Foley setup?

Macsmind ^

[Republican Red]

Foley setup?

As I’m a constituent of Rep. Mark Foley, I’ve been keeping up on this story about his alledged computer sex with a sixteen year old male page. In light of the fact that he resigned it’s obvious that the incidents took place. But there are many, many questions about this that need to be looked at.

First, I don’t condone these kinds of actions in anyway. I’m former law enforcement and even worked to help capture child predators on the internet before people even knew what that was, so I’m not defending Foley. However watching the news coverage today I have to wonder about a few things, and got to checking around.

Although not confirmed, it’s being thrown around that ABC’s primary source for the computer chats and emails is the liberal watch dog group CREW.

Significant, because while there is a story about how the GOP leadership knew of Foley’s actions for at least a year, after which he was ordered to stop contact with the teen, there reports that CREW also knew of the allegations months ago. In fact according to reports, CREW had contacted the FBI, and were waiting to go public when ABC posted the story. So the obvious question is “Why wait”? I think it’s obvious they were waiting to have the greatest effect.

It is interesting that CREW now is calling for an independent counsel to look into - not Foley - but the GOP leadership. This less than fourty-eight hours after his resignation. Pretty darn quick I would say, since the facts are still coming out. It’s almost like they had it all ….like, planned.

It’s also interesting to note that for the chat transcripts to be available for us to read they had to have been purposely logged, or in the case of text messages, saved. Again, ordinarily this is done in criminal investigations to obtain and preserve evidence. However, it’s not something one would necessarily do otherwise. Just from my observation reading one of the chats from one of the pages indicates responses that “knowleable, graphic and leading. In other words, not the “normal responses of someone who is being approached”. This is the kind of tactic we used in law enforcement when you are trying to corale these kinds of people.

So the point-blank question I have is was at some point the teen in the more graphic posted chats “coached” by someone? If so, by whom?

Again, while I do not condone his behavior - as there is no defense for it, something just doesn’t seem right about all this. Make no mistake, entrapped or not Foley should be prosecuted for his actions espeically in light of his end of the conversation, and in light of his position. Yet it does seem that there is much, much more here than meets the eye to this story and much more to come to light.

UPDATE: A DOJ friend of mine throws this wrench into the mix. He notes that in DC the age of consent is 16, which at least the cases such in the transcript where it looked consensual, legally there wouldn’t be anything to charge him with.

He’s right.

UPDATE: In light of hysterical conservatives calling for Denny’s head, Say Anything gives them a chill pill for now.

UPDATE II: I’m not alone in my suspicions. Rick Moran writes:

“My good friend and fellow American Thinker contributor Clarice Feldman left a comment that deserves to be elevated for greater readability. It is, something of an eye popper:

Reportedly the St Pete Times had the same information in August 2005 and wrote nothing about it either, apparently because the emails do not constitute illegal conduct, they are just creepy, and the boy’s parents did not wish to pursue this.

The far more damaging IM messages were released by CREW , the same “public interest” group which is representing the Wilson/Plames in their laughable suit against Cheney, et al.

When did they get the IM’s? Why did they wait until now to release them? Is there any indication the Republicans who looked into THIS MATTER had any knowledge of their(the IM’s) existence.

Pardon an old lady’s suspicions. I’ve seen this dance too many times before.

I read this morning that a Monroe, LA newspaper also had the story and didn’t run with it because there appeared to be no impropriety.

And one more point that our dimwitted lefty friends can’t seem to wrap their miniscule brains around; the incident that was brought to the attention of the Page Board is unconnected to any of the raunchy, sick emails ABC news got from, as Clarice informs us, CREW.”

Seems CREW has some explaining to do.

UPDATE III: CREW is a George Soros funded organization, but there is more:

“From 1995 to 1998, CREW’s Melanie Sloan served as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee under Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Before that, Sloan served as the nominations counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.).

According to GOP research, Mark Penn, who had been a pollster for President Clinton, and Daniel Berger, a major Democratic donor, are on CREW’s board. Spokeswoman Naomi Seligman declined several requests to reveal the membership of CREW’s board, although she confirmed that Penn and Berger are members. Last year, Berger made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group that was dedicated to defeating Bush in the presidential election, according to politicalmoneyline.com, a website that tracks fundraising.”

So we have a person who served under Clinton, and Rep. “Inpeachment” Conyers, who just “happened” to obtain emails and chats and “holding them” to just six weeks out of a midterm election where IF Democrats gain control of Congress, said Rep. Conyers has promised to impeach President Bush. More here.

Right. CREW was also instrumental behind the “get Delay” effort. More on CREW here. By Sloan’s admission, when she came on board at CREW her “mission” (before anything was known) was to “get Tom Delay”.

However, if CREW did indeed withhold evidence against Rep. Foley, for any length of time, they may have stepped over the line. In any case, I think they are going to have some explaining to do.

[Republican Red]

The net widens and it's not just Republican's who somehow knew about the emails.

