Cardin Calls on Speaker Hastert, Republican Leadership to Step Down if They Had Knowledge of Foley E-mails
Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) today called on House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill) and other Republican leaders to resign from their leadership positions if they had knowledge of the inappropriate e-mails sent by Rep. Mark Foley to a teenage boy and failed to take action.
Rep. Foley resigned from Congress last week after admitting to sending inappropriate and sexually charged e-mails to a 16-year-old House page. According to news reports, Speaker Hastert and other Republican leaders were notified of the "over-friendly" e-mails earlier this year.
"If Speaker Hastert and other Republican leaders knew about these disgusting and highly inappropriate emails, and took no action, they must step down from their leadership positions immediately," said Rep. Cardin. "The Republican leadership must recognize that protecting our children from sexual predators is far more important than covering up embarrassing political situations. There was no excuse for remaining silent."
Rep. Cardin also expressed deep concerns that the Republican leadership did not inform Democrats on either the Ethics Committee or Page Board about the inappropriate e-mails.
"As soon as leading Republicans heard of these offensive e-mails, Democrats should have been informed so that an open, bipartisan investigation could take place." asked Rep. Cardin. "Time after time, this Republican leadership has put partisanship over clean government and accountability. But this time, they crossed the line. An independent investigation must begin immediately to look into Rep. Foley's conduct and the apparent silence of the Republican leadership about the situation. Those responsible must be held accountable in order to begin restoring the American people's faith in their government."
Rep. Cardin believes that in order to clean-up Washington, we must hold our elected leaders to a higher standard of integrity, strengthen ethics rules and restore real oversight power to the bipartisan House and Senate Ethics Committees.
Throughout his career, Rep. Cardin has led the fight to strengthen government ethics. On the House Ethics Committee, the Congressman led one of the most notable Congressional ethics investigations in our nation's history - the investigation and sanctioning of former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Rep. Cardin served on the House Ethics Committee from 1991 to 1997. When the Maryland State Legislature faced ethical dilemmas in 1998, the leaders called on Rep. Cardin to lead a commission to draft Maryland's new ethics laws.
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