Tom Davis Refuses to Take Action on Foley!

Yesterday, Andrew Hurst Democratic candidate for Congress (VA-11) issued a statement asking Tom Davis, Chairman of Government Reform and Oversight Committee and former Chairman of the NRCC to do the appropriate thing and take action and due diligence on the Foley pedophilia scandal. Tom Davis has yet to even issue a response. (for the record, I e-mail Nick Meads Tom Davis’s campaign manager asking him for a statement, and received no response).

Here are the four specific actions that Tom Davis was asked to take.

1. Immediately disclose any personal knowledge you had of Rep. Foley's electronic communications. Various members of the Republican leadership knew of the illicit emails and did nothing. As a committee Chairman and former head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, you must have been privy to these conversations. What, exactly, did you know and when did you know it?

2. Call for the immediate resignation of Republican leaders like Tom Reynolds and Dennis Hastert who knew about the illicit communications for years but failed to investigate. Those who put politics ahead of the safety of children do not deserve to serve in Congress. Don't you agree?

3. Use your position as Chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee to open a full and complete investigation to determine who knew what and when. You had no qualms issuing a subpoena to Terri Schiavo as she lay on her death bed. Will you subpoena Hastert, Reynolds and others who failed to protect underage pages from a sexual predator?

4. Demand that National Republican Campaign Committee Chair Tom Reynolds donate to charity any funds given by Rep. Foley to the NRCC. As NRCC chair, you accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mark Foley. Will you call on Rep. Reynolds to donate those funds?

I would like to point you now to an independent website tomdavistruth.com which points out that Tom Davis should have known about Foley’s problems.

According to Roll Call: “nearly a dozen House GOP lawmakers and staffers have acknowledged that they knew of the initial batch of non-sexually explicit messages from Foley to a 16-year-old former House page, some of them for a year or more.
Tom Davis likely was one of the first to know. Davis worked closely at the NRCC with Reynolds especially in 2001-2002, since Davis would end his term at the end of the cycle in 2002. Davis was grooming Reynolds to head the NRCC after Davis would leave. Presumably this inner circle of high-level Republicans who knew about Foley would have included Tom Davis, since during that election year they worked intensely together and since this news would have a potentially devastating effect on their fund raising challenge.

The question to ask now is, when will Tom Davis take action, when will he declare what he knew and when (I hope he’s not waiting until GOP leadership straightens out their story), will he call for Hastert to resign, and will he use his power to investigate (he does in fact have jurisdiction).

Nate de la Piedra is the Online Outreach Coordinator for the Andrew Hurst for Congress 2006 Campaign. The ideas expressed herein belong to Nate de la Piedra and do not necessarily represent those of Andrew Hurst, his advisors, staff, or "The Campaign".