Smoking gun. A page forwarded an explicit Foley IM to Republican Representative Kolbe in 2001.
They knew. They knew all along.
It's a disgrace that this evidence was buried until after the election.
See the report here:
http://www.house.gov/...
And go to page 27.
Bastards. Pages continued to be exploited by Foley for 5 more years.
I'll type out the text, because it's a pdf:
In approximately October 2001, while he was a freshman in college, the former Kolbe page told Rep. Foley in an IM conversation that his girlfriend was coming to visit him. While the former page cannot recall the precise wording of the IM he received in response, he recalls that Rep. Foley made reference to the size of his penis. According to the former Kolbe page, after consulting with his parents, he forwarded Foley's IM as an attachment to an email directly to Rep. Kolbe through Rep. Kolbe's personal email account. In his email to Rep. Kolbe, the former Kolbe page explained that Rep. Foley had said something inappropriate to him and asked Rep. Kolbe to "take care of it."
Update [2006-12-8 15:3:22 by pontificator]: The page alleges that when he contacted Kolbe after Foley resigned, Kolbe told him not to tell anyone on the House Ethics Committee about the explicit IM. See page 31. That's an allegation of obstruction of justice.
Update [2006-12-8 15:56:51 by pontificator]: The cover-up is worse than the crime. After the scandal broke, and after Pelosi introduced a resolution for an Ethics Committee investigation, Majority Leader Boehner convened a meeting which included other individuals likely to be fact witnesses in the investigation. Representative Reynolds of New York refused to attend, on advice of counsel, because such meetings among fact witnesses could be viewed as an attmept by accused wrongdoers to get their stories straight. See pages 66-68.
Boehner does not have the ethical standards sufficient to be a leader in Congress. The prospect of an investigation had been raised, and he convened a meeting of individuals who would be fact witnesses in that investigation. You don't have to be a lawyer to know that such conduct is not appropriate. And you don't have to be a prosecutor to know that such conduct can be used as evidence of obstruction of justice. Boehner should resign from the Minority Leader's post immediately.
Update [2006-12-8 16:28:14 by pontificator]: In light of the facts uncovered, the decision not to discipline any members or staff is inexplicable. Any responsible corporation faced with such conduct would have no choice but to fire the offending parties. John at Americablog is all over this, and I encourage you all to go here for his reporting, if you can stomach it.