It’s been a long day of phone calls and checking sources. Nothing really new at this point, but a lot of questions still.

First, as you know, Foley’s now ex-chief of staff, Kirk Fordham says that Foley’s behavior was no secret to Speaker Hassert. Whatever, I don’t think Foley’s behavior was a secret to anyone up on the hill. But what about Fordham’s own behavior in the matter. No, I’m not talking about the accusation of him trying to stall Brian Ross on the story – which is bogus, but of other behavior we are to find out about in the coming days.

Since it’s known at this point, back in 2004, Fordham while Finance Director for Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, was threatened by Mike Rogers, who’s mission in life is to out Republican gays. In a letter he wrote to Fordham in 2003 Rogers mentioned Fordham being “openly gay” with a reference to Foley’s orientation as well.

However, the abruptness of Fordham’s resignation sparked my interest, so I made a call or two, and while not concrete let me give some advice to those who are covering his story – don’t go out too far on a limb, there is a lot more on him to come.

Look, a guy doesn’t just get up and resign from that kind of job without a good reason. He admits that he will be talking to the FBI in the morning, so therefore I see two possibilities on the “why?” of his resignation. 1) The FBI has him in his sights, and he’s going down to the “station” to “cop a plea”, or 2) He’s trying “write his own story”, thus he is going to cooperate. Now I know he’s saying stuff that he warned two years ago about Foley, but wait and see, I think there is a surprise coming, and it won’t be Hassert leaping off the Capital Dome.

I’m promoting this comment from Part V of the “Foley Setup?” for background:

“QUESTION – Did Fordham have acccess to Foley‚Äôs IM account information, screen name and password? Very likely. Could he have passed this information onto Aravosis and Rogers? Very possible. Could some of the IMs been manufactured then by Rogers or Aravosis, those being reported by ABC. Probable.

We know someone logged onto Foley’s IM account yesterday when he was in a treatment center for 20-30 seconds, according to Fox News. Could this have been Rogers or Aravosis

I believe now that Fordham is gone, resigned or forced out, that my question carries more weight. Why would Aravosis claim he received the information from Fordham if he had not? How would Forhan know Foley was IMing former pages that had already gone home, unless he knew Foleys IM screen name and password. I highly doubt Foley would IM these teenagers in front of Fordham. Fordham now is mad he is gone and is lashing out to try and cover his tracks with Aravois. Coincidently, he is now claiming he told REP leadership three years ago, about the same time Rogers came into possession of IMS from Foley. Yeah, now that is too much of a coincindence. Something stinks here big time.”

Besides Foley two names that have come into play are Rogers and John Aravosis of America’s Blog. Both are gay activists who on many occassions have threatened not only Foley and Fordham with outing, but others as well. These guys are what we call “Political Thugs”, the only thing they don’t use is guns, but they do nearly as much damage. Others call it by it’s real name – blackmail.

Again, the FBI – and I have this on good source – are aware of both individuals and looking into their involvement as well. As I said before we cops aren’t so stupid as to just look at an IM log or an email and say, “Oh look at that?, case closed!”

You have to prove that they originated on a specific computer, from a specific individual. If they weren’t they you have to find out who did create them. In any case are evidence, and as such if they were, as is apparent at this point, withheld from authorities for five months, one year or twenty five minutes, that’s breaking the law and such individuals could be charged for that.

The speculation at this point, and this is merely a guess but I’m betting that somewhere down the line Fordham was being blackmailed or forced to give up Foley’s IM logon for just the reasons mentioned in the comments above.

It adds up.

First, Passionate American had already alerted us to the descrepancies in the messages, and I spoke to the content of some of the messages, that looked a bit contrived. Again, going back to my years in Law Enforcement I actually worked in chatting wtih predators back when the world thought 28k modems were hot. I saw a lot of chats but I’d never seen the type of responses I had seen on some – not all – but some of the transcripts. Remember also that there is no way to log an IM chat without invoking it in the preferences and most people, especially when discussing these types of things, is worried about logging UNLESS they are TRYING to make a record to be used later against the individual.

Then we have the case of the bogus Stopsexpredators website, who’s owner is anonymous, but that will change soon as the FBI is going to supeaneo Google’s blogger for the indentity of the person who registered it, that is unless they registered it under a false name. In any case we know now that site is a key to figuring out what is really going in the game.

That brings me to Foley. While he resigned, there is no indication from him that all the IM’s received so far were in fact from him. Sure we have his statement where he apologizes for embarrassing everyone, but this was while a few IM were known. We now have more than 60 at last count. Did they all in fact originate with him? Or did someone else in fact use his signon and pretend to be him.

Big questions, but we really won’t know until he’s visible again. Word is that he has checked himself into a Scientology rehab in Clearwater Florida, and outside of his lawyers claiming the usual “abuse excuse”, at some point we are going to have to hear from him.

