Sunday, October 01, 2006
Hastert Tries To Pull A Fast One
Josh Marshall's guest blogger, John Aravosis and DailyKos' Georgia10 all have noted that Denny Hastert's letter to Alberto Gonzales RE: the Foley PredatorGate scandal is not what the media thinks it is. Instead, it's designed to do two things: Send the FBI haring off to investigate the victims and their advocates while ignoring the cover-up artists in the House GOP Caucus, and frighten any other ex-page victims of Foley's into keeping quiet. The first aim will undoubtedly be to target the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW for short, and do some good old-fashioned Nixon-Starr-style fishing expeditions. I hope that all the people working for CREW have paid up all their parking tickets, because rest assured that Denny Hastert will try to use anything he can find to "discredit" them somehow. The second aim is shown in this part of Hastert's letter to Gonzales:
In addition, since the communications appear to have existed for three years, there should be an investigation into the extent there are persons who knew or had possession of these messages but did not report them to the appropriate authorities. It is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now.If you were a former page, and were thinking of coming forward with e-mails or IM's you got from Foley, how encouraged would you be by the prospect of being investigated by the FBI for not having said something about them sooner? (Especially when you knew that the people who could have stopped Foley -- Tom DeLay, John Shimkus, Dennis Hastert et al -- weren't being touched by the FBI?) I think this was a calculated move to make sure the House Repugs don't get many calls on the 800 line they so ostentatiously set up for former pages to call in about any problems they had.
From Rep Foley's Web Site;
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/fl16_foley/072106senatesopass.html
: 10/02/2006 12:36:00 AM << Home
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