Recently, House lawmakers filed their third quarter campaign disclosure reports -- and you know what that means! It's time for another round-up of how much lawmakers have dropped on lawyers to defend themselves from investigation.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), with nearly $1 million in total fees dating back to last year, remains the undisputed House champion, but Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is charging hard.

Here's our list of legal spending habits for the past three months, as well as an estimate of how much each lawmaker has spent in campaign funds to date and to which firms:

Rep. Don Young (R-AK): $183,785
So far, Young has spent $447,000 on the law firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Tobin O'Connor Ewing & Richard (the vast majority of which is spent on Akin Gump). He's under investigation for his relationship with Bill Allen, former CEO of oil-services firm.

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ): $111,042
Renzi has paid around $148,000 to law firms Patton Boggs LLP and Steptoe & Johnson LLP (primarily on Patton Boggs). Renzi remains under investigation by the FBI for pushing legislation that would advantage political supporters and former business partners. His house was raided by the FBI this past April. Renzi has announced that he will not seek another term.

Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV): $55,000
Mollohan has spent $78,000 on the law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel. He has been under federal scrutiny since last May for earmarking funds for organizations connected to him.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA): $26,982
Lewis has spent over $987,000 on the law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Williams & Jensen. He is being investigated for earmarks that he provided to campaign contributors, as well as his role in the Duke Cunningham scandal.

Read more »

An epilogue, of sorts:

Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley, whose e-mails and instant messages to teenage former congressional pages shocked the country, may avoid criminal prosecution in Florida because of the state's three-year statute of limitations.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not start a criminal investigation of Foley until November 2006, making it nearly impossible to prosecute what some officials regarded as the best case, an explicit instant message sent by Foley to a 17-year-old high school student in February 2003, when Foley was in Pensacola, Fla.

From the AP:

Florida's top police agency said Wednesday its investigation into former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's lurid Internet communications with teenage boys has been hindered because neither Foley nor the House will let investigators examine his congressional computers.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it hopes to conclude its investigation next week. Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after being confronted with the computer messages he sent to male teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.

"We have requested to review federally owned computers that Mr. Foley used during his time as a representative, but the U.S. House of Representatives ... cited case law restrictions that prohibited them from releasing those computers," said Heather Smith, an FDLE spokeswoman.

The AP notes the court decision early this month that the FBI had wrongfully seized Constitutionally protected legislative materials from Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) office, which strengthens the House's refusal to turn over the computer. Probably not precisely what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Officials lied to reporters when they said the FBI suspected a nonprofit group held for months inappropriate emails between Mark Foley and a former teenage page, before turning them over to investigators, according to a new report.

At the height of the Foley scandal this summer, quotes from anonymous "law enforcement" officials surfaced in news accounts alleging that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had first received copies of the infamous Foley emails in April 2006, but did not turn them over to the FBI until July.

But a new report from the Justice Department's internal watchdog confirms that was not the case. In fact, "the e-mails were provided to CREW in July 2006, not April, and CREW sent them to the FBI within days of receiving them," the office of Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported.

Unfortunately, "we do not know who may have supplied the media with this inaccurate information," Fine's report stated. (You can find the full report here.)

CREW had disputed the allegation from the day it was made. "They're making it up. There's no question about it," CREW spokeswoman Naomi Seligman-Steiner told TPMmuckraker October 6, the day the Washington Post's Dan Eggen reported that the FBI believed CREW had sat on the emails for months, according to a "law enforcement official -- speaking on condition of anonymity."

Fine's office concluded that the FBI's decision not to investigate the emails was not "misconduct," but "should have raised enough concerns to warrant some action." At the very least, the report concludes, agents should have notified the House Page program.

Politics were not an issue in the FBI's decisionmaking process, Fine's report said.

More voices rise to join the chorus denouncing the House ethics committee's report exonerating GOP leaders for their blind-eye behavior to former Rep. Mark Foley's page seduction:

Houston Chronicle - "Critics for years have described the bipartisan U.S. House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct as a joke. [The Foley report] removed all doubt about the House's inability to discipline itself."

U.S. News & World Report - "The bipartisan report on the Mark Foley scandal was a study in pitiful cowardice." (Opinion)

Orlando Sentinel - "If willful ignorance among members and staff to Mr. Foley's exploits and reckless endangerment of teenage pages doesn't break any rule or call for any penalty, the committee's standards aren't low. They're subterranean. . . . The long-awaited report on the Foley scandal was an acid test as to whether the House ethics committee -- evenly split between Republicans and Democrats -- was finally ready to wake up to its responsibilities after years of slumber. The committee flunked."

