Washington – A senior congressional aide said today he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office about worrisome conduct between former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages more than three years ago, long before officials have acknowledged becoming aware of the issue.
Kirk Fordham made his comments to The Associated Press in an interview as a Kentucky Republican canceled a campaign fundraising event with Hastert. Rep. Ron Lewis said he wants to know the facts behind a scandal that has roiled Republicans since last week.
“I’m taking the speaker’s words at face value,” Lewis said in an interview. “I have no reason to doubt him. But until this is cleared up, I want to know the facts.
“If anyone in our leadership has done anything wrong, then I will be the first in line to condemn it.” Taken together, the comments by Fordham and the actions by Lewis added to the political uncertainty surrounding Hastert and fellow Republicans five weeks before midterm elections in which their control of the House will be tested.
Hastert’s office did not immediately respond to either development.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department ordered House officials to “preserve all records” related to Foley’s electronic correspondence with teenagers.
The development came as a congressional aide who counseled Foley to resign last week submitted his own resignation. “I never attempted to prevent any inquiries or investigation,” Kirk Fordham said in a statement.
Fordham was once Foley’s chief of staff. At the time of his resignation he had been serving in the same capacity for Rep. Tom Reynolds, a member of the GOP leadership who has struggled to avoid political damage in the scandal’s fallout.
Republicans have been struggling to put the scandal behind them, but another member of the leadership, Rep Roy Blunt of Missouri, said pointedly during the day he would have handled the entire matter differently than Speaker Dennis Hastert did, had he known about it.
“I think I could have given some good advice here, which is you have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of,” Blunt said. “You absolutely can’t decide not to look into activities because one individual’s parents don’t want you to.” Foley resigned last week after he was reported to have sent salacious electronic messages to teenage male pages. He has checked into an undisclosed facility for treatment of alcoholism, leaving behind a mushrooming political scandal and legal investigation.
Acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Taylor for the District of Columbia sought protection of the records in a three-page letter to House counsel Geraldine Gennet, according to a Justice official speaking on condition of anonymity.
Such letters often are followed by search warrants and subpoenas, and signal that investigators are moving closer to a criminal investigation.
At the same time, FBI agents have begun interviewing participants in the House page program, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The official declined to say whether the interviews were limited to current pages or included former pages.