[wideawake]

Correct. In other words, people knew there was a predator out there, but they failed to report him immediately - preferring to wait until a time that created a political opportunity.

They did not care if another teen was victimized while they waited for their moment - they were motivated by politics, not public safety.

[Republican Red]

Here is a release from the editor of the St Pete paper:

An editor’s note from the St. Petersburg Times, the first news outlet to evidently receive the email exchange between Mr. Foley and a former page from Louisiana. It is followed by press statements from the Office of the Speaker.

A Note From the Editors

There still seems to be some confusion about the order of events related to our coverage of Rep. Mark Foley and his email exchanges with teenagers he met through the congressional page program. Let me try to clear this up.

In November of last year, we were given copies of an email exchange Foley had with a former page from Louisiana. Other news organizations later got them,too. The conversation in those emails was friendly chit-chat. Foley asked the boy about how he had come through Hurricane Katrina and about the boy's upcoming birthday. In one of those emails, Foley casually asked the teen to send him a “pic” of himself. Also among those emails was the page’s exchange with a congressional staffer in the office of Rep. Alexander, who had been the teen’s sponsor in the page program. The teen shared his exchange he’d had with Foley and asked the staffer if she thought Foley was out of bounds.

There was nothing overtly sexual in the emails, but we assigned two reporters to find out more. We found the Louisiana page and talked with him. He told us Foley’s request for a photo made him uncomfortable so he never responded, but both he and his parents made clear we could not use his name if we wrote a story. We also found another page who was willing to go on the record, but his experience with Foley was different. He said Foley did send a few emails but never said anything in them that he found inappropriate. We tried to find other pages but had no luck. We spoke with Rep. Alexander, who said the boy’s family didn’t want it pursued, and Foley, who insisted he was merely trying to be friendly and never wanted to make the page uncomfortable.

So, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn’t go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today’s paper, our policy is that we don’t make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn’t meet our standard for publication. Evidently, other news organizations felt the same way.

Since that time, we revisited the question more than once, but never learned anything that changed our position. The Louisiana boy’s emails broke into the open last weekend, when a blogger got copies and posted them online. Later that week, on Thursday, a news blog at the website of ABC News followed suit, with the addition of one new fact: Foley’s Democratic opponent, Tim Mahoney, was on the record about the Louisiana boy’s emails and was calling for an investigation. That’s when we wrote our first story, for Friday’s papers. After ABC News broke the story on its website, someone contacted ABC and provided a detailed email exchange between Foley and at least one other page that was far different from what we had seen before. This was overtly sexual, not something Foley could dismiss as misinterpreted friendliness. That’s what drove Foley to resign on Friday.

I hope this helps clarify a bit about what we knew and when we knew it.

Scott Montgomery

Government & Politics Editor

[JimSEA]

Three separate groups seem to have varying degrees of guilt here.

Foley and his staff for covering up this pederasty and criminal harassment.The Republican leadership for what can only be a cover up of embarrassing and criminal behavior by one of their own.The Democratic leadership for withholding this information until just prior to the election in hopes of benefiting by ousting the Representative and, they hope, the Speaker. By doing this they gave Foley at least an extra year to prey on young pages. Cover up up criminal behavior for partisan political advantage.

Pretty disgusting all around.

[OldFriend]

Seemingly, not everyone knew that Foley was a predator, but those that did chose to remain silent until such time as it could be most politically damaging.

This does not negate the ugliness of Foley's behaviour.

It does put the revelations into a new light.

[muawiyah]

The Republicans didn't know about the material C.R.E.W. sat on for three years while this old pervert abused young children.

One might also question why the FBI sat on this same information ~ does George Soros' chain of command reach into the Justice Department?

[roses of sharon]

Wow, I wish we could fight like the DNC and their MSM do, talk about brilliant!

Of course we would need, ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCNPRBBCNYTWPHOLLYWOODLATAARPNAACPNOWNEAAFLCIONABLAGLADPBSNEWSWEEKTIMEUSNEWSNATIONROLLINGSTONEPEOPLEMTVGEVIACOMUNITEDNATIONSHUMANRIGHTSWATCREDCROSSABACAIRACLU............

[Republican Red]

I'm sending Mac's findings to every blog I can find. We might not have the MSM but we do have the new media.

[raccoonradio]

I hope other criminal offenders in Congress should do the honorable thing and, like Cong. Foley, resign.
Senator Kennedy, it's your move.

""Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law?
Or is there one system for the average citizen
and another for the high and mighty?"
- Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973 -

[butternut_squash_bisque]

"...I think they are going to have some explaining to do."

Good fricking luck getting that to happen.

Don't you know that elite lib-dem trash are above the law, and not subject to the morals and mores of the rest of us?

[tcrlaf]

"Don't you know that elite lib-dem trash are above the law, and not subject to the morals and mores of the rest of us?"

Sadly, this keeps being PROVEN to us every week...

