Representative Trent Franks announced Friday that he would resign from Congress immediately after accusations emerged that he had offered $5 million to a female employee to be a surrogate mother for his children, and that she and another female employee worried that the lawmaker wanted to have sex as a means of impregnating them.
.. Mr. Franks’s net worth sits at nearly $30 million
.. Franks’s wealth derives primarily from stock in Trinity Petroleum, where he was chief executive
.. Mr. Franks and his wife have two children, twins born by a surrogate.
.. Mr. Franks was best known as one of the most socially conservative members of the House. In 2013, he came under harsh criticismfor remarking that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low”
.. He also founded the Arizona Family Research Institute, a nonprofit associated with Focus on the Family, a socially conservative religious organization.
Inside Trump’s snap decision to ban transgender troops
A congressional fight over sex reassignment surgery threatened funding for his border wall.
House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico.
But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.They turned to Trump, who didn’t hesitate. In the flash of a tweet, he announced that transgender troops would be banned altogether.
.. And when Defense Secretary James Mattis refused to immediately upend the policy, they went straight to the White House. Trump — never one for political correctness — was all too happy to oblige.
.. The announcement, multiple sources said, did not sit well with Mattis, who appeared to be trying to avoid the matter in recent weeks. An extensive Defense Department review of the policy was already underway, but a decision wasn’t expected for months.
.. “It’s not so much the transgender surgery issue as much as we continue to let the defense bill be the mule for all of these social experiments that the left wants to try to [foist] on government,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a conservative supporter of the Hartzler proposal, said last week.
He added: “It seems to me, and all due respect to everyone, that if someone wants to come to the military, potentially risk their life to save the country, that they should probably decide whether they’re a man or woman before they do that.”
.. “I’m glad the president will be changing this costly and damaging policy,” Hartzler said after Trump’s announcement. “Military service is a privilege, not a right. We must ensure all our precious defense dollars are used to strengthen our national defense.”