The heads are beginning to roll…and the contradictions are beginning to be underscored. ABC’s The Blotter:
The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, according to Republican sources on Capitol Hill.
Those sources said Fordham, a former chief of staff for Congressman Mark Foley, had urged Republican leaders last spring not to raise questionable Foley e-mails with the full Congressional Page Board, made up of two Republicans and a Democrat.
“He begged them not to tell the page board,” said one of the Republican sources.
So THAT was the problem, right?
No, there’s another version that doesn’t absolve the powerful, elected bigwigs so easily:
People familiar with Fordham’s side of the story, however, said Fordham was being used as a scapegoat by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
They said Fordham had repeatedly warned Hastert’s staff about Foley’s “problem” with pages, but little was done.
But there’s a bigger problem here. Congressman Tom Reynolds (R-NY), Fordham’s boss, has been denying for days that Fordham was brought into the discussions about this scandal when Reynolds found out months ago….
Now we know that Reynolds was lying. Fordham was involved quite intimately with the goings on – whether you believe Fordham that he was involved and urging the issue be dealt with, or if you believe Hastert et. al. that Fordham was advising Shimkus to leave Foley alone, either way Fordham was a key player, and Reynolds has been saying for days that Fordham was not.
And finally, isn’t it interesting that for days the House GOP leadership has been telling us how they simply never read the emails so they never knew how bad it was. Also, they’ve been telling us that Foley tricked them, he was such a good liar they never realized how bad it was. But now they tell us that they were convinced Foley was trouble and they desperately wanted to tell the full Page Board but one single staffer wouldn’t let them. How is it that the GOP members, at the same time, didn’t realize the emails were a big deal and were duped by Foley, but also they were convinced Foley was trouble and wanted to investigate him
Good questions — and there may be answers.
But we truly doubt the correct ones on this will come from Rush, Sean and Matt D.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.