House Speaker Dennis Hastert offered a public apology Thursday for his handling of a complaint about a congressman’s suggestive electronic messages to an underage page as the House ethics committee opened an investigation into former Rep. Mark Foley’s contacts with pages.
“I’m deeply sorry this has happened, and the bottom line is we’re taking responsibility,” Hastert told a news conference outside his district office in Batavia, Ill. “The buck stops here.”
The political damage from the cyber-sex scandal that Republican candidates already had sensed began to show up in polling data, indicating a sharp drop in support for the GOP and public distrust of congressional leaders’ explanations for their handling of a complaint about Foley. However, it is not yet clear how lasting the falloff in support will be as lawmakers and the FBI pursue separate investigations of the six-term Florida Republican. Foley abruptly resigned his seat last week.
President Bush again offered his support for Hastert (R-Ill.). But Republicans were nervously assessing polls for a broader measure of the damage, and some were distancing themselves from the speaker by canceling scheduled campaign events with him.
A Time magazine poll released on Thursday found that two-thirds of Americans aware of the page scandal believe Republican leaders tried to cover it up. Fox News reported that internal Republican polling indicates the party could lose as many as 50 seats in the House in the Nov. 7 elections, giving the Democrats control.
An AP/Ipsos poll showed that half of likely voters say the Foley scandal will be “very or extremely important” when they vote. By nearly a 2-1 ratio, voters say Democrats are better at combating corruption.
Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House ethics committee, said a subcommittee formed to look into the scandal already had approved nearly four dozen subpoenas for witnesses and documents; he pledged the investigation “will go wherever our evidence leads us.”
Answers before election?
The committee’s senior Democrat, Rep. Howard Berman of California, said the panel’s investigation should take “weeks, not months,” holding out the possibility of answers before the elections.
Hastert’s office also floated the idea of appointing former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who is reviled by many Democrats because of his clashes with the Clinton White House, to examine procedures for protecting pages. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California objected, however, arguing that the ethics committee should first examine whether current procedures were followed, a spokeswoman said.
The FBI is moving deliberately in its inquiry, mindful of congressional anger last May when agents raided the Capitol Hill office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) in a bribery investigation.
The Justice Department is still negotiating access to Foley’s House office computer and other evidence, according to a law-enforcement source familiar with the inquiry. “There’s clearly sensitivity there,” the source said.
Another difficulty is determining whether Foley’s electronic messages, though possibly offensive to some people, meet the test for a criminal solicitation of sex. Through his attorney, Foley has denied having sexual contact with minors.
Former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who has said he warned Hastert’s office of Foley’s inappropriate behavior with pages more than two years ago, was interviewed Thursday by FBI agents at his lawyer’s office in Washington.
Fordham’s attorney, Timothy Heaphy, said his client decided to warn Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer because of “one particular incident” involving Foley and pages. Heaphy declined to elaborate. Palmer has denied receiving the warning.
In the fall of 2005, an aide to Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) complained to Hastert’s office about an inappropriate e-mail Foley sent to a former page. The office’s quiet handling of that complaint–Foley received only a private warning to cease contact with pages–has been the focus of criticism since more explicit electronic messages were revealed last week.
“I don’t know who knew what when,” Hastert said Thursday. “If it’s members of my staff or they didn’t do the job, we will act appropriately.”
Hastert declared at his news conference that he had no thoughts of resigning over his handling of the matter and anticipated remaining the Republican House leader in the next Congress.
Bush calls Hastert
After nearly a week of not making any direct contact with Hastert or other House GOP leaders, Bush called the speaker Thursday night to voice his support.
“He thanked him for making a clear public statement today in which the speaker said he takes responsibility and reiterated that House leadership is accountable,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Still, the national Republican establishment remained divided on whether Hastert should stay as speaker, with no clear consensus emerging. A national Republican leader described two camps in discussions, with one arguing that the departure of Hastert would provide the public a catharsis for the scandal but the other contending that the departure of the party’s highest-ranking congressional leader would only further feed the frenzy.
Comments that Hastert made in a Tribune interview suggesting the scandal had been orchestrated by ABC News, Democratic political operatives aligned with the Clinton White House and liberal activist George Soros were considered a serious misstep in national Republican circles, an official said. Senior Republican officials contacted Hastert’s office before his news conference Thursday to urge that he not repeat the charges, and he backed away from them in his news conference.
“The Chicago Tribune interview last night–the George Soros defense–was viewed as incredibly inept,” a national Republican official said. “It could have been written by [comedian] Jon Stewart.”
Democrats ridiculed assertions that party operatives arranged the scandal.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called the allegations “a Republican lie. It’s a disgrace. They are blaming everyone but themselves for what happened.”
Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said, “By pointing fingers at everyone but himself, Speaker Hastert certainly has an interesting definition of `The buck stops here.'”
Soros told Fox News that any suggestion that he is involved in orchestrating the Foley revelations “is so far off the mark, it’s really laughable.”
A Soros-funded foundation provided a grant to a liberal-leaning ethics group that had obtained a copy of a suggestive e-mail from Foley to an underage page and forwarded it in July to the FBI with a request for an investigation. At the time, the FBI declined to investigate.
ABC News, which broke the Foley story, has said it obtained the e-mail from a Republican source.
The identity of a former page who had communicated with Foley through instant messages was revealed after a mistake by ABC News resulted in the former page’s screen name being shown in a transcript posted on its Web site. Researchers were then able to use this information to learn the identity of the former page, now 21.
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mdorning@tribune.com
azajac@tribune.com
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Watch the complete Hastert news conference and read the transcript online at chicagotribune.com
