Washington – The FBI is examining former Rep. Mark Foley’s e-mail exchanges with teenagers to determine if they violated federal law, an agency spokesman said Sunday.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the bureau is “conducting an assessment to see if there’s been a violation of federal law.” He had no further comment.
House Speaker Dennis Has tert requested Sunday that the Justice Department conduct an investigation into Foley’s messages to teenage boys – a lurid scandal that has put House Republicans in political peril.
“As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated federal law,” Hastert, R-Ill., wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress also called Sunday for a criminal probe. White House counselor Dan Bartlett called the allegations against Foley shocking but said President Bush hadn’t learned of Foley’s e-mails to a 16-year-old boy and sexually suggestive instant messages to other boys before the news broke last week.
Foley, R-Fla., quit Congress on Friday after the disclosure.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the Foley case “repugnant, but equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives knew there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a congressional seat this election year.”
In his letter to Gonzales on Sunday, Hastert asked the Justice Department to investigate “who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement.”
Hastert also sent a letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Sunday requesting that he “direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages.”
Hastert maintained at first that he had learned only last week about the e-mails. But Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said Saturday he had told Hastert months ago about concerns that Foley sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.
Reynolds, R-N.Y., is under attack from Democrats who say he did too little to protect the boy.
Hastert acknowledged over the weekend that his aides had referred the matter to the House clerk and to the congressman who was chairman of the board overseeing the page program. Hastert’s office said it had not known the e-mails were anything more than “over-friendly.”
Majority Republicans engineered a House vote Friday that refers the Foley matter to the House ethics committee but lets that panel decide whether there should be an investigation.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, pressed the committee on Sunday to begin investigating.
