WASHINGTON - The FBI is assessing whether former Rep. Mark Foley broke
any laws when he sent sexually explicit e-mails to a male teen-age congressional
page and leaders of both parties demanded full-scale investigations into another
untimely scandal for the Republicans.
"The FBI is conducting an assessment to determine if there has been any
violation of federal law," FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak said on Sunday.
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US Rep Mark Foley (R-FL) speaks during a news conference at
the Port of Miami in Miami, Florida, in this February 21, 2006 file photo.
Foley resigned from the US Congress on September 29, 2006 following
reports he sent sexually inappropriate e-mails to underage male
congressional interns.[AP]
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House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert sent a letter to U.S.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting a Justice Department investigation
of Foley's conduct with current and former House pages.
"Since the communications involved interstate communications there should be
a complete investigation and prosecution of federal laws that have been
violated," Hastert said.
"In addition, since the communications appear to have existed for three
years, there should be an investigation into the extent there are persons who
knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the
appropriate authorities," Hastert wrote.
Said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada: "The alleged crimes here
are far outside the scope of any congressional committee and the attorney
general should open a full-scale investigation immediately."
Top House Republicans acknowledged on Saturday that they had been aware of
e-mail traffic between Foley and a former teen-age page, but that they were not
aware of the sexually explicit messages to other pages revealed last week.
EXPLICIT REFERENCES
Foley, 52, a six-term Florida Republican, resigned on Friday after ABC News
reported he sent messages containing references to sexual organs and acts to
current and former congressional pages.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said House Republican leaders should be
questioned under oath on how much they knew of Foley's e-mails to male pages,
the teen-agers who answer telephones, deliver documents and run other errands
for members of Congress.
The scandal, breaking just weeks before the November 7 election to determine
control of Congress, has shaken Republicans who often accuse the Democrats of
being weak on moral issues.
Foley was chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children, and
the author of the key sexual predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child
Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which President George W. Bush signed in
July.
Reid in a statement said the allegations against Foley were "repugnant, but
equally as bad is the possibility that Republican leaders in the House knew
there was a problem and ignored it to preserve a congressional seat this
election year."
The House Ethics Committee has been directed to investigate Foley's actions,
and House Republican leaders also called for a criminal investigation into his
contacts with pages.
Democrats and at least one Republican said House Republican leaders should
step down if they were aware that Foley was sending inappropriate messages and
did nothing about it.
"I think anyone should resign, any leader that knew about this should resign,
absolutely," Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio, a Democratic
contender for the U.S. Senate, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Hastert aides said they had been alerted to an exchange between Foley and one
congressional page in the fall of 2005 but were not told about any sexually
explicit e-mails or text messages, according to a statement issued by the
speaker's office.
They said Foley had been warned to stop any such contact and that Hastert did
not become aware of the incident until the spring of 2006.
