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interview, Shimkus said that both he and the Clerk of the House saw the actual emails sent by Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) to a congressional page when they conducted their "investigation" of Foley last fall.
official version of events put out late yesterday by his fellow Illinoisan, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, whose internal investigation found that Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) declined to provide the emails in question out of respect for the page and his family, who desired privacy. It's about to require a flow chart to keep this all straight.
local paper that, no, he didn't (emphasis is mine): Shimkus was unavailable for comment, but through his spokesman, Steve Tomaszewski, he acknowledged speaking to Foley last year after being notified about one of the e-mails that Foley had sent to a page assigned to the office of a Louisiana congressman. Shimkus "did not see personally any e-mail a year ago when he dealt with the issue," Tomaszewski said. Hastert's internal investigation says Shimkus never saw the emails.
link) Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was known for--indeed prided himself and built his power upon--his encyclopedic knowledge of the House GOP caucus: members' likes and dislikes, their personal and political strengths and weaknesses, their pressure points. Mark Foley (R-FL) and a congressional page first came to the attention of the House leadership last fall, Delay was still majority leader. Now the broad version of events being put out by Hastert and Company is that this all came to their attention when Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) brought the concerns of the page and his family to the leadership. No one can get their story straight about what happened after that, but that is the starting point for the story, or so we are told. But if Foley already had a "reputation" among congressional pages, you can bet his reputation extended to staffers and probably to congressmen themselves. One thing that seems to be missing from the GOP reaction is shock or surprise. Maybe I've simply overlooked them, but I haven't seen any quotes along the lines of what you usually expect when something like this breaks: the befuddled reactions of those who knew the alleged perpetrator but had no idea he was even capable of what he is being accused of. I'm thinking of those standard quotes from serial killers' neighbors: he was quiet, kept to himself, seemed completely normal. It's a small world up there on the Hill, and you just don't get the sense that this is a bolt from the blue. I'd be surprised if some reporters didn't already have the low-down on Foley's "over-friendly" ways. The peccadilloes of congressmen is the black market currency on the Hill.
Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday. While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage boys who once worked in the page program, said Matthew Loraditch, a Maryland college senior who runs the US House Page Alumni Association's Internet message board. Loraditch said during his time on Capitol Hill, Foley was one of the members of Congress who expressed what appeared to be a sincere interest in the young pages, often visiting the areas where they congregate in the corner of the House of Representatives chamber to chat or offer stories and advice. Loraditch said he and other pages viewed Foley as gregarious and "flaky" at the time, and that he offered several of them, not including Loraditch, his personal e-mail when they were graduating from the program and saying goodbyes. After Loraditch returned to Maryland and began attending college at Towson University, several male former pages told him they had received Internet messages that were similar to the graphic messages first reported by ABC News last week.
We have also asked for the creation of a toll-free telephone number for House Pages, parents, grandparents, and staff to confidentially report incidents of concern. I'm sure this will inspire a lot of confidence in the operation they're running, that the leaders of the House have set up a toll-free number for pages to report sexual advances by members of Congress.
link) Foley: "If I were one of these sickos, I'd be nervous with America's Most Wanted on my trail." Mark Foley and America's Most Wanted's John Walsh discuss Foley's new anti-child predator legislation.
We continue to hear that the initial conversations about Rep. The House Clerk, who played a key role in what happened and interviewed Foley along with Rep. Trandahl resigned from his position as Clerk around the time this was all happening. And the first public mention I can find of his departure was in statement released by Speaker Hastert on September 30th, 2005.
Rodney Alexander's (R-LA) office suggest the page first contacted Alexander's office on August 31st. Trandahl became Executive Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. More clarity on just when these events occurred could quickly rule out his departure being tied in some way to the Foley imbroglio. But it seems quite probable the events in question took place early in September 2005. Regardless of the reasons behind his leaving the Clerkship, Trandahl is probably in a better position to shed more light on this matter than almost anyone. I believe the Clerk is given a large degree of responsibility for the pages under House Rules. And of all the players in the drama he's the only one who is at least notionally independent. That is, not a member of the House nor a staffer working for a particular member. To the best of my knowledge no one has yet gotten Trandahl on the record.
link) Early this evening I was starting to think that Foleygate might truly be the scandal that dare not speak its name. He's apologized, resigned and, I imagine, will soon face criminal indictment under laws he helped write.
of cover-up and enabling that reached its way through the highest reaches of the House Republican leadership. Early this evening neither the Post nor the Times had devoted a story specifically to the contradictory stories coming out of the House leadership. And usually you've got to really pore over the details to find the inconsistencies and contradictions. So I'm not sure I've ever seen this big a train wreck where leaders at the highest eschelons of power repeatedly fib, contradict each other and change their stories so quickly. Just consider, Denny Hastert has repeatedly said he didn't know anything about the Foley problem until Thursday. But two members of the leadership -- Boehner and Reynolds -- say no, they warned him about it months ago. Rodney Alexander brought the matter to the Speaker's office.
results of a detailed internal review of what happened in which they revealed that no member of the House leadership -- not Hastert or Shimkus or the House Clerk -- had actually laid eyes on the emails in question. Only Hastert's office apparently didn't touch base with Rep.
Louis Post-Dispatch in which he described how he and the Clerk had read the emails. What makes this even more comical is that, according to the AP "Shimkus, who avoided reporters for hours, worked out his statement with Speaker Dennis Hastert's office." At present, the Speaker is committed to portraying himself as a sort of Speaker Magoo. We're supposed to believe that pretty much everyone in the House GOP leadership knew about this but him. These fibs and turnabouts amount to a whole far larger than the sum of its parts. Even the most cynical politicians carefully vet their stories to assure that they cannot easily be contradicted by other credible personages. When you see Majority Leaders and Speakers and Committee chairs calling each other liars in public you know that the underlying story is very bad, that the system of coordination and hierarchy has broken down and that each player believes he's in a fight for his life.
Ma...
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