1115.org

Looks like the Mark Foley scandal will stay in the limelight this week. The focus has shifted to:
• Who knew what when?
• What did they do?
• Why are they now lying about it?

Much of the attention is directed at the Republican House leadership. House Majority Leader John Boehner and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert have managed to draw attention to themselves by not getting their stories straight in time. These guys should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves; that’s a rank amateur’s mistake, and both these guys are supposed to be slick professionals.

Brad DeLong reports that on Friday night Charles Babington and Jonathan Weisman’s story in WaPo datelined Saturday September 29 read:

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him “we’re taking care of it.” It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged e-mails between Foley and the boy…

By Saturday morning the story had been revised to:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert. It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy…

Also, on Friday night, Boehner sang a slightly different tune to Roll Call:

Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying “That is not true.”

Before your very eyes, ladies and gentlemen, he goes from “I told him and he said we’re taking care of it” to “I don’t remember if I told him” to “Reports that I told him are flatly false.” (Reports, mind you, based on his own original statement. How rich is that?)

The trouble, of course, is that when Hastert said “we’re taking care of it” what he meant was “we’re making sure it stays under wraps so that Foley’s seat is not at risk in November”. So “I told him and he said we’re taking care of it” couldn’t be allowed to stand.

Thomas Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also has a starring role, though it may not be accurate to describe him as a supporting actor:

Reynolds, R-N.Y., was told (“sometime this spring”) about e-mails sent by Rep. Mark Foley and is now defending himself from Democratic accusations that he did too little.

Unfortunately for all concerned, Reynolds has also gone and said that he told Hastert right away:

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said Saturday he told Speaker Dennis Hastert months ago about concerns that a fellow GOP lawmaker had sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.

There are two other threads of this story that are likely to receive attention in the next few days.

One:

The page who received the first e-mail messages told ABC News that people in the program had warned his class to watch out for Mr. Foley.

Two, on September 5, a person with the screen name WHInternNow left the following comment on a Daily Kos story about Mark Foley:

The Real Problem With Foley

It’s not that he’s gay. It’s that he constantly hits on underage interns on The Hill. You guys talk about an “open secret” well Foley’s eye for the young boys in the White House and around the Capitol is what has the Republican bosses scared to death. It’s just wrong that this guy can hit on young boys and still be in the leadership.

This was on September 5, more than three weeks before the emails story broke.

An open secret on Capitol Hill that pages are actually warned about, semi-officially? That’s going to make it more and more untenable for the Republicans who have admitted knowing about the emails to claim – as they have been doing – that nothing was done at the time because there was no real indication of impropriety once Foley explained the emails away as innocent and merely “over-friendly”.

Apart from Boehner and Reynolds, that list includes Rep. Rodney Alexander and Rep. John Shimkus.

*** Update, 6:35 am October 1 ***

(1) When Thieves Fall Out

WaPo this morning:

Only after Reynolds’s definitive statement did Hastert concede yesterday that he may have been notified of some of the questionable activities of Foley, 52, who had co-chaired the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus.
[…]
With his statement, Reynolds, who is locked in a difficult reelection campaign, signaled he was unwilling to take the fall alone amid partisan attacks that were becoming increasingly vituperative. The Democratic National Committee yesterday issued a statement asking “Why Did Tom Reynolds Cover Up Congressman’s Sex Crimes?” It continued: “While the shocking [online] exchanges produced an immediate uproar that cost Congressman Foley his job, at least one member of the House Republican leadership had known about the situation for months and did nothing about it: . . . Reynolds.”

Republican insiders said Reynolds spoke out because he was angry that Hastert appeared willing to let him take the blame for the party leadership’s silence.

A House GOP leadership aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that Reynolds realizes he has taken a shot at his leader but that it is understandable.

“This is what happens when one member tries to throw another member under a bus,” the aide said.

(2) Under Pressure, Speaker’s Office Produces Defective Spin

Here’s Hastert’s attempt to explain why he did not learn about Foley’s emails till a few months ago, although his office was informed last year:

The chronology released by Hastert’s office begins in late 2005, after Alexander had alerted colleagues of Foley’s e-mail exchanges with the former page, who had returned to Louisiana. Hastert aide Tim Kennedy “immediately discussed the matter with his supervisor, Mike Stokke, Speaker Hastert’s Deputy Chief of Staff,” the statement says. Also brought into the talks were Hastert’s staff attorney, Ted Van Der Meid, and the House clerk.

The clerk and Shimkus “immediately met with Foley to discuss the matter,” the chronology says, and they told Foley “to immediately cease any communication with the young man. . . . Mindful of the sensitivity to the parents’ wishes to protect their child’s privacy and believing that they had promptly reported what they knew to the proper authorities,” it says, “Kennedy, Van Der Meid and Stokke did not discuss the matter with others in the Speaker’s Office.”

The problem with the story is that although Hastert’s office clearly recognized the potential seriousness of Foley’s conduct (enough to bring an attorney into the discussions) the “proper authorities” they reported the matter to consisted of the Clerk of the House. He may be a very proper person, but is hardly much of an authority.

*** Update 2, 4:25 pm October 1 ***

This is fixing to turn extremely ugly. ABC News revealed today that Congressional Republicans have known for at least five years about Foley preying on Congressional pages. It also looks like pages reporting to Republican supervisors were warned about Foley, but pages reporting to Democratic supervisors were not.

A Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.

Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk’s office.

Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told “don’t get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff.”

Some of the sexually explicit instant messages that led to Foley’s abrupt resignation Friday were sent to pages in Loraditch’s class.

Pages report to either Republican or Democratic supervisors, depending on the political party of the member of Congress who nominated them for the page program.

Several Democratic pages tell ABC News they received no such warnings about Foley. Loraditch says that some of the pages who “interacted” with Foley were hesitant to report his behavior because “members of Congress, they’ve got the power.” Many of the pages were hoping for careers in politics and feared Foley might seek retribution.

If you know the right words to describe this behavior by Congressional Republican leaders, please do let me know, because I must confess I do not. They have tacitly colluded to allow this man to continue preying on underage pages for at least the last five years, doing nothing but issuing a casual “caveat emptor” warning, and only to pages sponsored by Republican representatives.

To me, the most disgusting part of the story is that even when reports of the emails to one page first surfaced, Foley chose to brazen it out, dismissing the emails as innocent and over-friendly, that’s all. The fact that Foley would choose brazenry, although it was an open secret in Republican circles that he had been preying on pages for years, clearly indicates that Foley fully expected Congressional Republican leaders to keep their mouths shut. And the fact of the matter is that until other sexually explicit IMs surfaced — only because ABC News aired the story — Foley’s protectors kept up their shameful silence.

Clearly the Republican Party and George Bush deserve each other. What did we ever do to deserve both?