"A 16-year-old kid was entrusted by his parents to the U.S. House of Representatives, and Congress has a responsibility," Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Chicago Tribune in October.

"The most important questions are, 'What did the Republican leadership know, when did they know it and, if they knew something, why didn't they do anything to protect the child?'"

Now, Emanuel's questions are boomeranging back on him and his Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. A House report revealed last week that he and the DCCC knew of Foley's emails during the 2005 period but did not bring them up with the House Page Board or other groups.

Read more »

The reviews are in on the House ethics committee report on the Foley scandal, and they aren't good.

"[A] 91-page exercise in cowardice," a New York Times editorial thundered."The report’s authors were clearly more concerned about protecting the members of the House than the young men and women under their charge in the page program."

"What, one has to wonder, would it take for the House ethics committee to hold a lawmaker or a staff member accountable?" asked the Washington Post in its editorial, "The Buck Just Stopped." (The Wall Street Journal, however, pronounced the report "fair and sensible.")

Even some GOPers are whispering that those who dodged a bullet only did so because the committee purposely fired above their heads. Roll Call's John Bresnahan quoted one unnamed "Republican insider" with ties to Hastert who called the report a "shrewd political document" that carefully criticized only members and staff who were leaving power.

"They kicked people who don't care anymore," the source told Bresnahan. "Hastert doesn't care, and the other guys don't care either. . . . This doesn't hurt them at all."

Yesterday, Paul was among the first to note how the House ethics investigators took outgoing Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) to task for his less-than-heroic response to complaints from a recently-departed page that Foley was asking him questions about his penis size.

In a statement late yesterday, Kolbe responded. "The report demonstrates that members of my office and I took prompt action in 2001 to address the complaint that was brought to our attention," Kolbe declares. Full statement after the jump.

Read more »

One puzzle that had never quite been clear: how did Mark Foley's emails to a former House page reach the public eye?

According to the ethics report (page 44 and on), in the fall of 2005, a page nominated by Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) received the now-infamous icky emails. He forwarded them to Danielle Savoy, a staffer in Alexander's office, calling them "sick."

From there, Savoy forwarded them to her friend, Kelley Halliwell, a lobbyist and formerly of Rep. Joel Hefley's (R-CO) office. And she forwarded the emails to her boyfriend Justin Field, who worked at the House Democratic Caucus. From there, they went to the House Democratic Caucus communications director Matt Miller. And from him to The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times (both of whom ultimately decided not to run stories) and also the communications director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Nevertheless, it would be nearly 10 months before a publication actually ran with the story.

It sounds from the report that Ted Van Der Meid, Speaker Dennis Hastert's counsel, had his own problems with being too close with the House pages. From pages 39-40:

According to [House Clerk Jeff Trandahl], he raised his concerns about Rep. Foley to Van Der Meid "pretty often" in the context of raising similar concerns he had relative to Van Der Meid's over-involvement with pages assigned to the Speaker's office. Trandahl testified, "So here is my point of contact in the Speaker (sic), and I'm trying to have the conversation about him specifically, but also in a general sense." According to Trandahl, while Van Der Meid understood his concerns "politically," Van Der Meid's "pushback" was that "there is nothing wrong with people being mentors and caring about the kids." Trandahl responded that the page program had paid professionals to serve those functions. Trandahl felt that "there needed to be a very clear line between the page program and people who worked up here [in leadership]."

Van Der Meid did not report Trandahl's concerns about Rep. Foley's conduct to anyone else in the Speaker's Office... He explained that he did not elevate the Foley matter because he "got the impression that [Trandahl] was dealing with it."... He further testified that "[Trandahl] had never asked me to take any other action," and in any event, "I don't know what I would have done."

Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe (R) isn't the only guy to take a beating in the House Ethics Committee report on the Foley scandal.

The panel finds that Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) all but abandoned his responsibilities as chairman of the House Page Board. "Rep. Shimkus should have demanded copies of all relevant e-mails or other documents," the report states. "[A]t a minimum Rep. Shimkus had an obligation to learn more facts regarding the e-mails [between Foley and a page] before concluding that he could handle the matter himself without informing the other members of the Page Board or seeking their input."

