Where Is The Line Drawn?
A senior congressional aide said Wednesday that he alerted House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office two years ago about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages.
Kirk Fordham told The Associated Press that when he was told about Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had “more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene.”
The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House GOP leadership have acknowledged.
This follows news that a deal has apparently been reached that would allow Hastert to stay on temporarily:
The top House Republican, under fire for his handling of a Capitol Hill sex scandal, gained support on Wednesday in his bid to survive the political firestorm over a former congressman’s lewd messages to teenage boys, party aides said.
But House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who oversees the congressional intern program at the center of the scandal, could still be forced out after the November 7 elections, the aides said.
“Looks like right now he will keep his job for a maximum of one and one-half months,” said a senior party official, adding that in the meantime Hastert may fire some staffers. Other party aides said it remains unclear how long he will stay.
Nevertheless, IF – and that’s a big if – the breaking AP story is correct, and Hastert’s knowledge of Foley’s conduct went beyond that somewhat flirtatious, but by no means salacious, email exchange (remember, folks, those IMs with all the nauseating sexual innuendo are not the same as the emails that Hastert was told about in 2005), then the jig is up. No need to wait until November, just do it today.
Why would this change my tune? Because this would place the emails in a whole new context; in and of themselves, they were worrisome, but hardly conclusive proof that Foley had a thing for young boys. If Fordham warned Hastert (or his top staff) months prior, however, then the emails would take on another rather ominous aspect entirely.
Two things worth noting:
(1) Fordham doesn’t want to be the fall guy. That doesn’t mean he’s lying, but it is relevant.
(2) Hastert has already denied the AP report.
There’s been way more than enough hyperventilating over this story from all sides, and I don’t want to draw conclusions yet. This is still a ‘breaking news’ allegation. Nevertheless, if true, it’s curtains for Hastert, and rightly so.
Needless to say, we’ll revisit this when more details arrive…
UPDATE 4:03 p.m.: The additional ‘details’ that are arriving at this point are basically dueling allegations from the various camps. It’s very hard to know who to believe or trust at this point; for this reason, I still think, no matter whether Hastert is forced out or quits, the independent investigation route is the best way to go…the truth might not come out even then, but right now, it’s just a circus…
I think Hastert will stick it out — oops, bad choice of words –
Ewwwww!
If Fordham is telling the truth, then Hastert’s departure is overdue – control of the House be damned. However, I doubt very much that the investigative process will conclude on such a timeline for us to know the answer to that question anytime soon. As they say: the millstones of the law grind finely and slowly – especially when a powerful politician’s career is at stake.
Fordham, foley’s former chief of staff, and probably an enabler, is to be believed when he says he was ratting out his former boss? I have a feeling he was soft-peddling this bike.
What are the odds that fordham is gay?
ps…why won’t abcnews release more IMs? You know they have em.
will brian ross become the next judy miller? I need a crime to be found so that all the other tidbits from the investigation come out. I do mean ‘all’ the tidbits.
All the tidbits?
Foley was, uh, majority whip…
if fordham is gay, this thing is over.
the story will read one gay guy who spent his early years working on,with,for,under another gay, gets a job where he can protect his former ‘boss’. No one would be in a position to know more about foley than his former chief of staff. He knew who foley was, what he was doing and he kept on hiding it.
Now this enabler is to have any crediblity?
Chief of staff?
Oh my, another poor choice of words.