The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centered on solicitous emails and sexually suggestive instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Florida, to teenage boys who had formerly served as congressional pages. Investigation was closed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) on September 19, 2008, citing insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges as both "Congress and Mr. Foley denied us access to critical data," according to FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey. The scandal grew to encompass the response of the Republican congressional leadership to previous complaints about Foley's contacts with the pages and inconsistencies in the leaders' public statements. There were also allegations that another Republican congressman, Jim Kolbe, had improper conduct with at least two teenage male pages, but federal investigators absolved Kolbe of any wrongdoing in the case.
The scandal led to Foley's resignation from Congress on September 29, 2006. In some quarters, the scandal is believed to have contributed to the Republican Party's loss of control over Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, as well as the end of House Speaker Dennis Hastert's leadership of the House Republicans. Kirk Fordham, chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds and former chief of staff for Foley, also resigned as a result of the scandal.
Newsweeks June 7, 2010, issue's Back Story listed Foley, among others, as a prominent conservative politician who had a record of anti-gay legislation and yet was later caught in a gay sex scandal.Newsweek, 2010-06-07, p. 56
The questionable conversations, which took place between 1995 and 2005, were investigated by the FBI for possible criminal violations. In September 2008, Florida officials investigating Foley decided not to charge him, citing a lack of evidence and the expiration of the statute of limitations. The House Ethics Committee investigated the response of the House Republican leadership and their staff to earlier warnings about Foley's conduct, some of which went back several years. In early October 2006, two news organizations anonymously quoted former pages who said that they had sexual liaisons with Foley after turning 18 and 21. During this time, Foley was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, which introduced legislation targeting sexual predators and created stricter guidelines for tracking them.
Messages
Emails In 2005, Foley sent five emails to a 16-year-old former page from Monroe, Louisiana who had been sponsored by Rep. Rodney Alexander (R–LA). They were the first messages to be made public in the scandal. Among other things, Foley asked the page for his photo, his age and birthday, how school was going for him, and what he wanted for a birthday present. Foley also observed that another male page (to whom he had also written) was "in really great shape ... i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey ..." The page forwarded the emails to a colleague in Alexander's office, saying "this really freaked me out", and described Foley's request for a photo by repeating the word "sick" 13 times in a row. The page asked his colleague "if you can, please tell Rodney [Alexander] about this", and additionally mentioned a female page who had been warned about a congressman who "hit on" interns.
ABC News reported on October 5 that in 2002, Foley emailed one page with an invitation to stay at the congressman's home in exchange for oral sex. The page, who was 17 years-old at the time, declined the offer. The same report stated that he emailed another with a request for a photograph of his erect penis. Another former page reported that he saw sexually explicit emails sent to one page from his page class of 2001–2002, and learned of "three or four" pages from that class who received similar emails.
Instant messages After the initial story on the emails, other pages contacted ABC and The Washington Post, providing transcripts of sexually explicit instant messaging (IM) conversations from 2003 that Foley had with two pages who were under the age of 18 at the time. The Washington Post reported it had received its copies of the same IMs from a page who had served on Capitol Hill with the two pages to whom they had been addressed.
Another former page, Tyson Vivyan, said that he had received "sexually suggestive" messages from Foley in 1997, a month after he left the page program. A page from the class of 1998 also reported receiving explicit IMs from Foley. A page from the class of 2000 reported he chatted with Foley during the Congressman's 2000 visit to the page dormitory, and afterwards, he began receiving e-mails and IMs from Foley, which became explicit immediately after his 18th birthday.
Sources of messages and chronology In November 2005, the initial five e-mails were leaked out of Alexander's office, after the recipient (a page whom Alexander sponsored) reported them to the Congressman.
Two Florida newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, and the Fox News Channel acquired copies of these e-mails in November 2005, but decided not to publish a story. According to an editor at the St. Petersburg Times, they received the e-mails from a source in Alexander's office.
The St. Petersburg Times editors decided the exchange was probably just "friendly chit-chat". Nonetheless, they assigned two reporters to investigate in November 2005. The recipient of the e-mail refused to cooperate with the reporters, and no other pages they interviewed had complaints about correspondence with Foley. The Times revisited their investigation "more than once", ultimately choosing not to break the story.
