The Foley Report Is Out

The NY Times and WaPo cover the newly released report covering the Foley-Congressional page scandal (This page links to the report and the exhibit list).  The Times utterly ignores the report's conclusions about how various Democrats shopped the initial emails to the media for political gain; the WaPo does not.

From the Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — The House ethics committee  said Friday that a nine-week investigation into former Representative Mark Foley’s conduct  had found that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders were negligent in not shielding teenagers from inappropriate advances by Mr. Foley.

But the panel also concluded that neither Mr. Hastert nor other officers of the House had violated any House rules, and recommended no sanctions for their failure to stop Mr. Foley’s conduct.

The bipartisan report, released in the waning hours of the Congressional session, concluded that “political considerations played a role” in some of the decisions made by lawmakers or their aides after learning about Mr. Foley’s contacts with former Congressional pages.

“A pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences” of Mr. Foley’s untoward behavior, the report said. “The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment, it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House.”

...

The committee found that there was “a disconcerting unwillingness to take responsibility for resolving issues regarding Representative Foley’s conduct.” Those in the chain of command, the report said, “did far too little, while attempting to pass the responsibility for acting to others.”

The committee said it could not conclusively say why Republicans failed to address Mr. Foley’s conduct. But the investigation found that Republicans “may have been concerned that raising the issue too aggressively might have risked exposing Representative Foley’s homosexuality, which could have adversely affected him both personally and politically.”

...

In a written statement on Friday, Mr. Hastert noted that the investigation found no evidence that anyone knew about the sexually charged instant messages that led to Mr. Foley’s resignation. “I am glad the committee made clear that there was no violation of any House rules by any member or staff,” he added.

Still, the investigation concluded that the speaker’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, first learned of Mr. Foley’s conduct with pages in 2002 or 2003. And the speaker’s chief counsel, Ted Van Der Meid, had been aware of concerns about Mr. Foley’s behavior for nearly a decade.

The committee’s findings validated the accounts of Kirk Fordham, Mr. Foley’s former chief of staff, and Jeff Trandahl, then the House clerk, both of whom testified that they repeatedly warned the speaker’s office about Mr. Foley, described in the report as a “ticking time bomb.” The concerns heightened in November, 2005, when a former page sent e-mail messages he had received from Mr. Foley to the office of Representative Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican. It was this exchange, in which Mr. Foley asked for the teenager’s photograph, that prompted Republican leaders to confront Mr. Foley.

And the WaPo:

The House ethics committee concluded yesterday that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and his top staff probably knew for months, if not years, of then-Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate contact with former House pages but did nothing to protect the teenagers.

Top GOP House leaders also "failed to exercise appropriate diligence" in the matter, the committee's report found, and tried "to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of Foley's conduct." The ensuing scandal contributed to the Republicans' losses in the midterm elections. The report speculated that some officials were reluctant to act too aggressively for fear of exposing Foley's homosexuality or for political reasons.

And here is a swipe at the Dems that the Times inexplicably overlooked:

Democratic aides are also criticized, for shopping around inappropriate Foley e-mails to media outlets as far back as November 2005, apparently for political gain.

...

Democrats receive their share of scrutiny in the report. In August 2005, a former page of Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) sent Alexander aide Danielle Savoy e-mails he had received from Foley asking him for a picture and asking what he wanted for his birthday. Savoy passed them on to a friend, who showed them to her boyfriend, Justin Field, who worked for the House Democratic Caucus.

Democratic Caucus communications director Matt Miller saw the e-mails as inappropriate, but rather than taking them to authorities, he shopped them to the press, first to the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times that November, then to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. He also gave the e-mails to the communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a point apparently validating Republican charges that senior Democrats were behind the revelation of Foley's conduct.

However, re the shopped e-mails:

Hastert issued a statement late yesterday stressing that the investigation had uncovered no evidence that any House member, officer or employee, or any member of the media, knew of the overtly sexual instant messages that led to Foley's sudden resignation.

Just a reminder - there were the first emails to the Louisiana page that were borderline ("send me a picture", and then a second wave from other pages who cam forward after the story broke that were not ambiguous.

Comments

[BumperStickerist]

Mission Accomplished
-

[Bob]

Yep let's here once again how there's no bias in the MSM... Since Hastert and the Republicans didn't break any ethic rules by their "inaction", then I believe the Democrats "actions" constitute the real scandal here.

But as Bumper says, that wasn't their mission!

[lurker]

Agreed.

[Bob]

here = hear! boy, must have been my late night attending my daughters Christmas Play... I'm no scrooge, but boy these things can really tax your Christian Heart!

[vnjagvet]

I believe the report validates the investigation conducted on this very blog well before the election.

Congratulations to the Tom and the JOM gang.

