Washington – The congressional investigation of the Mark Foley page scandal reached into the House’s highest office Monday as the chief of staff to Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., spent more than six hours testifying to a House ethics subcommittee.
Scott Palmer, Hastert’s top aide for nearly two decades, is central to the inquiry: A key witness has said he told Palmer a few years ago that Foley was showing inappropriate interest in teenagers working as House pages. Foley, R-Fla., resigned his seat Sept. 29 after ABC News confronted him with sexually graphic messages he had exchanged with former pages.
Palmer, 55, has said the account told by Kirk Fordham, who was Foley’s chief of staff, “did not happen.”
Monday night, as Palmer and his attorney, Scott Fredericksen, left the office of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, Fredericksen said his client’s testimony was “consistent with the position he’s taken all along.”
The day after Foley’s resignation, Hastert’s office issued a statement indicating that some aides there knew of warnings about Foley but did not share them with Palmer or the speaker.
The statement said two high-ranking Hastert aides learned last year of ambiguous e-mails that Foley had sent to a teenage boy in Louisiana. The statement said the two aides, who have not testified before the ethics panel, did not tell Hastert or Palmer.
Fordham, who met with the ethics subcommittee Oct. 12, has said he went to Palmer with a different concern involving Foley and pages.
Repeatedly unable to dissuade Foley from showing inordinate attention to pages, Fordham said, he appealed to Palmer to use his influence to change the Florida lawmaker’s behavior. Fordham said Palmer later told him that he had spoken with Foley about the problem and informed Hastert.
