Posted on 09/30/2006 3:06:00 PM PDT by wjersey
Rep. Thomas Reynolds, head of the House Republican election effort, said he told Speaker Dennis Hastert after learning a fellow GOP lawmaker sent inappropriate messages to a teenage boy.
Reynolds, R-N.Y., was told months ago about e-mails sent by Rep. Mark Foley and is now defending himself from Democratic accusations that he did too little. Foley, R-Fla., resigned Friday after ABC News questioned him about the e-mails to a former congressional page and about sexually suggestive instant messages to other pages. The boy who received the e-mails was 16 in summer 2005 when he worked in Congress as a page. After the boy returned to his Louisiana home, the congressman e-mailed him, and the teenager thought the messages were inappropriate, particularly one in which Foley asked the teen to send a picture of himself.
The teen's family contacted their congressman, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who then discussed it with Reynolds sometime this spring.
"Rodney Alexander brought to my attention the existence of e-mails between Mark Foley and a former page of Mr. Alexander's," Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a written statement Saturday.
"Despite the fact that I had not seen the e-mails in question, and Mr. Alexander told me that the parents didn't want the matter pursued, I told the speaker of the conversation Mr. Alexander had with me," Reynolds said.
Reynolds added that Alexander also discussed it with the clerk of the House, and the congressman who oversees the page program, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill.
Shimkus has said he learned about the e-mail exchange in late 2005 and took immediate action to investigate.
Shimkus said Foley told him it was an innocent exchange. Shimkus said he warned Foley not to have any more contact with the teenager and to respect other pages.
Democrats charged Reynolds did far too little and said more digging should be done.
"Congressman Reynolds' inaction in the face of such a serious situation is very troubling, and raises important questions about whether there was an attempt to cover up criminal activity involving a minor to keep it from coming to light before election day," said Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney.
New York Democrats hoping to unseat Reynolds blasted the congressman, saying they call into question the Republican's values.
"Mr. Reynolds knew about these allegedly inappropriate emails from a fellow congressman to a minor for months and didn't lift a finger," said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the state Democrats.
FACT: There was no sex between Foley and the young man. There was no grooming or anything like that. Foley may be gay... I don't know that, but nothing he did to this young man was sexual in nature. There were only emails and nothing else
Nothing else? I trust you have since been made aware of the IM messages.
There was grooming. There was a conversation that was sexual in nature.
And please, none of the "maybe he isn't Maf54" nonsense. AOL logs the ISP for Instant Messages. He wrote them, as sure as he wrote the emails.
Once again, lying LIBS like wjersey try to carry the water for the Dems via their MSM fellow LIARS.
There were emails.
There were text messages.
The latter messages were not known by GOP leaders.
Also, the MSM sat on this story for months as well. They had these text messages and never revealed them to Hastert and others.
Expect this aspect of the story to backfire on the MSM and Dems who always go too far.
Then it's just a matter of simple division.
The initial email doesn't mean all that much in and of itself. Seen in the light of the earlier Instant Messages sent to a DIFFERENT kid, the email takes on a whole new charcter ~ it becomes clear that it is an initial step in an homosexual/pedophile "grooming" operation (as it's been called by others).
If that was the extent of Shimkus' investigation, he should at least be removed from heading the House page program. I have seen nothing to suggest he interviewed other current/former pages to see if the creepy emails were an isolated incident or not.
Tom reynolds is gay?
You must a lot of fun at parties. Go away.
I'm going to repeat my original assertion, that I will not believe one damned word of what the MSM has to say about this. So far, I have not seen anything that makes me believe Hastert was aware of this unacceptable behavior by Foley. All we have right now are a bunch of breathless media reports and a whole bunch of spin out of the DemocRats.
I'll wait to hear what Rush has to say on this tomorrow, when he balances out the MSM fervor from over the weekend.
The most often repeated, and most often ignored lesson in politics is: THE COVERUP GET YOU IN MORE TROUBLE THAN THE ORIGINAL OFFENSE.
I seem to remember a few years back about a MA Rep who drugged an underage Page and then had sex with him. It was not sweet Barneykins. I think the fellow was reelected to boot. I cannot remember his name. At the time there was a big flap about the incident for a few days.
I understand that AZ has a homosexual in the House, but he is above board about it.
Yep, the dimwits say MORE DIGGING SHOULD BE DONE!!!!!! YIPPEE!! ANOTHER INVESTIGATION with dimwits heading the charge. More money in the investigators pockets and more of our tax money thrown down the democRAT HOLE.
There was grooming. There was a conversation that was sexual in nature.
And please, none of the "maybe he isn't Maf54" nonsense. AOL logs the ISP for Instant Messages. He wrote them, as sure as he wrote the emails.
