Cover Up Attempted: Senior GOP Aides Had Foley "Damage Control" Calls Up Until Scandal Broke

Two senior aides to National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds participated in "damage control" conference calls concerning correspondence between Congressman Mark Foley and a former congressional page -- two days before the scandal became public, and earlier than previously reported.

NRCC Communications Director Carl Forti and Reynolds then chief-of-staff Kirk Fordham both took part in the first call the evening of Wednesday, September 27, and one call the next day, Forti and other sources familiar with the call confirmed. Forti's involvement and the NRCC's role in the run-up to the Foley scandal add another link between the disgraced former congressman and Reynolds, who has said he knew only indirectly of questionable emails, and that he reported them to his House superiors.

Foley resigned Friday, September 29, soon after ABCNews presented him with a sexually explicit instant message correspondence with a page.

But ABCNews first approached the Foley campaign that Tuesday, with more ambiguous correspondence in which Foley asked the former page for his photograph(.pdf).
http://abcnews.go.com/images/US/Foley_email4.pdf

The conference call, described by a Hill staffer familiar with its contents as focused on “damage control,” also included Foley’s Florida-based political consultant, Richard Johnston, and his communications director, Jason Kello, according to two people familiar with the call. The participants were unaware of the explicit instant messages that would force Foley's resignation two days later.

Foley’s aides were “seeking [Forti’s] advice and keeping him abreast of” the ABCNews inquiry, said the Hill staffer.

Forti said his participation was routine.

“The NRCC helps members all the time with things that are problems and could be problems – that’s what we do,” he said.

Among NRCC staff, “I was the only one who participated in the conference calls,” Forti said, referring to the Wednesday night call and to another after the first ABCNews report Thursday but before the graphic instant messages surfaced Friday.

Forti said he couldn’t comment on whether either Reynolds himself or NRCC executive director Sally Vastola participated in the early discussions about the first Foley email because both testified before the ethics commission on the case and are forbidden from discussing their testimony. Reynolds’ campaign spokesman, L.D. Platt, declined even to ask the congressman about the issue, citing the ban on discussing testimony.

Foley consultant Richard Johnston and Foley communications director Jason Kello were also on the phone, according to two people familiar with the call.

Fordham, then Reynolds’ chief of staff, and formerly Foley’s chief of staff, played a central role throughout the affair.

“Kirk was involved before the resignation – in the days before – helping, advising Foley with respect to how this would be handled in the context of his reelection campaign,” said Fordham’s lawyer, Timothy Heaphy, referring to the earlier, less damning email. “There were NRCC people involved in that discussion.”

Reynolds himself wasn’t asked about the Wednesday and Thursday discussions during the 40-minute press conference he gave on the subject October 2.

He said then he’d been told of months earlier – but hadn’t seen – the first emails, which he described as “overly friendly chit-chat.”

“It’s astounding to me as a parent or a grandparent that anyone would insinuate that I would seek to cover up inappropriate conduct between an adult and a child,” he said.

NOTE: I owe something more than a hat tip on this to Murray Waas, an investigative reporter for National Journal, who was the first reporter to spot this earlier NRCC involvement in the Foley scandal. Waas wasn’t able to report it because of a family emergency, but suggested this line of inquiry to me and offered guidance in pursuing the piece. The reporting here is all original though.

http://abcnews.go.com