Ken Mehlman, defending the GOP handling of the Foley scandal, today on CNN:
The fact is the speaker and our leadership could not have been more aggressive. The moment they found out about this, they gave Mark Foley the political death penalty.
They said, get out of Congress or we’re going to throw you out. They called in the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate.
He just makes this stuff up, doesn’t he? Sits in on a conference call sometime Saturday evening with other clever guys and gals and just starts pulling responses to the expected Sunday morning questions out of the air.
Recall that Speaker Hastert has already admitted that Foley was gone so fast they didn’t have time to tell him to resign. They never told Foley, Quit or we’re going to kick you out. Simply never happened. It was Nancy Pelosi who first moved to refer the matter to the Ethics Committee, not any GOP leader. So I don’t know what exactly Mehlman considers to have been “aggressive” action by the House leadership because in fact they took no unprompted action.
Recall, too, that Hastert’s letter to the Attorney General requesting an investigation came after Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had already publicly called for an federal investigation earlier that same day.
Like I said, Mehlman just makes this stuff up.