They also pull up just short of accusing House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) of conspiring to obstruct justice, when he tried to rope other GOPers with conflicting stories into meeting with him to "prepare a statement." To the panel, that smacked of an attempt to coordinate a plausible lie:

[T]he efforts by the Speaker's office to prepare a statement under the direction of counsel could have had the additional effect of inhibiting the Investigative Subcommittee's ability to secure evidence. . . This effect was compounded by the appearance of [lawyer Randy] Evans and a law partner as counsel for the Speaker, Stokke and Kennedy during their testimony before the Subcommittee.

Some may recall that Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) refused to attend the meeting. But that doesn't keep him clear of suspicion. He only did that on advice of his counsel -- the aforementioned Randy Evans, who had the thankless (though likely profitable) job of keeping all the men out of trouble.

As we tear through the new House ethics report, we'll bring you updates of the juicy stuff we find.

First up, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who comes out looking very, very bad.

A former House page told the committee that he sent Kolbe, to his personal email account, a copy of an instant message he received from Foley in 2001 in which Foley had "made reference to the page's penis size."

When the committee asked Kolbe about this, he said he couldn't recall whether the page had contacted him or his assistant or whether it was by phone or email. What's more, he said he never knew the specifics of the young man's allegation against Foley, and "did not attempt to speculate."

As if that isn't bad enough, Kolbe appears to have tried to keep the kid quiet when the scandal broke: the former page also told the committee that he'd called Kolbe after the Foley story broke this September and asked for advice. He says Kolbe replied that "it is best that you don't even bring this up with anybody.... There is no good that can come from it if you actually talk about this. The man has resigned anyway."

Kolbe's side of the story? He told the committee that "the page had already decided that he was not going to report the IM, and the he merely responded, 'That's your decision.'"

But The Washington Post caught wind of the page's story anyway. And soon after being contacted by a Post reporter about it, Kolbe called the page and left a message: "It looks like you did some talking."

We've posted the relevant section of the report here.

From the AP:

The House ethics committee has concluded that Republican leaders did not break any rules in handling ex-Rep. Mark Foley's improper advances to former male pages but were negligent in protecting the teenagers, a congressional aide said Friday.

Update: More, from Roll Call:

The executive summary of the panel’s report does, however, state: “In all a pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Rep. Foley’s conduct with respect to House pages.”

Update: You can download the report from the Ethics Committee Web site.

At 2:00 PM, to discuss their report on the Mark Foley investigation.

The AP reads the tea leaves:

The House ethics committee met in closed session Friday, indicating the panel could be close to finishing its report on ex-Rep. Mark Foley's improper advances toward former male pages.

It's the last day of the 109th Congress, which means that if the GOP-controlled House is going to release its ethics report on the Foley scandal, they have to do it today. So keep an eye out.

Signs are tiny, but promising: senior aides whispered to Roll Call earlier this week that the report "could" be publicly released this week. And ethics committee members murmured to the AP that they don't want to deal with this next year.

Still, no one's quite sure whether the committee will be delivering their long anticipated report.

The committee could, as the final act of the most inept board of overseers of the famously inept 109th Congress, simply pass the chore on to the new, Democrat-led ethics committee in January. That would undoubtedly delay the process even further, since the committee will be shifting membership along with the new Congress.

Finally, Vanity Fair has delivered their take-out on the Mark Foley scandal (or Pagegate, if you prefer). And it's chock full of satisfyingly sordid details.

One figure in particular gets a drubbing: the out-going House Speaker, Dennis Hastert.

Here's Hastert, standing dumbly by when Kirk Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff and then Rep. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) chief of staff, brings word of the coming calamity -- that ABC News has copies of sexually explicit instant messages sent by Foley to underage pages:

Fordham thought he made it clear that his old boss needed to quit, but Foley couldn't bring himself to do that. The N.R.C.C. headquarters was around the corner, and Fordham made it his next stop. There he found Representative Reynolds and Speaker Hastert. But before he could finish relaying the awful news, Reynolds's face got purple and he began to shout, "He needs to resign, and he needs to do it right now!" The Speaker just sat there, silent, according to Fordham: "He didn't react at all. This was weeks before the election, and they're thinking how this is going to impact us."

And here's Hastert trying to attempt damage control:

Hastert, believing the leadership needed to present a united front, as one by one his colleagues were repudiating his foggy recollections, called a Republican-leadership meeting. That same day, an ethics-committee investigation was pressed for by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (over the objections of those who wanted an independent counsel), its purpose to discover who knew what when about Foley. Blunt, Boehner, and Reynolds were all summoned "to basically get their stories straight for the press," according to a knowledgeable source, who adds, "That to me is where Hastert attempted a cover-up."