If the IM's are authentic, they have nothing to do with the boy in question. I just won't take the word of an ABC hack -Brian Ross- who broke the story and is known for his political bias against Republicans, and who is closely working with CREW, an organization funded by George Soros to bring down Republicans. So I want real evidence, not just hearsay.
And since I'm not a lawyer, let me call Clarice Feldman - a well known attorney in Washington, DC, and a frequent contributor to the American Thinker, and let's find out what he has to say about those IM's, OK?
Mr. Feldman, Highball from FR has said the following regarding the IM's: And please, none of the "maybe he isn't Maf54" nonsense. AOL logs the ISP for Instant Messages. He wrote them, as sure as he wrote the emails. Do we know for sure those IM's belong to Foley?
Clarice Feldman: ABC has not disclosed the names of the recipients of the instant messages which were sexually explicit, years old, and not seen by anyone else. We do not know how anyone but the recipients could have retrieved them. We do not even know if they are authentic. None of the recipients has come forward and identified himself.I see. And, could you tell us if the Republican leadership in Congress acted appropriately upon hearing the news in regards to these emails?
Clarice Feldman: The Republican leadership acted appropriately on the initial innocuous correspondence and could not proceed further in view of the parents’ demand that their son’s privacy be respected only to find months later just before the election that same correspondence showing up on an unlikely blog site and then almost simultaneously on ABC and on C.R.E.W.’s site.
You mentioned an “unlikely blog site and then almost simultaneously on ABC and on C.R.E.W.’s site,” what do you mean by that, could you please elaborate?
Clarice Feldman: It is not only the recent, unread blog spot breaking the story which raises my suspicions. The rest of the genesis of the story is as murky.And could you tell us who is C.R.E.W?Brian Ross of ABC ran the story, beginning with the same “overly friendly” but not sexually suggestive email exchange and adding a series of instant messages dating to 2003 previously unseen by anyone in Congress between Foley and anonymous recipients said to be former pages. The Republican leaders, seeing the more damning correspondence, sought and got Foley’s resignation.
As soon as the ABC story ran, and organization called C.R.E.W., which said it had the original exchange which Hastert had heard of and the St Petersburg paper had seen, put them on their website .They said they’d earlier conveyed them to the FBI, were releasing them because of the ABC story, and asked for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Republican leadership. It is abundantly clear to me that C.R.E.W. and ABC communicated and may have coordinated the release of this story.
Clarice Feldman: C.R.E.W. is one of four “public interest” organizations which the RNC has long identified as major donors of George Soros richly-funded Open Society Institute. It is backing the risible Wilson/Plame civil suit against Cheney and others.Mr. Feldman, was Speaker Hastert aware of the sexually explicit IM's?
Clarice Feldman: 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.
Was there anything sexual in the emails... and why didn't the media bring this to life in 2005 when they found out?
Clarice Feldman: Let’s track back what else we know of this story. Sometime last year a former page contacted the St. Petersburg Times with an exchange of emails between himself and Congressman Foley. In the words of the editor, they never ran the story. (The following has been released by the office of the Speaker of the House, but does not yet appear online at the time of this writing.)“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 theteen 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.”
So, the paper had nothing it could act on. But Foley’s opponent somehow got wind of the story which had appeared before only on a very new, utterly obscure blogsite and demanded an investigation. ABC then picked up the story and when it did , further anonymous sources with far more salacious and troublesome evidence appeared on the scene.
Looks like a conspiracy to me, and I'm not excusing Foley if he indeed has behaved inappropriately.
Clarice Feldman: But Democrats are attempting to make hay by alleging that the Republican leadership may have known about the inappropriate emails and covered them up for months. Their hope, no doubt, is to discourage turnout by disillusioned evangelical and other voters sensitive to moral issues. But the emerging background detail suggests that this is simply not the case, and that an attack strategy has been devised by parties anxious to damage the GOP and swing the coming election.So typical of them, yet, I don't hear the media or the Democrats for that matter saying anything about Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations.
Clarice Feldman: The seamiest of the released emails, which Foley has not denied, are right up there with Rhodes Scholar and Illinois Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations lusting for 15 year old Catholic school girls in their uniforms.
Taped phone conversations lusting for 15 years old girls - the hypocrisy is indeed amazing.
Mr. Feldman, thanks so much for setting the record straight for us.
P.S. I'll be back later today, but here is the link to Feldman's article.
You seem very confident about that. You are not working for Soros, are you?
"The question is how many gay Congresscritters can you identify. We know who the pedophiles are.
Then it's just a matter of simple division."
You are full of hate in the form of shit and that runs from your mouth! You KNOW nothing except hate.
You make good points.
I'd like to add that the phrase "overly friendly" just grates and I have not yet thought of a reaonable interpretation.
Isn't often I'm able to surface a DU troll so quickly.
BTW, your little frieds at DU and Bartcop are handling this scandal in a remarkably "low key" manner ~ must be something they fear ~ like some of their little friends getting outed or something.
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