It Gets Worse

The Sunday Washington Post reports that Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert "was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley(R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday -- contradicting the speaker's assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week."

The admission resulted from some infighting and bad blood within the Republican leadership, leading the Post to conclude that : "Yesterday's developments revealed a rift at the highest echelons of House Republican ranks a month before the Nov. 7 elections, and they threatened to expand the scandal to a full-blown party dilemma."

In an even more directly damaging revelation the New York Times asserts that: "Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday."

Even after admitting hearing about Foley's emails, Hastert claimed neither he nor others in the leadership had ever actually read any. But that was soon contradicted by another House Republican in an interview in the St. Louis Dispatch (as discussed by Josh Marshall.) In the Times story, House leaders are still claiming that they did not know about the more sexually explicit email messages obtained by ABC News which seem to have led directly to Foley's resignation. We'll see if that claim stands, and for how long.

The Palm Beach Post writes that ABC News may have emails and instant messages from Foley to five boys.

So here's what we've got so far: The Republican chair of the Congressional caucus on children's issues, a champion of the fundamentalist Christian right, which demonizes homosexuality and considers itself the defender of innocent children, is caught for engaging in sexually explicit emailing with male minors. Foley at first denied the charge, then resigned. The Republican leadership of the House knew about at least some of this behavior for a year but kept it secret, and supported Foley in his continuing activities on childrens' issues as well as his re-election campaign. This includes the Speaker of the House, who denied he knew of the emails but had to admit he did know. The boys were congressional pages, and therefore protecting them was the specific responsibility of the Congress and its leadership.

Hastert has been credibly accused of other kinds of corruption in office, as have other Republican leaders and members of Congress. This may cast new doubt on their fitness for office.

Sunday Update: Democratic congressional leaders have called for the Attorney General to investigate not only whether Foley's behavior constitutes crimes (under legislation he wrote), but whether the House Republcan leadership coverup of his behavior was criminal. The Bush House defended the House leadership on Sunday talk shows, and said there was no need for an investigation.

Think Progress has developed a time line which shows that immediately after a member of the House leadership, Rep Tom Reynolds, learned of Foley's transgressions, Foley made an unusually large $100,000 donation to the National Republican congressional campaign committee, which Reynolds runs. So now the possibility of bribery or blackmail enters the sequence of sordid events and potential crimes.

ABC News moves the timeline's beginning back to at least 2001: it is reporting that five years ago, a GOP congressional staff person warned congressional pages to "watch out" for Foley.

2nd Update: The FBI has begun a preliminary investigation of Foley's emails. This same New York Times story reports that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's call for an Ethics Committee investigation of the conduct of the House Republican leadership has been joined by Republican Senator Richard Lugar who "agreed that the personal safety of the pages who work in the Capitol needs to be assured. “I would join Congresswoman Pelosi in saying an investigation ought to occur,” he said on CNN.

A Democratic lawmaker who sits on the page oversight board said she was not told about Mr. Foley’s e-mails. “This should be investigated objectively,” said Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the Democratic leadership should have been told 10 months ago. This was a very serious charge.”