Lots of questions, but this story is more than just about Foley, and we are going to get to the bottom of it before too long.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

UPDATE: Riehl World View examines the claims of an “intern” who says that they found out about Foley’s activities from a Google search. h/t Clarice!

Which by the way, local news here in Miami, WFOR Channel Four talked to former pages who – get this – thought Foley was a nice guy, friendly, and never noticed he made any advances.

UPDATE II: Oak Leaf at Polipundit references ABC’s attempt to remove history in light of the revelation that Foley’s “teen” happened to be EIGHT-Teen and an adult at the time.

UPDATE III: For more on the “character” of Aravosis read this. People, rabid doesn’t begin to describe it .

But saying that, I’m reminded of the story Eskimos tell of how they capture a wolf. The way they do it is to cover a knife in seal or another animal’s blood and let it freeze. Then they stick it – handle first – into the ground with the blade pointing up. They then wait for the wolf who smelling the blood begins to lick the blade of the knife until it cuts it’s own tongue. Then as the wolf’s blood begins to flow the wolf is in such a frenzy that it doesn’t even notice it’s bleeding to death. Soon the wolf lies dead in the snow, a victim of it’s own appetite for destruction.

He has ears to hear…..

UPDATE IV: The Hill’s Alexander Bolton claims to have a “source” that says that a former GOP staffer was the source of the emails to the media.

“The source who in July gave news media Rep. Mark Foley‚Äôs (R-Fla.) suspect e-mails to a former House page says the documents came to him from a House GOP aide.

That aide has been a registered Republican since becoming eligible to vote, said the source, who showed The Hill public records supporting his claim.

The same source, who acted as an intermediary between the aide-turned-whistleblower and several news outlets, says the person who shared the documents is no longer employed in the House.

But the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer when the documents were first given to the media.

The source bolstered the claim by sharing un-redacted e-mails in which the former page first alerted his congressional sponsor’s office of Foley’s attentions. The copies of these e-mails, now available to the public, have the names of senders and recipients blotted out.

These revelations mean that Republicans who are calling for probes to discover what Democratic leaders and staff knew about Foley‚Äôs improper exchanges with under-age pages will likely be unable to show that the opposition party orchestrated the scandal now roiling the GOP just a month away from the midterm elections.”

However, it should be noted that Alexander Bolton is:

“Prior to joining The Hill in 2000, Alexander Bolton was assistant to David Corn at The Nation magazine and interned at Roll Call. A native of Greenwich, Conn., he received his B.A. degree in philosophy from Princeton University”

.

So whose “the source”? “Fluff”…..

Even so, it still doesn’t answer the question of who “held the messages”, and who knew about their existance since July or even before, all things we are going to find out soon.

All this from “an assistant to David Corn”?

Waiter! Check!

UPDATE V: Seems Fordham needs to put off that meeting this morning with the FBI as he can’t seem to keep his story straight, I wonder why?

UPDATE VI: Aravosis responds to the “rumors” (sort of)…..

“As I hear it, I supposedly had the Foley emails and/or salacious “instant messages” for 2 years now, or something like that, but I decided to sit on them until just before the election, then, as the rumor goes, I secretly set up a separate blogger blog on which I published the emails just last week, apparently to push the story into the mainstream media right before the election (because I didn’t have another blog on which I could publish them?).

A second rumor has Reynolds’ now-former chief of staff, and former Foley chief of staff, Kirk Fordham giving me access to Foley’s AOL account – apparently because I blackmailed him, not sure with what – so that I could personally get a copy of Foley’s instant message traffic. First off, it’s not clear why in God’s name Foley’s former chief of staff, and still good friend, would want to screw Foley. And second, I’m pretty sure you can’t get copies of your IM discussions via your AOL account – but hey, no one ever said that Hannity and his minions were good with facts.

Anyway, as you know, I published the Foley emails on my blog last Thursday after ABC News story broke. I had received the emails in July, as I already explained on this blog last Thursday, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to publish allegations of pedophilia/child sex predation, even against a member of the other political party, until I had all the facts (and not being Speaker Hastert, it’s not like I had access to the House GOP leadership, to Foley or the pages to quiz them about the emails). Shortly after I received the emails, I found out that CREW had also received copies of the emails and had immediately passed them to the FBI. I figured that took care of the situation (silly me to trust George Bush’s FBI, they didn‚Äôt investigate) and I let the issue go until I saw ABC had published the story last week and that Foley had confirmed to ABC that the emails were real.”

Yeah, yeah….Still those pesky questions remain. Like “WHO” sent Aravosis the emails, and for the benefit of “Bush’s FBI”, tell us again why you chose to withhold evidence of a possible crime for some sixty days? How is it said, “Ignorance is no excuse?”