenant governor with a skeleton crew as he attempts to push on despite mounting calls to resign.
The resignations include Dave Mills and Courtney McCargo, two employees of Fairfax’s political action committee We Rise Together. Policy director Adele McClure and scheduling director Julia Billingsley have also resigned.
As of Tuesday morning, Fairfax’s communications director Lauren Burke and chief of staff Larry Roberts remained.
In the last week, much of the state’s political establishment has called for Fairfax to resign in the wake of allegations from two women that he sexually assaulted them in the early 2000s.
The lieutenant governor, whose position is part time, has also been put on paid leave by his full-time employers, the law firm Morrison & Foerster, while the accusations are investigated.
Fairfax, who denies the allegations, has called for FBI investigations into the allegations and has cautioned against what he called a “rush to judgment.”
Vanessa Tyson, a political science professor, has claimed that Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex in his hotel room at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. On Friday, the second woman, Meredith Watson, came forward to say that Fairfax raped her in 2000, when the two were students at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
While there is a two-year statute of limitations in North Carolina on prosecuting a misdemeanor sexual assault, the state has no statute of limitations on felony sexual assault.
The Fairfax scandal is part of the ongoing chaos atop the commonwealth’s government, which began with the emergence of a racist photo in Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook. Northam has vowed to remain in office, telling CBS’ Gayle King “I am not going anywhere” in an interview that aired Monday.
ABC News and WTOP’s Jack Pointer contributed to this report.
