Out Of The Woodwork

by digby

I know this will come as a great shock to everyone, but it appears that Hastert may have lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member with personal knowledge of Foley and his behavior with pages said yesterday.

The staff member said Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, met with the Florida Republican at the Capitol to discuss complaints about Foley’s behavior toward pages. The alleged meeting occurred long before Hastert says aides in his office dispatched Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) and the clerk of the House in November 2005 to confront Foley about troubling e-mails he had sent to a Louisiana boy.

Hastert and his chief of staff Palmer are very close; they are roomates during the week in Washington. It just doesn’t seem to be to be too likely to me that Palmer never mentioned all the warnings he received about Foley. I know the Speaker is a busy fellow and all, but somebody preying on the pages just seems like something that would come up, if only as gossip. Which is probably how it did come up because they didn’t seem inclined to do a damned thing about it.

And then there’s this:

The divergent accounts have highlighted the holes in the public’s understanding of Foley’s undoing. And they are sure to ratchet up the pressure on Trandahl to come forward with his knowledge of events. As House clerk between January 1999 and November 2005, Trandahl had direct control over the page program.

Pages apparently saw Trandahl as a strict disciplinarian. In one instant-message exchange obtained by The Post, a former page, on his way to his first annual reunion in Washington, told Foley in January 2003 that “everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc.”

He then added, “well we dont have the [expletive] clerk to fire us anymore. . . . we didnt like trandahl that much . . . he isnt a nice guy . . . and he gets really scarey when he is mad.”

Trandahl’s departure came within days of his confrontation with Foley over e-mails that the congressman had sent a former page. House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl’s exit were oddly quiet. The departure of a staff member of long standing, especially one as important as the House clerk, is usually marked with considerable fanfare, said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. Debate is suspended in mid-afternoon to accommodate a stream of testimonials from lawmakers.

Trandahl’s departure was marked by a one-minute salute from Shimkus and a brief insert into the Congressional Record.

“My one-hour Special Order changed to a five-minute Special Order, now to a one-minute,” Shimkus said. “I just want to say thank you for the work you have done.”

Lilly said: “He seemed to suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.”

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What’s up with that, do you suppose?

Update: I hear on the grapevine that the next hilariously lame GOP excuse is that — you guessed it — the emails are forgeries. I’m not kidding.

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