Clearly, the House Republicans have decided that Speaker Denny Hastert is going to resign. Hastert has decided, I suspect, to let the other members use him as their scapegoat - blame Hastert, so then when he resigns, the "problem" will be gone, and the other members can no longer be blamed.
But this is absurd.
- Congressman Reynolds' office had a direct role in covering up this scandal.
- Shimkus was the one who took the predator's word for it, and who didn't tell the Democrat or the other Republican on the Page Board about the scandal.
- Alexander, who claims neither his staff nor the leadership ever told him that a page who was his own constituent was sexually harassed by a member of Congress, thinks the House GOP leadership handled this scandal just swell - he just told CNN that simply telling the predator to stop was sufficient.
- Boehner - who knew about the emails, he knew that the decision was made to let Foley stay in their leadership, let him stay as chair of the missing and exploited children caucus. Boehner did nothing.
- And finally, every single GOP member of Congress needs to answer the question as to whether they were the only people on the Hill who didn't know of Foley's youthful indiscretions. It seems it wasn't that a big secret - the pages were warned about Foley in 2001. So who amongst the Republicans knew about Foley and did nothing to stop him.
The mainstream media has now picked up on the fact that Congressman Tom Reynolds (R-NY) is linked to alleged child sex predator Mark Foley through his chief of staff Kirk Fordham. Fordham was Foley's chief of staff and campaign manager. However, they've still missed a key point (read below).
Here's today's LA Times:
Another former staffer said it was an oft-repeated story around Capitol Hill that Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, would sometimes accompany the congressman to keep him out of trouble.If this allegation is true, then Reynolds' chief of staff knew that Foley had issues. But we're to believe that the chief of staff didn't mention this to his boss, Reynolds, when the Foley emails came to light months ago?
Fordham represents a link between Foley and House GOP leaders. Shortly after leaving Foley's office last year, he became chief of staff to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Reynolds has said he was told this spring about the e-mails that sparked the initial complaint about Foley.
Fordham has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Times.
What's more, the LA Times didn't realize, and no one in the MSM has picked up on yet, that Reynolds sent his chief of staff to "advise" Foley last week before the predator resigned. What's worse, Reynolds' chief of staff tried to broker a deal with ABC News last Friday in order to get ABC to cover-up the worst of the evidence against Foley.
Last night, Reynolds put together a press conference about the Foley/GOP child predator scandal in which he creepily surrounded himself with 30 children. He then, incredibly, said the following:
"I don't think I went wrong at all," said Reynolds. "I don't know what else I could have done. What's a good citizen to do?"You sent your chief of staff for two days last week to help advise a child sex predator. Your chief of staff then tried to get ABC to cover-up the most damning information in this entire case. What more could you have done? You must be joking. This gentleman is still your chief of staff, so you obviously have no problem with what he did in this case, and likely you gave him permission, or sent him, to help Foley - after all, it's not like you didn't notice that your chief of staff disappeared for two works days and then was talking to the media as Foley's representative. Yeah, no conflict there.
Why won't Tom Reynolds explain why he sent his chief of staff to help a sex predator cover-up the evidence? No one has reported on this story yet - come on media, it's a freebie.
