Did Foley Buy GOP Cover-Up?

Since 1996, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has received $550,000 from Foley, including $100,000 from last summer. These monies are an obvious benefit to the GOP leadership who want to win elections to keep their hold on power.
Coincidentally, the NRCC chair — Tom Reynolds — is one of the first in the GOP leadership who learned about Foley’s “naughty” emails. And, it was Reynolds’ chief of staff who took the most blatant public step to squash the scandal by trying to bribe ABC with an exclusive in exchange for not reporting about the sexually explicit emails that broke the scandal.  Question is whether Foley’s donations to the NRCC constituted a tacit bribe that motivated the GOP leadership to remain silent for at least the past couple years about Foley’s “naughty” little secret.

While Foley contributed to individual candidates, his largest political donations went to the NRCC.  Since 1996, Foley made 3 six-figure donations to the NRCC. The Associated Press reports that “such a sum is not an unusual donation for members of the party’s top echelon to the committee responsible with helping to elect GOP House candidates.”

However, the records for Foley’s contributions to the NRCC since 1996 from PoliticalMoneyLine and opensecrets.org show that Foley generally donated an amount in the $5,000 to $20,000 range, except for 3 years. In 1998, Foley contributed $100,000. However, Foley did not repeat this generosity again until 2004, when he donated $200,000 and then a donation of $100,000 on July 27, 2006, which was after the GOP learned about Foley`s emailing with pages and was clearly in crisis control mode as they kept the knowledge to themselves.

(Note: Need to click onto link for spreadsheet document that lists Foley`s contributions at the politicalmoneyline site.)

When these contributions to the NRCC are reviewed in the factual context of what occurred during the past few years it becomes interesting.   According to ThinkProgress’ great cover-up timeline, the GOP leadership have known since at least 2001 that Foley was sending “naughty” emails to Congressional pages. And, we now know that in 2003 Foley “interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page.” But, knowledge of Foley’s misconduct did not extend outside of GOP circles and congressional workers at that time.

It was in 2005 and 2006 that the GOP’s dirty secret became known to 3rd parties, like the parents of pages and the media. In September 2005, a former page contacted GOP Rep. Alexander’s office, who was the boy’s sponsor, and told him about the emails from Foley. This information was provided to Hastert and other GOP leaders. In late 2005, the leaders told Foley to cease all contact with this former house page.  In Spring 2006, Alexander tells NRCC Chair Reynolds about the Foley emails and Reynolds tells Hastert. And, Alexander’s office also informed House Majority Leader Boehner about the emails, who has pointed the finger at Hastert as the man in charge who had resolved the problem.  Given that the matter had been resolved in 2005 (a year in which Foley only donated $15,000), what was it that freaked Alexander so much that he felt it necessary to protect himself by informing both GOP leaders in 2006 about purportedly the same emails. Whatever triggered Alexander’s concern in the Spring of 2006 may have also triggered Foley’s generous 6-figure donation a few months later.  

The chain of command on this issue is also interesting. Why would Rep. Alexander inform Reynolds, who is chair of the NRCC, about Foley’s emails with pages? It is certainly strange — to say the least — that Alexander would deem it necessary to inform the chair of a committee to fund and assist election campaigns about a matter that may be ethical and/or criminal or unlawful.

The obvious question is what role does Reynolds play in the Foley scandal? Well, Kirk Fordham, who is Reynolds’ chief of staff, is the person who offered an exclusive to ABC’s Brian Ross on Foley’s decision to resign if Ross would agree “not to publish the raw, sexually explicit messages.” Ross did not agree and then “Foley resigned after ABC confronted him with those messages.” Given the power and control that the GOP leadership wield over their members, it is not likely that a staff member like Fordham would have taken such public steps to protect Foley by essentially offering a bribe to a nationally recognized reporter in order to cover-up Foley’s misconduct from the public unless this matter had implicitly or explicitly been discussed amongst the leadership.

Fordham, who is a former chief of staff for Foley, also advised Foley as the scandal unfolded, but Reynolds claimed that he did not know Fordham was advising Foley and that he did not authorize such advice. Was Fordham advising Foley on a strategy developed and/or authorized by the GOP leadership who had to be concerned about a sexual predator scandal breaking so close to the midterm elections?

It appears that the GOP considered the Foley matter to be a partisan issue to be handled and cleaned up somehow rather than a serious matter of a breach of trust of the public, parents and pages. GOP candidates are dispensing with Foley donations received over the years. Yet, Reynolds does not have any problem donating money to a man who he knows has been a sexual predator of teenage boys. Reynolds learned of the allegations against Foley “sometime this spring,” and informed Hastert in early 2006 or “shortly after the February GOP leadership elections.” Then, a few months later, Reynolds’ personal PAC donated $5,000 to Foley on May 10, 2006.

Reynolds is now “astounded” by the idea that “as a parent or a grandparent that anyone would insinuate that I would seek to cover up inappropriate conduct between an adult and a child.” But, apparently Reynolds has no problem discussing such issues while he is protected from the media questions by being flanked at the time by 30 children and parents.

Time will tell whether Foley bribed the GOP leadership to remain silent for months or years about a sexual predator and the nature of the currency for that bribe — whether it be money to NRCC or some other fund, or simply the politics of the pending midterm elections. But, it is just hard to swallow that a staffer acted on his own in the clearest example of a very public smoking gun by trying to bribe a reporter with the currency of an exclusive story.

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UPDATE:

Two additional points raised at Daily Kos comments:

isbister raises a great point. On July 21, 2006, CREW received emails from Foley to a former House page and gave those emails to the FBI on that same day.  The “emails sent off alarm bells” for CREW’s executive director, who was a former prosecutor of sex crime cases.   Six days later, Foley donated $100,000 to the NRCC.

teacherken raised an interesting question: Did Foley bribe the GOP leaders or did the GOP leaders blackmail Foley?

“who is responsible for initiating the larger transactions, and on what basis?  Did Foley initiate to keep them quiet, hence it is a bribe, which is bad enough for the leadership, or did they initiate by telling him that unless he paid them they would force him out, which would make it blackmail?  In the latter case, it would be clear that Federal laws were broken by the leadership.

And if some rumors are now floating around are true, could th current panic in the Republican leadership be their worries that he could cooperatee with FBI and thus take them down?”