House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his leadership team have been working through the weekend to deal with the Foley scandal The result was a brief speech to reporters this afternoon. Hastert, not surprisingly, did not respond to questions from reporters.
Most of the comments were fairly predictable, but we are starting to see an inkling of a defense.
“I repeat again, the Republican Leaders of the House did not have [the instant messages]. We have all said so. On the record. But someone did have them. And the ethics committee, the Justice Department, the news media – or anyone who can — should help us find out who.
“Yesterday I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting he investigate to what extent any federal laws were violated by Congressman Foley, and also to find out who might have known about the sexually explicit instant messages. I was pleased to read in the newspaper this morning that the FBI has begun to investigate.”
There are two parts to this. First, Hastert still wants desperately to create a distinction between the IM content and the email. If GOP leaders didn’t see the instant messages, the theory goes, then they shouldn’t have been expected to do anything.
This is a flawed and unpersuasive argument. On top of the fact that GOP staffers started warning pages about Foley five years ago, the emails alone should have spurred some kind of action. And, as a TPM reader noted, “Once ABC got hold of the e-mails, it took them one day to flush out the IMs. That’s what an actual investigation looks like. The Republican leadership simply didn’t want to know how bad the Foley situation was. That’s just as morally negligent as if they had started digging and found the IMs.”
And then there’s the other part.
Hastert called for an FBI investigation, which some news reports indicated was evidence of the Speaker asking the FBI to look into Congress’ handling of the controversy. This is incorrect. Hastert tipped his hand today by emphasizing that he wants federal law-enforcement officials “to find out who might have known about the sexually explicit instant messages.”
As Atrios put it:
So, Hastert thinks the really important thing to do is investigate those who had copies of the IMs and emails like, say, the guys Foley was sending them to in order to find out why they didn’t turn them over to the FBI.
This is a sick and twisted bunch of people running our government – letting a predatory colleague stick around in order to cover it up and then essentially threatening to go after anyone who comes forward with information.
Your Republican Party, protector of predators.
Hastert’s point is being emphasized by several far-right blogs — indeed, it started making the rounds yesterday — which are suggesting that somehow ABC News, and possibly CREW, are responsible for this scandal and they should be the subject of a criminal investigation.
I’ve been wondering what far-right voices would come up with, but I simply lacked the imagination to come up with this. It’s hard to imagine serious people finding this compelling, but be prepared to hear more of this in the coming days.