Hastert Blames Media, Soros, Clinton

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/...&entry_id=9525

10/6/2006

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, fighting for his political survival, is lashing out at the news media, George Soros and even associates of former President Clinton.

Prior to his more restrained afternoon news conference, Hastert suggested there may be a backlash when Republicans learn how the Foley story came to dominate the news cycle.

"When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy,'' Hastert told the Chicago Tribune of the firestorm over Mark Foley's contacts with House pages.

"The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Demoratic operatives, people funded by George Soros,'' Hastert says in the interview published this morning.

It was ABC news who confronted Foley with e-mails last Friday which led to his immediate resigation. Soros has contributed money to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which turned over some Foley e-mails to the FBI this summer.

As for Clinton, the Tribune writes that Hastert suggested that "operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.''

"All I know is what I hear and what I see,'' Hastert told the Tribune. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then.''

However The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported today that ABC's original source for the Foley story was a Republican House aide, who has been a registered Republican since he was able to vote.

Hastert was more diplomatic in his afternoon news conference from his Illinois district, expressing how "deeply sorry'' he is that the scandal occured in the first place, and declaring that as speaker, "the buck stops here.''

Hastert went on to say he has no intention of resigning his post, and expects to stand for election and win the speakership when the new Congress convenes next year.