House Republican leader John A. Boehner criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other party leaders on Tuesday for their "entirely inadequate" response to the sex scandal that has ensnared freshman Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.).
Pelosi told reporters at a press conference Monday that she was unaware of the alleged payoff until ABC News reported it earlier that day. But spokeswomen for Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who chaired the party's campaign arm when Mahoney won his seat in 2006, and Maryland Rep. Chirs Van Hollen, the current chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both acknowledged that their bosses had confronted the Florida Democrat about a rumored affair earlier this year.
Pelosi told reporters at a press conference Monday that she was unaware of the alleged payoff until ABC News reported it earlier that day. But spokeswomen for Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who chaired the party's campaign arm when Mahoney won his seat in 2006, and Maryland Rep. Chirs Van Hollen, the current chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both acknowledged that their bosses had confronted the Florida Democrat about a rumored affair earlier this year.
“This is a gravely serious matter, and to date, the collective response from Speaker Pelosi, Congressmen Emanuel, Congressman Van Hollen and Congressman Mahoney has been entirely inadequate," Boehner said in a statement released by his office.
Boehner and his GOP colleagues are familiar enough with these scandals; after all, Mahoney won his House seat after revelations surfaced that ex-Rep. Mark
Foley had exchanged inappropriate e-mails with high school-aged boys in the congressional page program. After a lengthy investigation, the ethics committee eventually determined that aides to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) failed to pursue these allegations fully.
Now that the situation is reversed, Boehner and other leading Republicans want their counterparts to answer some of those same tough questions about what they knew and when they knew it. The Republican leader issued his statement hours after Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, the Republicans' campaign chairman in the House, called on the party brass to come clean about what they first heard about Mahoney's alleged affair and when they first heard it.
"Congressman Mahoney and House Democratic leaders must provide these answers to the American people at once," Boehner said. "They should not be permitted to hide behind the shield of a nonfunctioning House ethics committee or any convenient loopholes in House rules."
Read on.
Read on.
Boner boy is always doing something stupid. Look Mahony has to be a hearing as to the question of did he use campaign money or his own. Who cares if he paid his mistress or if she black mailed him. Now Boner is demanding quick answers now while he did nothing to report Mark Foley's acts against kids working in the Capital. For many years Boner kept the secret of what Foley was doing and when it came out he wanted to put it behind us and more on. Foley was looking to molest kids, Mahoney is having an affair with a grown woman which is the worse for a Law Maker. Don't let me get started with Larry Craig.
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