For all of House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s problems in the Mark Foley sex scandal, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, is having some trouble too.
For one thing, Reynolds learned about Foley’s emails (though there was no real reason for him to know about it) and didn’t do much. He says he brought the matter to Hastert’s attention, and according to the Speaker, mentioned it along with “other things that might have affected campaigns.”
Perhaps more importantly, Glenn Greenwald has taken the lead in highlighting the fact that Reynolds dispatched his current chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, to go help Foley after the controversy broke. Indeed, Fordham personally contacted ABC News’ Brian Ross to try and cut a deal: Ross keeps the sexually-explicit IM content private, and Ross gets an “exclusive” on Foley’s resignation.
Ross rejected the deal, of course, but that’s almost secondary to the broader point: Reynolds’ top aide tried to suppress the IMs.
It means that the Chief of Staff for the current NRCC Chair, a key GOP House leadership position, tried on behalf of Foley — after he knew of the IMs — to block the public from learning about the IMs by offering ABC an exclusive interview with Foley in exchange for ABC’s agreement to conceal those messages.
That means that the top aide to one of the Republican House leaders, as recently as last Friday, tried to suppress the most incriminating and important facts regarding this scandal. Isn’t that the very definition of “cover-up”?
Yesterday, Reynolds held a press conference in his home district. It didn’t go well.
There were quite a few interesting tidbits, but this was my personal favorite, by way of Buffalo Geek:
Yes, Rep. Reynolds wants to host a press conference to deal with a sex scandal, but he won’t answer questions unless he’s surrounded by children he hardly knows. Classy.
Not incidentally, Reynolds went on throw Hastert under the bus, effectively following Majority Leader John Boehner’s lead in laying the scandal at the Speaker’s doorstep.
It actually makes sense Reynolds would want to divert attention from himself. Glenn explains why:
…Reynolds was almost certainly (and, I believe, reportedly) meeting over the weekend with Hastert, Boehner, Shimkus and others as they all plotted how to respond to the scandal. It seems highly likely, to put it mildly, that (a) Reynolds’ own chief of staff was reporting to Reynolds about the work he was doing on behalf of Foley, and (b) Reynolds was informing Hastert, Boehner and company about the work his Chief of Staff was doing to help manage and contain this story. Did they know that Reynolds dispatched his Chief of Staff to help Foley, and did they know what that Chief of Staff was attempting to convince ABC to do?
I can understand, on a personal level, why Mark Foley would not want those IMs released. But the only possible reason why Reynolds and company would work to have them concealed is to avoid the political damage that would result from Americans learning about the true nature of the predatory conduct they helped conceal and enable.
Stay tuned.