Top aides to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) are expected to testify this week in the House Ethics Committee investigation of the Foley page scandal.
Hastert may also appear, according to Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Lynn Sweet. Today Chief of Staff Scott Palmer entered the room to testify before the committee around 2p.m.
The investigation of how the Republican leadership handled the issue has provoked turmoil and finger-pointing in Hastert's office, congressional sources say.
Some of Hastert's principal aides have hired criminal defense lawyers to represent them during the investigation. Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert's chief in-house counsel, has retained Washington, D.C.-based attorney Lee Blalack, who also represents convicted former Congressman Duke Cunningham.
A key focus of the congressional investigation is the timing of when Hastert and his top staff first learned of Foley's problem behavior toward congressional pages.
The results of an internal review conducted by the speaker's office, released on Sept. 30, said Hastert's staff only learned of complaints about Foley in the fall of 2005 after a congressional page complained about inappropriate e-mails.
But former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl as well as Kirk Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff, have both told associates, and are believed to have testified before the House Ethics Committee, that top staff in Speaker Hastert's office were informed several years ago about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward congressional pages.
There are a couple things I find interesting with this story. The first is how the Ethics Committee is shifting its attention now towards Hastert's office just two weeks before the congressional midterms. So far, the committee is looking at Hastert's staff--both Palmer and possibly Van Der Meid for now. But it is going to be really big political news once Hastert is called in to testify before the Ethics Committee. That is certainly not good to have two weeks before the election.
The second thing I find interesting is that Hastert's staff members are hiring criminal defense lawyers to represent them during the investigation. Van Der Meid has just hired Lee Blalack, who has also just represented Duke Cunningham--that's comforting to know, considering how Cunningham was convicted of bribery. I just have to wonder what Van Der Meid knows about this Foley mess.
There is a truth somewhere in all these contradictory statements between Hastert, Reynolds, Shimkus, Alexander, and all the minor staff members of Fordham, Trandahl, Palmer, and possibly even Van Der Meid. The longer this thing stays in the news, the closer we are at getting towards the truth of this issue.
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