Is there doubt in ANYONE'S mind that if Foley had switched Party's 2 weeks ago, that every Democrat and gay liberal ON THE PLANET would be rushing to his DEFENSE???

[Republican Red]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: 202-225-2800

September 30, 2006 Ron Bonjean or Lisa C. Miller

INTERNAL REVIEW OF CONTACTS WITH THE OFFICE OF THE SPEAKER REGARDING THE CONGRESSMAN MARK FOLEY MATTER

On Friday, September 29, the Speaker directed his Chief of Staff and Outside Counsel to conduct an internal review to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding contact with the Office of the Speaker regarding the Congressman Mark Foley matter. The following is their preliminary report.

Email Exchange Between Congressman Foley and a Constituent of Congressman Alexander

In the fall of 2005 Tim Kennedy, a staff assistant in the Speaker’s Office, received a telephone call from Congressman Rodney Alexander’s Chief of Staff who indicated that he had an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House page. He did not reveal the specific text of the email but expressed that he and Congressman Alexander were concerned about it.

Tim Kennedy immediately discussed the matter with his supervisor, Mike Stokke, Speaker Hastert’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Stokke directed Kennedy to ask Ted Van Der Meid, the Speaker’s in house Counsel, who the proper person was for Congressman Alexander to report a problem related to a former page. Ted Van Der Meid told Kennedy it was the Clerk of the House who should be notified as the responsible House Officer for the page program. Later that day Stokke met with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. Once again the specific content of the email was not discussed. Stokke called the Clerk and asked him to come to the Speaker’s Office so that he could put him together with Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff. The Clerk and Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff then went to the Clerk’s Office to discuss the matter.

The Clerk asked to see the text of the email. Congressman Alexander’s office declined citing the fact that the family wished to maintain as much privacy as possible and simply wanted the contact to stop. The Clerk asked if the email exchange was of a sexual nature and was assured it was not. Congressman Alexander’s Chief of Staff characterized the email exchange as over-friendly.

The Clerk then contacted Congressman Shimkus, the Chairman of the Page Board to request an immediate meeting. It appears he also notified Van Der Meid that he had received the complaint and was taking action. This is entirely consistent with what he would normally expect to occur as he was the Speaker’s Office liaison with the Clerk’s Office.

The Clerk and Congressman Shimkus met and then immediately met with Foley to discuss the matter. They asked Foley about the email. Congressman Shimkus and the Clerk made it clear that to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and at the request of the parents, Congressman Foley was to immediately cease any communication with the young man.

The Clerk recalls that later that day he encountered Van Der Meid on the House floor and reported to him that he and Shimkus personally had spoken to Foley and had taken corrective action.

Mindful of the sensitivity to the parent’s wishes to protect their child’s privacy and believing that they had promptly reported what they knew to the proper authorities Kennedy, Van Der Meid and Stokke did not discuss the matter with others in the Speaker’s Office.

Congressman Tom Reynolds in a statement issued today indicates that many months later, in the spring of 2006, he was approached by Congressman Alexander who mentioned the Foley issue from the previous fall. During a meeting with the Speaker he says he noted the issue which had been raised by Alexander and told the Speaker that an investigation was conducted by the Clerk of the House and Shimkus. While the Speaker does not explicitly recall this conversation, he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynold’s recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution.

Sexually Explicit Instant Message Transcript

No one in the Speaker’s Office was made aware of the sexually explicit text messages which press reports suggest had been directed to another individual until they were revealed in the press and on the internet this week. In fact, no one was ever made aware of any sexually explicit email or text messages at any time.

[frankjr]

"I Find This Puzzling" (Foley set up?)

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/10/i_smell_a_rat.html

[ClaireSolt]

This strategy relies on a population of gullible, self-righteous people who have not yet understood that anybody can be targeted by the drive by media, even them.

[jwalsh07]

Yes and yes. Foley is disgusting the Dems are unleashing October surprises at a frantic pace.

[AmeriBrit]

BTTT

[trumandogz]

the primary problem is that GOP Leadership knew about Foley's relationship with this kid months ago and they decided to keep it secret and permit Foley to run in the Primary Election. If they would have told him to resign whey they first found out about his relationship the GOP could have found another candidate to run for the seat. However, now the GOP will lose this seat.

[butternut_squash_bisque]

Got that right, bigtime, t. He'd be a *hero* to them, like Frank and Bubba are.

[jwalsh07]

I would disagree. The primary problem facing the leadership vis a vis Foley was, absent the instant messaging disgrace, the reluctance of the Republican leadership to accuse a homosexual Congressman of inappropriate conduct.

In short, absent compelling evidence of malfeasance, the Republicans were at the mercy of the PC monster.

[trumandogz]

The e-mails are suggestive and the IM's are disgusting. However, all the GOP leadership had to do nine months ago was tell Foley to step down and let someone else retain his GOP Seat in Congress.