Reynolds balked at having such a meeting. "This is stupid! We can't all go and meet privately and try to get our stories straight, because this matter was just referred to the ethics committee," he told Hastert, according to the same source. "In fact, none of us are supposed to be talking to each other, because we are not supposed to talk to potential witnesses." Worse, added Reynolds, "I can tell you anything we say at this leadership meeting is something we have to share with the ethics committee."

The meeting eventually became a conference call, but without Reynolds's participation.

Read the whole thing here.

In the days before ABC News first reported Mark Foley's "over friendly" emails toward a congressional page, top Republican political staffers huddled with Foley in conference calls, helping him handle political fallout from story, The New York Daily News reports.

In other words, when top Republicans learned of Foley's inappropriate emails, they appear to have circled the wagons and helped Foley himself spin the story, rather than alert the House Page Board or any other responsible authority to look into the matter.

Rep. Tom Reynolds' (R-NY) communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee, Carl Forti, was on the calls, along with Reynold's chief of staff Kirk Fordham and Foley's top staffers. A source told the Daily News the calls were focused on "damage control"; Forti confirmed that the calls took place.

The Republican leadership, of course, has been under fire for not dealing more aggressively with Foley after the emails came to light months earlier (there's been no evidence that top Republicans knew about the sexually explicit IMs turned up after ABC News' initial story). This is actually an example of top Republicans helping Foley deal with fallout from the emails.

An open question from the story is whether Reynolds, who's locked in a tight reelection battle due in part to his role in Foleygate, was involved in the damage control effort -- which involved two of his top staffers. He refused to answer questions for the piece, citing his testimony before the House ethics committee.

Over at Radar, they've got your mid-morning muck diversion, a clip from the 2003's action thriller Strike Force -- starring Mark Foley.

In it, Foley gives a straight-to-video performance as Congressman Fairchild, a lawmaker who pays a sack of money to a group of vigilantes (called "The Librarians") to rescue his kidnapped daughter.

The only other scandal figure we can think of who's matched Foley's contribution to cinema is Jack Abramoff, who infected the world with the action flick Red Scorpion, only to redouble the accomplishment with Red Scorpion 2.

Update: From TPMm Reader GN: "You're forgetting Gary Condit's cameo in the film Return of the Killer Tomatoes."

Mark Foley may have resigned from Congress, but he's still a Republican. And he's not going to exit rehab right on the eve of the election. Foley's extending his 30-day stay (which started October 1st), his lawyer announced today.

ABC News reports:

A source close to former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl told ABC News that Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) was one of a small number of "problem members" of Congress who page program supervisors complained spent too much time socializing with pages, taking them to dinner or sporting events outside of official duties.

Mark Foley was also on the list.

The source said Trandahl frequently cautioned both congressmen that "adults should hang out with adults, pages should hang out with pages," a message Trandahl also conveyed to pages during their orientation.

Kolbe is already facing a preliminary FBI inquiry for allegations arising from a 1996 trip that included two teenaged former House pages.

One of the last mysteries in the Mark Foley e-mail saga has been solved, for the most part: who was behind an anonymous Web site which first revealed select e-mails from the disgraced former congressman to young men.

The site, StopSexPredators.blogspot.com, was run by a "junior staffer" at the gay rights group, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), according to the New York Times. According to HRC spokesman David Smith, the group learned of the employee's handiwork this week, and immediately fired him for "misusing the group's resources." HRC would not disclose the name of the staffer, the paper reported. Hence our "sorta."

HRC's Smith told me this morning that the fired employee had worked organizing HRC members to volunteer for political campaigns in Michigan. In the past, the group has supported Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

Shortly after the HRC staffer anonymously posted Foley e-mails to his Web site, ABC News -- which had obtained the e-mails independently -- ran a story on them. That story led to tips of more graphic instant-message transcripts between Foley and former pages, which led to Foley's resignation, and the story took off from there. (You can relive the magic via our archives.)

From the AP:

An aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Wednesday went before ethics investigators in private to explain how the office handled complaints about former Rep. Mark Foley's behavior toward former pages.

Ted Van Der Meid, who oversaw the page program for Hastert, R-Ill., appears to be one of the last witnesses. The House ethics panel is investigating whether lawmakers and staff aides acted properly when learning of Foley's too-friendly messages to ex-pages and other possible inappropriate behavior.

The panel is in its third week of hearing testimony and seems unlikely to complete its probe before the Nov. 7 elections.