The Republican effort to cast blame on the media for publicizing Rep. Foley’s masturbatory online flirtations with teenage house pages doesn’t appear to stick…..
I ran into a friend who told me he was sitting on a story about a then-unnamed US Representative with a predilection for young teenage pages last spring — say six months ago. He said he didn’t know what to do with it and was planning to tell a member of Congress about it sometime. I would have begged him for it if I had a place to publish it…. But alas, not at the time.
Well, I ran into him last weekend sitting on a bar stool in a Capitol Hill Haunt — alone and being very, very quiet.
I asked what he was doing. After all, it might be a good time for a celebration after breaking such a very large and consequential story to the media. He almost singlehandedly put the Bic lighter to what has become a huge firestorm of news.
His response? “I am trying to avoid a subpoena.”
And, in fact, he may be doing just that. According to some reports the FBI is investigating HOW the story broke as much as to what extent Foley’s fixation was with House pages and if the Florida Republican broke any laws.
Ken Silverstein’s account with Harper’s online is much more lucid than mine.