Top aide involved in Foley sex scandal resigns

WASHINGTON - A senior congressional aide resigned Wednesday and said he told House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office about former Rep. Mark Foley’s sexually charged correspondence with teenage pages more than three years ago, long before officials have acknowledged becoming aware of the issue.

The scandal surrounding Foley’s behavior continued to grow Wednesday as Republicans scrambled to stop the bleeding just five weeks before elections in which Democrats were already being projected to make significant gains in the House.

Late Wednesday, the No. 2 House Republican, Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, asked the House clerk to investigate allegations that Foley, R-Fla., who resigned last week, was intercepted by Capitol Police trying to enter the House pages’ dormitory while drunk late one night.

No further details were immediately available about the allegation, which was outlined in a letter Boehner sent to House Clerk Karen Haas and surfaced during a conference call Tuesday among House Republican leaders.

But Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio, chairman of the Republican Conference, told NBC News that the lawmakers learned that the Republican director of the page program had “brought specific concerns” about Foley’s behavior to Haas’ attention.

Ex-Foley aide says he’s a scapegoat
The new allegation only added to Republicans’ headaches after Kirk Fordham, a top aide to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., said earlier in the day that he was resigning and speaking out to protect himself.

Foley quit last week after ABC News published sexually provocative e-mail and instant messages he sent to teenage male pages. Reynolds, a member of the Republican leadership, has struggled to avoid political damage after it was learned that he was told about Foley’s e-mail messages to a Louisiana page last year.

Accusing Republican congressional leaders of “trying to shift the blame on me,” Fordham acted Wednesday after ABC reported that Republican figures whom it did not identify were accusing him of trying to head off an investigation of Foley, whom he previously served as chief of staff for 10 years.

“This is categorically false,” Fordham, who counseled Foley to resign last week, said in a statement. “At no point — ever — did I ask anyone to block any inquiries into Foley’s actions or behavior. These sources know this allegation is false.”

Ethics committee to take up Foley case
The House ethics committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the allegations against Foley, who has acknowledged in recent days that he is gay and has said he has entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility.

Fordham’s disclosure Wednesday was significant because he was Foley’s closest aide for a decade before becoming the top aide to Reynolds.

Saying that because he had resigned and had no one he needed to protect, Fordham promised to “fully cooperate with any and every investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct. At the same time, I will fully disclose to the FBI and the House Ethics Committee any and all meetings and phone calls I had with senior staffers in the House Leadership about any of Foley’s inappropriate activities.”

Fordham said one of the officials he notified three years ago was “still employed by a senior House Republican Leader.”

“Rather than trying to shift the blame on me, those who are employed by these House Leaders should acknowledge what they know about their action or inaction in response to the information they knew about Mr. Foley prior to 2005,” he said.

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