Hastert, Top Aides Knew of Foley Allegations

Hastert, Top Aides Knew of Foley Allegations: "Saturday, Sept. 30; 8:58 pm

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and at least three of his aides were told of allegations that then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) had improper e-mail contacts with a former House page months before the incident became public and Foley resigned from Congress, according to a senior House Republican and a report released by Hastert’s office on Saturday.

This contradicts earlier claims from Hastert’s office that the Speaker did not know of Foley’s behavior until it was revealed this week by ABC News.

Hastert and other GOP leaders also continue to insist that they were unaware of much more sexually graphic electronic messages from Foley to unidentified young men. The release of these explicit messages, which occurred after the first ABC story broke, spurred Foley to immediately resign from the House.

Democrats have pushed for an ethics committee investigation, and some Congressional insiders suggest a criminal probe of Foley will begin soon, if it has not already.

As of Saturday evening, nearly a dozen House GOP lawmakers and staffers have acknowledged that they knew of the initial batch of non-sexually explicit messages from Foley to a 16-year-old former House page, some of them for a year or more. These include Hastert; Majority Leader John Boehner (Ohio); National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.); Reps. Rodney Alexander (La.) and John Shimkus (Ill.); Mike Stokke, the Speaker’s deputy chief of staff; Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s counsel; Paula Nowakowski, Boehner’s chief of staff; Jeff Trandahl, the former Clerk of the House; and another Hastert aide and Alexander’s chief of staff, according to public statements and GOP insiders.

Most troubling for Hastert was a statement released by Reynolds on Saturday afternoon in which the NRCC chairman said he had informed Hastert personally of the Foley situation after he was told of it by Alexander. Alexander, who represents the teen’s district, was acting at the behest of the boy’s parents, who wanted Foley to stop contacting their son."