Foleygate: Speaker Said, They Said

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

At least three people will tell the House ethics committee that Speaker Hastert knew about Mark Foley’s problem with House pages before it became public ten days ago. That testimony contradicts Hastert’s public stance so far: that he learned about it from ABC News.

First, Kirk Fordham, Foley’s former chief of staff, is expected to tell the House ethics committee today that Hastert’s chief of staff Scott Palmer told him he’d spoken to Hastert personally about Foley’s problem as early as 2002.

Neither Fordham nor his lawyer have confirmed this crucial detail on the record. But an anonymous source — who seems to be intimately acquainted with Fordham’s side of the story — told both The Washington Post and Newsweek that this what Fordham remembers — and that’s what he’ll tell the ethics committee. (Palmer has vaguely rebuffed Fordham’s account of Palmer’s 2002 or 2003 intervention with Foley, and one imagines that he will dispute this part of it too.)

Second, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) says that he talked to Hastert about Foley earlier this spring. “I took it to my supervisor,” Reynolds says.

Third is House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) who also remembers talking to Hastert about the matter in the spring.

Although Hastert hasn’t publicly said that he thinks Boehner and Reynolds are lying, he’s apparently saying that privately. The AP reported yesterday that Hastert has been telling friends in no uncertain terms that Boehner and Reynolds were full of it:

Longtime conservative leader Paul Weyrich said Tuesday that Mr. Hastert of Illinois had assured him that Mr. Boehner was wrong when he said that he had told Mr. Hastert months ago about the page problem with Mr. Foley.

“As to Congressman Thomas M. Reynolds, the speaker said, ‘If he had mentioned this problem to me, I surely would have taken notice,’ ” Mr. Weyrich said in an e-mailed account of a phone conversation with Mr. Hastert.

Mr. Weyrich quoted Mr. Hastert as saying that Mr. Reynolds often came to him with numerous requests to help incumbents in trouble.

“The speaker said he signs off on the majority of requests and only listens with one ear because the requests are repetitive,” Mr. Weyrich said.

“Did Reynolds during such a session drop the bombshell about Foley in the speaker’s lap without the speaker’s comprehending what was being told to him? ‘That is possible but unlikely,’ the speaker said. In any case, he has absolutely no recollection,” Mr. Weyrich said.

Will Hastert tell the ethics committee what he’s been telling his friends?

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: