I’ve barely mentioned Mark Foley lately — there just hasn’t been much to report — but today’s as good a time as any for an update.
First, (subscription-only) Roll Call notes today that the House Ethics Committee, which has already heard testimony from a number of key sources, is going to have a chat today with a source who can answer a lot of questions.
In what could prove to be the turning point in the investigation of former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) interaction with House pages — and what Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his staff did or did not know about it — the House ethics committee will take testimony today on the Foley case from former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl. [..]
Trandahl could provide key testimony as to when senior aides to Hastert were first informed of Foley’s alleged inappropriate behavior with male pages. Trandahl also could confirm or dispute the veracity of the timeline of events released by the Speaker’s office on Sept. 30.
From all indications, Hastert and his allies won’t care for what Trandahl has to say.
Former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl repeatedly raised red flags about former Rep. Mark Foley years before GOP leaders said they knew about Foley’s inappropriate conduct with pages, sources said. […]
Two sources close to Trandahl told CNN that he had been monitoring Foley’s interaction with pages after being told of troubling behavior by the congressman in the House cloakroom and elsewhere. Trandahl took his concerns to Kirk Fordham, Foley’s former chief of staff, many times, the sources said.
In other words — surprise, surprise — Hastert’s version of events may prove to be incorrect.
As if that weren’t enough, more shoes may be falling on Hastert fairly soon.
As Mark Kleiman noted, both Tucker Carlson and Dana Milbank have both reported rumors that a third page scandal is poised to break, this one involving a male member of the House and a 16-year-old girl. As Kleiman put it:
That would not merely seriously reignite the Foley Follies; it would also stifle the wingnut attempt to turn this into a gay scandal rather than a scandal about grown men abusing their office to make sexual advances to high-school students, and the party and institution they belong to scurrying to protect the grown-ups rather than the teenagers. If the story breaks this week or next, we could see a true landslide in November.
I’m very much inclined to agree. And who’s the third? I don’t know, but one blogger seems to have a hint:
Sometime, probably in the next 48 hours though I’m bettting sooner than later, an Illinois Congressional race is going topsy turvy. It’s another pick-up for Dems. If you are observant around the net you’ll find the information. Mobilization is already occurring around the state to get ground troops.
As for Foley himself, a Catholic priest told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Wednesday about an intimate two-year relationship he had with Foley when the congressman was a teenage altar boy living in Lake Worth. The priest, Anthony Mercieca, “described a series of encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate. Among them: massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being naked in the same room on overnight trips.”
“Might perceive as sexually inappropriate”?
