House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Monday that no Republican leaders saw lurid Internet exchanges from former Rep. Mark Foley to pages and that he would have demanded the Florida Republican's expulsion if he had known about them.
"As a parent and speaker of the House, I am disgusted,"Hastert, R- Ill., told reporters after holding a meeting at the Capitol in the wake of the disclosure of the e-mails in 2003 to a page, which led to Foley's resignation last Friday. The page's home state was not immediately cited.
The speaker did not mention e-mail exchanges between Foley and another page, from Louisiana, in 2005. Other House Republicans said they told Hastert about those exchanges months ago. Hastert has not disputed those accounts.
"Congressman Foley duped a lot of people," Hastert said. "I've know him for all the years he has worked in this House and he deceived me, too."
There currently are 72 House pages, 48 selected by Republicans and 24 by Democrats, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. The Senate breakdown is 30 pages, 18 chosen by Republicans and 12 by Democrats.