Ex-Foley Aide Roils Timeline
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Just as Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) appeared to have weathered the worst of the storm surrounding the House page scandal, a former aide to ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) sparked new controversy by claiming he had warned the Speaker’s longtime top staffer about Foley’s behavior at least a year earlier than anyone in Hastert’s office had previously acknowledged.
Kirk Fordham, a former close aide to Foley who most recently served as chief of staff to National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.), resigned from Reynolds’ office Wednesday amid questions about his role in the page scandal. Within hours, Fordham told The Associated Press he had recalled “more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House [about Foley’s interest in pages and] asking them to intervene” more than three years ago.
A House GOP aide said Fordham was referring to alleged conversations with Scott Palmer, Hastert’s chief of staff and closest adviser since he first entered the House. Palmer denies any such conversations occurred.
“What Kirk Fordham said did not happen,” Palmer said in a statement.
Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean added: “This matter has been referred to the [Committee on Standards of Official Conduct], and we fully expect that the bipartisan panel will do what it needs to do to investigate this matter and protect the integrity of the House.”
Fordham’s statement further muddled the already confusing timeline of the leadership’s knowledge of Foley’s contact with pages.
In repeated public comments, and in a detailed chronology of events released by Hastert’s office over the weekend, GOP leaders claimed that they were first made aware of Foley’s alleged conduct in November 2005, when Rep. Rodney Alexander’s (R-La.) office alerted aides in Hastert’s office that Foley had sent questionable, but not sexually explicit, messages to a former page from Alexander’s district.
Hastert’s office has struggled to contain the Foley fallout and to bat down questions about what Hastert knew and when he knew it, arguing — despite suggestions to the contrary by two fellow GOP leaders — that the Speaker himself was not aware of any problem between Foley and pages until last week.
But Fordham’s allegation brings the circle of those who had been told about Foley’s behavior one step closer to the Speaker’s chair. Palmer has been Hastert’s friend and top aide for more than 20 years and, when Congress is in session, he lives with Hastert and Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Stokke in a town house that Hastert owns in Southwest Washington, D.C.
Earlier Wednesday, before Fordham’s comments to the AP, media reports appeared quoting anonymous GOP sources suggesting that Fordham deserved much of the blame for the failure to fully investigate Foley in 2005. ABC News, for example, cited Republican sources who claimed that Fordham had “begged” the leadership not to tell the full House Page Board about Foley’s e-mails to the Louisiana page.
Fordham issued a statement Wednesday disputing that suggestion and distancing his own actions in the Foley case from Reynolds, who is in the midst of a competitive re-election race in New York.
“I want to clarify a few things: When I sought to help Congressman Foley and his family when his shocking secrets were being revealed, I did so as a friend of my former boss, not as Congressman Reynolds’ chief of staff. I reached out to the Foley family, as any good friend would, because I was worried about their emotional well-being,” Fordham said.
“At the same time, I want it to be perfectly clear that I never attempted to prevent any inquiries or investigation of Foley’s conduct by House officials or any other authorities.”
After the AP story was released, a House GOP leadership aide said of Fordham: “This person is very unhappy. He is someone with an ax to grind.”
Fordham could not be reached for comment by press time.
Even before Fordham’s comments to the AP, some Republican strategists otherwise sympathetic to the Speaker questioned the leadership’s apparent strategy of heaping blame for the Foley mess on Fordham.
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