• Tools:
• Save |
• Print |
• E-mail |
• Most Popular |

Aide: Democrat leader heard of Foley e-mails in 2005

Adjust font size:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The head of the House Democrats' campaign committee, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, had heard of former Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate e-mails to a former male page a year before they became public, a campaign committee aide told CNN.

Foley, a Republican, resigned after the scandal broke. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans have suggested repeatedly that some Democrats knew about the e-mails earlier than they have acknowledged, but waited till midterm elections approached to bring up the issue.

Emanuel's campaign committee aide said Friday that the Illinois Democrat was informed in 2005, but never saw the correspondence and did not have enough information to raise concerns. The aide said Emanuel took "no action" because his knowledge was "cursory" and little more than "rumor."

The aide's acknowledgement differs from the flat "no" Emanuel gave in October when asked -- during an interview on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" -- if he or anyone on his staff knew of the e-mails before the scandal broke.

The e-mails surfaced when House Democratic staffer Matt Miller sent a copy of them to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's communications director, Bill Burton, in fall 2005, according to an investigative report released Friday. (Watch what the House ethics committee found in its probe of Mark Foley's e-mails )

Burton told Emanuel about the e-mails but did not tell reporters, the aide said.

In his deposition to the ethics committee, Miller said he also sent Foley's e-mails to the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, the Miami Herald and Roll Call, according to the report. (Read the full report -- PDF)

Miller also sent the material to Harper's Magazine "and possibly others," the report said.

Miller told the ethics committee he had sent the e-mails to the media because he considered them inappropriate and predicted "nothing would come" from giving them to the ethics panel or the House Page Board, according to the report.

Miller had sent the e-mails to the Democratic campaign committee with the expectation they would be shared with the media, he testified.

It wouldn't be until late September -- six weeks before midterm elections -- that media reports on those e-mails led to Foley's resignation and a political firestorm that contributed to Republicans' loss of the majority.

How e-mails got to Miller

The report released on Friday outlined how Miller received the e-mails:

Both Field and Miller testified that no one in the caucus office -- including then- Chairman Rep. Bob Menendez of New Jersey -- received the e-mails or was "involved in the decision to provide them to the press," the report said.

Menendez told CNN last week in a statement that he was never told about the e-mails.

Because Halliwell no longer works for the House, the ethics committee "did not attempt to reach a conclusion regarding whether her conduct could provide a basis for disciplinary action."

The panel only has jurisdiction over current House members and employees.

On Friday, the committee said although GOP leaders were negligent by not protecting teenage pages from possible improper advances but had broken no rules, and no one will be reprimanded. (Full story)

CNN's Ted Barrett contributed to this report.

Obama on fiscal cliff: Congress, I warned you

---

• Report: MH370 a criminal investigation
• Ebola toll rises in 'unprecedented' outbreak
• Republicans hit a nerve over Obamacare
• NATO suspends cooperation with Moscow
• Will Caesars impress with Vegas High Roller?

• Romney to lunch with Obama
• Senators 'troubled' after Rice meeting
• Bergen: Senseless Benghazi obsession
• Ticker: RNC wants 'autopsy' of election
• LZ: For 2016, Bush vs. Clinton

• Talkin' 'Icky Thump' blues (1:40)
• 'Why you treat yourself bad?' (3:15)
• Soviet culture returns (3:47)
• Unseemly rap lyrics targeted (3:29)
• Now In The News