[topsecretk9]

>...Matt Miller saw the e-mails as inappropriate, but rather than taking them to authorities, he shopped them to the press, first to the Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times that November, then to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. He also gave the e-mails to the communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a point apparently validating Republican charges that senior Democrats were behind the revelation of Foley's conduct.

Democratic Family Values in action.

[topsecretk9]

Just curios, but is this the same Matt Miller

...Menendez has said the deal did not even constitute an ethics violation because he had cleared it with a lawyer on the House Ethics Committee. The lawyer Menendez named, Ellen Weintraub, has said she does not remember the case but probably would have found it ethically sound.

“We’re confident that after any review, the U.S. attorney will come to the same conclusion as the House Ethics Committee, which was that this transaction was completely appropriate and legal,” Matt Miller, a Menendez spokesman, said Friday.

If so, it's pretty rich.

[Neo]

This whole report reminds me of the ending of the movie "Capricorn One" where James "Dr. Motorcycle" Brolin (AKA Mr. Buba Streisand) runs up to a memorial service for him (and two others) due to their untimely "deaths" on a bungled mission to Mars, and apparently exposes the whole coverup.

There is no scenes of the legal and political repercussions, because frankly they are "Page 18 News." The NYT did the best at showing the producers of the movie were right. To steal from the Sam Waterson joke in the movie .. "Mom's on the roof."

[Neo]

A guy returns from a long trip to Europe, having left his beloved cat in his brother's care. The minute he clears customs, he calls his brother and inquires after his pet.

"The cat's dead," his brother replies bluntly.

The guy is devastated. "You don't know how much the cat meant to me," he sobs into the phone. "Couldn't you at least have given a little thought to a nicer way of breaking the news? For instance, couldn't you have said, 'Well, you know, the cat got out of the house one day and climbed up on the roof, and the fire department couldn't get her down, and finally she died of exposure... of starvation... or something? Why are you always so thoughtless?"

"Look, I'm really, really sorr," says his brother. "I'll try to do better next time, I swear."

"Okay, let's just put it behind us. How are you, any way? How's Mom?"

There was a long pause. "Uh," the brother finally stammers, "uh... Mom's on the roof."

[Jane]

I heard yesterday on Fox that the report found Rahm Emmanuel was aware of the emails (and the shopping of same) despite the fact he told the press he knew nothing about it. It was said like it was an afterthought.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. The right really doesn't have the same stomach for scandal that the left has.

[clarice]

Yes. It doesn't. And Emmanuel is known to be the cut out to the Soros groups like CREW and works closely with Hillary!

[Daddy]

Finally, the end of the Foley affair. Sounds like time to turn over a new page in Washington.

[cliffhils]

Does this mean that there will be a new congressional rule that E-mails between House members and interns will be "monitored?"

[Tom Maguire]

Does this mean that there will be a new congressional rule that E-mails between House members and interns will be "monitored?"

Yeah - but only of it is man to boy. Since no man in Washington ever hit on the female interns, that won't be an issue.

[clarice]

The WaPo suggests (correctly IMO) that the Reps were a bit chary of intervening because they were afraid that given that the emails they had were so innocuous they'd be tagged with hoophobia if they made much of it.

No kidding.

Perhaps we should pretend to be journos and write the story as it would appear in the NYT and Wa Po if much more than a warning had been issued on the basis of the picture request.

[clarice]

On second thought, a column on this in the style of the Andy Sullivan would be fun, too.

[SmokeVanThorn]

I call bullshit. Is there any real doubt that Trandahl and Fordham minimized the concerns about Foley because of their sympathies for his orientation? The notion that the two individuals. If the House leadership was "blind" to the problems (and let us note once again the deliberate obfuscation of relatively minor misconduct with the later IMs), it's because Trandahl and Fordham provided the blindfolds.

[clarice]

**hoMophobia**

[SunnyDay]

clarice - write the story.

[SunnyDay]

I'm sure you can give Iowahawk and Scrappleface some good competition. :)

[clarice]

I wish.

[Neo]

Pelosi's comments on this matter will be fresh powder when the Rep. "Icebox" Jefferson matter comes up in the House before long.

But of course there is the matter of the election in New Orleans this weekend.

I sure bet a whole bunch of Democrats wish that "Icebox" would lose so the matter will slip quietly into the Potomac or Mississippi, take your pick.

[SunnyDay]

I find it amazing that all those politicians, who did nothing to evacuate those poor people, and who are obviously corrupt, got re-elected.

I'm sorry but NOLA deserves whatever it gets. That's just nuts.

At least we kick them out when they do crap.

[Enlightened]

I find it amazing that the leftwing nutballs that invaded this site spewing the DeMSM talking points are nowhere to be found. It is truly impossible for them to admit they were wrong. It's disgusting. I do have to hand it to Glenn Sock Puppet - he has slammed Rahm Emmanuel for the fake he is - he lied about what the knew.

I said it before - Rahm Emmanuel is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He is the architect of Democratic Lying Liars.