The StopSexPredators, Lane Hudson, who initially exposed the emails from the Louisiana Page has spoken to the media. Sounds like he was out to get Foley and the Republicans in general. He claims that Foley had hit on him when he was a White House Intern during the Clinton years. The Washington Blade article states,
Hudson said his first inkling of Foley’s penchant for young men came through personal experience. Hudson said he met Foley in 1995 at a Washington bar during the time Hudson worked as a student intern at the White House during the Clinton administration. According to Hudson, Foley chatted with him and a few other White House interns at the bar, which Hudson declined to name, and asked for Hudson’s e-mail address. Hudson gave it and Foley soon began an e-mail exchange with him.
“It was nothing explicit, nothing very salacious,” Hudson said of Foley’s e-mails to him.
“I was young and naïve. I didn’t connect the dots,” he said, adding that he never took steps to report Foley’s e-mails as being inappropriate.
He states that all of a sudden in 2006 he became angry that no one was doing anything about it.
Sorry, but this reminds me of a joke.
A doctor was examining an old farmer in the emergency room. The old farmer had a broken leg and the doctor asked him how he did it. The farmer said, "Well you see when I was a young ranch hand, the boss's daughter came into my bunk room one night and asked me if I needed anything. I told her no. She asked again if I needed anything at all. I again told her no that I was fine. She asked one more time if there was anything at all that she could do for me and I said no." The doctor said what does that have to do with your broken leg. The farmer replied, "Well I was up on the roof of the barn and I suddenly realized what she meant. That's when I feel off the roof."
So basically, somewhere in late summer of 2006 Lane Hudson finally decided that this was so very important that he had to get this information to the press. Hudson's claim of just trying to do the right thing is insincere. He refused to disclose his source for the emails and he admitted that he was very partisan. His statements show signs of glee that it caused so much trouble for the Republicans.
Quite frankly the reporting on this, so far, is soft. The Washington Blade states,
He points to press accounts indicating that other news organizations, including newspapers in Florida, knew of Foley’s e-mails to the Louisiana page and chose not to report them. He said he became convinced that GOP leaders in the House, who knew of Foley’s inappropriate overtures to pages several years ago, chose not to act because of political repercussions.
"I was mad about it,” he said. “It disappointed me hugely that the gilded halls of Congress, one of the longest, continuously operating governments in the world, allows stuff like this to happen.
“And I wanted to do something about it. Now, I’m also very active politically. And I understood that my actions have political implications. I didn’t know how much it would affect these elections but it’s now clear that it’s affected them quite a bit. And I’m OK with that because politics is a tough game and this could have gone very badly and it didn’t.”
Hudson was obviously politically active and had sufficient contacts with Democrats in Congress to make sure that the Democratic Leadership was aware of what he described as "a predator in Congress who, over the course of his 12 years of service, was continuously seeking out pages with unethical, immoral and inappropriate intentions." However, his only attempt to get the story out was to push the story to the LA Times. Get real, his story simply does not hold water.
The United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct - House Page Programs Allegations is investigating who knew what and when. See here and here. On October 6, 2006 the Committee issued a letter to all Congressmen , which stated in part
The purpose of this letter is to notify all Members that it is the expectation of the Investigative Subcommittee that any Members with information related to the matter under investigation will bring such information to the attention of the Investigative Subcommittee. Such information should include, but not be limited to, any information related in any way to communications or interactions between former Representative Mark Foley and any current or former participants in the House Page Program. In this regard, you should inquire of staff under your supervision as to relevant information in their possession.
In order to assist the Investigative Subcommittee with its inquiry, we also request that you contact current and former House Pages sponsored by your office for the purpose of learning whether any of those individuals had any inappropriate communications or interactions with former Representative Foley or any other Member of the House.
Well maybe they should speak to Lane Hudson, he seems to know more about Mark Foley and his tryste with pages and, evidently, Democratic White house interns, than anyone. His story has more holes in it than Uday and Qusay Hussein. I sincerely doubt that he suddenly said "Shazzam! That's what Foley meant when he emailed me 11 years ago." I suspect it had more to do with getting Mark Foley out of the closet and hurting the Republicans, than it did "falling off the barn roof."
The following links are a few of the interviews that he has done.
Gay blogger sought to protect pages
Lane
Hudson Speaks Out On Foley
How
S.C. native put Foley on hot seat
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