Ken Silverstein, an editor at Harper's Magazine, said that he received copies of the five e-mails in May 2006 from a "Democratic operative". Silverstein subsequently wrote a story on the e-mails, which was cancelled due to a lack of absolute proof that Foley was anything more than "creepy". He said that his source "was not working in concert with the national Democratic Party" but was "genuinely disgusted" by Foley's behavior. Silverstein himself passed the information to other media organizations after cancelling the story.
In July 2006, a paid Republican Congressional staffer sent copies of the e-mails to several Washington media organizations through an intermediary. The organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said it received copies of the e-mails on July 21 and turned them over to the FBI that same day.
In August 2006, ABC News reporter Brian Ross received the initial e-mails from a Republican source but did not write a story for over a month because he was working on other stories.
On September 24, 2006, the e-mails were released by Lane Hudson on his anonymous blog Stop Sex Predators. Hudson was at the time employed by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). When the HRC found out about Hudson's activity during the week of October 25, 2006, it publicly fired him for misusing its resources.
The political humor blog Wonkette drew readers' attention to the posted e-mails on September 27. The next day, September 28, Ross reported on the e-mails which he had received in August.
After that initial story, two sources brought copies of more explicit instant messages to ABC News and The Washington Post. Both were former pages – the first was a Republican who would "never vote for a Democrat", and the second was a Democrat from the same class as the two pages who received the messages.
On November 20, 2015, it was revealed that Zack Stanton, a congressional page from 2001 until 2002, was the source of the transcripts provided to ABC and The Washington Post.
Physical contact In early October 2006, two news organizations anonymously quoted former pages as saying that they had sexual liaisons with Foley after they turned 18 and 21, respectively.
Visits and meetings On at least two different occasions, one in the summer of 2000 and one in 2002 or 2003, Foley allegedly visited the dormitory where pages live. On the first occasion, he drove up in his BMW automobile during a nighttime "mixer" party. Students came out of the dorm to talk with him and were warned away by an adult supervisor in the page program, who shooed them back inside.
In the second visit, Newsweek reported that Foley showed up at the dormitory after the 10 P.M. curfew, apparently drunk, and attempted to enter the building. He was reportedly turned away by a security guard.
Other meetings include a dinner with one former page, then 17, after which he invited the youth back to his hotel room and "touched his leg", and a visit by two pages in 1997 to Foley's Washington condo where they consumed pizza and soda. Another page reported that Foley repeatedly invited him out for ice cream.
Sexual liaisons Though Foley is not alleged to have engaged in sexual relations with pages during the time of their service, he allegedly had, on at least two occasions, sexual relationships with ex-pages.
In communications with one of the pages, who chose to remain anonymous, Foley appeared to emphasize that while he assessed the attractions and orientation of pages, he waited until they had left the program to engage the youth in erotic activities: "I always knew you were a player but I don't fool around with pages."
The Los Angeles Times contacted the anonymous former page, according to a report in the paper on October 8, "after others identified him as someone whose contacts with Foley went beyond graphic messages." The page said that after leaving the page program, he began receiving instant messages from Maf54, Mark Foley's chat username, that quickly became provocative in nature. According to the Times:
The ex-page said that in the fall of 2000, when he was 21 years old, he engaged in sexual intercourse with Foley at the congressman's Washington residence. According to the former page's account, "[t]he two had wine and pizza on a backyard patio and then retired to a spare bedroom."
Another former page told ABC News that Foley arranged a sexual liaison with him but only after he turned 18.
Foley's response After the initial e-mails had been publicized, Foley's office confirmed that Foley had sent the messages but said they were innocuous, and accused his election opponent of orchestrating a smear.
Shortly after being questioned by ABC about the more explicit IMs – and before they had been publicly revealed – Foley resigned from Congress. The congressman issued a statement, saying, "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent."
Kirk Fordham, chief of staff to representative and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Reynolds of New York, and former chief of staff to Foley, said that he was with Foley when ABC confronted him with the explicit IMs. Fordham said that he asked Foley if they were authentic, and that Foley replied, "Probably." According to Newsweek, Foley "knew he was finished." Fordham then visited GOP headquarters to inform Hastert and Reynolds; he returned with a one-sentence resignation letter that Foley signed. A short time later, Foley submitted his resignation to Governor Jeb Bush and left the capital.
Once the scandal broke in full, Foley had virtually no chance of staying in Congress. Hastert and Reynolds let it be known that if Foley did not sign the resignation letter, they would have sought his expulsion from the House. Polls showed him losing badly to his Democratic challenger, businessman Tim Mahoney.