On Monday evening, BuzzFeed published a report that Representative John Conyers Jr (D-Michigan) settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015; with a former employee who said she was fired for refusing his sexual advances and “blackballed” into accepting a settlement of $27,000.

Reached at his Detroit home, Conyers told AP that he had not settled any sexual harassment complaints with any staff members, and that he knows nothing about any claims of inappropriate touching. Commenting on sexual harassment claims against politicians and celebrities, he said he has “been looking at these things with amazement.”

An icon of the civil rights movement, Conyers was first elected to Congress in 1964. He is currently the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. His case is just one of 264 settlements amounting to $17 million paid out by Congress’s Office of Compliance for various violations, including sexual harassment, over the past 20 years.