This is important because it suggests that Kolbe, and the page, may be more involved in this entire affair than had been previously thought.
1. The Washington Post reports yesterday that Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) invited four former Pages to stay at his apartment in Washington, DC while he was out of town. On its face, not necessarily a problem, but still a bit odd.
2.The Post reports that the source for this factoid about the Pages being invited to Kolbe's place is former Page Jordan Edmund.
Kolbe once invited four former pages to make use of his Washington home while he was out of town, according to an instant message between Foley and another former page, Jordan Edmund, in January 2002. The pages planned to attend a first-year reunion of their page class. But because of a snowstorm, they did not take Kolbe up on his offer, according to one of the four pages.3. Note that Edmund revealed this fact in an instant message chat with now-ex Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL). And that Edmund is the same Page who reportedly had the salacious instant message chat with Foley that ABC published and that prompted Foley to resign. So Edmund, presumably, knew both Foley and Kolbe pretty well, or well enough to have sex chats with Foley and be trusted with the home of Kolbe.
4. Also note that I just confirmed with the Washington Post that Edmund was in fact one of the four pages invited to stay at Kolbe's home while Kolbe was out of town (that fact was unclear in the Post article).
Okay, so here are the questions and observations:
1. There has been talk over the past few days that Edmund, a conservative Republican, was simply "joking around" with Foley in those instant message chats. I have no way of proving or disproving that allegation, but it's interesting that Edmund was apparently on good enough terms with the only other openly gay Republican member of Congress to be invited to stay at his home while the congressman was out of town. That ties Edmund to two openly gay congressman. Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just interesting.
2. It's interesting on its face that Kolbe was close to the same Page with whom Foley had the salacious chats.
3. It's also interesting that the Page was willing to tell Foley about private discussions he and his friends were having with Kolbe. That begs the question whether the Page was equally open about telling Kolbe about the private discussions he and his friends were having with Foley, i.e., the lurid ones.
4. Why did Kolbe and Foley know the same Page, apparently quite well?
5. This suggests that, at least in one case, Kolbe and Foley may have gotten to the know the Pages at the same time, or at least shared their friendship with the Page in some way - meaning, did they all hang out together, did one congressman introduce the Page to the other? It begs the question of how involved Kolbe was with this entire affair, and at the very least whether Kolbe knew more about Foley's indiscretions with the Pages, either from talking to the Pages or to Foley.
There are a lot more questions. But in a nutshell, it's strikes me as more than a little odd that the same Page's name has now come up with regards to two different congressmen.
