Did Rahm Emanuel lie about his knowledge of Mark Foley? Yes.
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At the height of the Mark Foley scandal in October -- when Democrats were pounding Denny Hastert and company on a daily basis for having taken no action despite knowing about the emails sent by Foley to at least one page (and for lying about their past knowledge) -- Democratic Congressman (and DCCC Chair) Rahm Emanuel went on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos (along with GOP Rep. Adam Putnam). I haven't been able to find a full transcript, but the full video is here, and this article provides an account of the segment.

All week long, Republicans had been insisting that the Foley scandal was a Democratic "dirty trick," speculating that Democrats -- specifically the DCCC of which Emanuel was the Chair -- were just as aware of the Foley e-mails as various GOP House Leaders were, and they accused Democrats (with no evidence) of being responsible for engineering the story.

Stephanopoulos explicitly asked Emanuel: "I just want to ask you plainly -- did you or your staff know anything about these emails or instant messages before they came out?"

Emanuel interrupted the question with an emphatic "no." Then, once Stephanopoulos was done with the question, this is what Emanuel replied: "George, never saw 'em . . . . "

After that answer, Putnam interjected this question: "Were you aware of them?" Emanuel replied: "Never saw them." A moment later, Stephanopoulos said to Emanuel: "So you were not aware of them, had no involvement?" Emanuel replied: "No. Never saw them. No involvement. . . ." Putnam again asked: "Was there an awareness?" Emanuel replied: "No. Never saw them. The first time I ever saw these things, right here was when Brian Ross broke the story."

When summarizing the reasons why he believed that the GOP House Leadership was guilty of poor judgment and a cover-up in the Foley scandal, this is what Emanuel said:



On Friday, the House Ethics Committee released its Report (.pdf) on this matter, and it was extremely critical of the Republican Leadership -- including just-elected GOP Minority Leader John Boehner -- for their "negligence" in failing to take steps to investigate Foley's conduct despite having ample signs that something was amiss (in particular, the e-mails Foley sent to pages).

But the Report also found that "the Communications Director for both the House Democratic Caucus and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also had copies of the emails in the Fall of 2005" (p. 76). Specifically, the Report documented that back in October, 2005, the Communications Director for the House Democratic Caucus (Matt Miller) was sent copies of the Foley e-mails, and he was very disturbed by them.

Convinced that the GOP-led House Committees would take no meaningful action, Miller sent the e-mails to various newspapers in Florida (The Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times), as well as Roll Call. He also provided copies of the e-mails to Bill Burton, the Communications Director of the DCCC (pp. 45-46).

It is now being reported by CNN that not only was the DCCC's Burton aware of the e-mails in 2005, but so, too, was Emanuel:



Did Rahm Emanuel explicitly and clearly lie during his October appearance on ABC?

Emanuel would likely say that he did not "lie," because each time he was asked whether he was "aware" of the e-mails -- which he plainly was -- he never denied being "aware" of them. Instead -- he would likely argue -- he changed the subject by denying that he ever "saw" the e-mails, a fact which appears (based on what we know) to be true (or at least not demonstrably false). Therefore, in the narrowest and most technical way, an argument could be constructed that Emanuel did not actually "lie" in his responses.

But that argument, ultimately, is nonsense. If you listen to the video, there is little doubt that Emanuel was lying in every meaningful sense of that word. He not only denied having "seen" the e-mails, but also interrupted Stephanapolous's first question about whether he was "aware" of the e-mails with an emphatic "no," and at least on one other occasion, denied not only having seen the e-mails, but also having been aware of them. Those denials were just outright false (i.e., "lies").

Independent of the question of whether Emaneul "technically lied" -- and far more important -- is the fact that Emanuel was clearly and deliberately misleading. Any reasonable person would have come away from that interview (as I know I did) with the strong impression that Emanuel was completely unaware of any e-mails sent by Foley to the pages, and that he had no reason to know anything was amiss with Foley until ABC broke the story.

In fact, Emanuel emphasized how inappropriate it was for Republican House Leadership to allow Foley, in 2005, to become the Chair of the Missing and Abused Children Caucus despite what Emanuel called the "warning signs" about Foley's behavior. But Emanuel was aware of at least some of these same "warning signs" in 2005, and he said nothing about them at the time. He was guilty of doing exactly what he was piously and indignantly accusing the GOP House Leaders of doing -- namely, knowing about the Foley e-mails to pages and taking no action.

None of this excuses or mitigates the conduct of the GOP House Leaders in the slightest. Nor does it vindicate the claim that this was some sort of "dirty trick" on the part of Democrats to sabotage GOP electoral chances. To the contrary, Miller, the House Democratic Caucus staffer, appears to have been genuinely disturbed by the emails and he took appropriate action -- he sent them to the media not in the weeks before the 2006 election, but all the way back in October, 2005, when he concluded (reasonably and, as it turns out, correctly) that the media was a far better vehicle for stopping Foley than the GOP-led House, which would protect Foley.

But what it does mean is that Emanuel was guilty of exactly what he was accusing the GOP House Leadership of. And his hypocritical, pious lectures about the "warning signs" which GOP Leaders had were dishonest at their core.

An entire essay can be written -- and probably should be -- about why things like this matter so much, but for the moment I will just make a couple of observations. I wrote a lot about the Foley scandal back in October and repeatedly argued that I thought that worse than the GOP House Leader's inaction was the obvious lies they were telling in order to protect themselves once the scandal was uncovered. For instance:



And:



But Emanuel was guilty of the same thing. Exactly the same thing. And he sat there on ABC and adopted this melodramatically concerned, earnest voice as he expressed righteous outrage that the GOP could let someone like Foley become the head of the "Missing and Abused Children Caucus" even though they had "warning signs" of Foley's conduct -- "warning signs" which Emanuel also had, even if not as many.

It's possible that the Democratic takeover of Congress can result in genuine and meaningful -- and desperately-needed -- change for our country. But it's also possible that it could result in nothing notable, that it will produce only the most marginal and politically risk-free actions, all justified by the need not to do anything too "extreme" due to a fear of harming their 2008 electoral prospects.

Which course Democrats take will be determined by whether they are guided by political figures committed to genuine change due to a conviction that such change is needed (even if that means incurring some political risks), or whether they are driven by cynical, exclusively political and dishonest Beltway operatives like Rahm Emanuel.

To compete with Republicans, Democrats need not only political idealists, but also calculating strategists who are devoted to winning. That's fair enough. But they also need to enforce some (at least) minimal ethical standards if they are to avoid becoming indistinguishable from the rotted and corrupt GOP tyrants who were just so deservedly tossed out of power. Rahm Emanuel seems to fall well below even those most minimal standards.

When you lie in bed with a Clntonite, you get horsesheads in your bed, just like the bushfamily.

They have NO standards.

All the DLC people should be eliminated from politics. Same as all Bush ties. Get rid of all the centrists/rghtwinges on that side.
They are all complicit.

Now, bravo to whoever is leakiing this stuff...gotta be someone from the left

Greenwald Wrongly Accuses Emanuel of Lying About FoleyGate
By Big Tent Democrat

Glenn Greenwald, a very fine blogger, is over the top and I think wrong when he accuses Rahm Emanuel of lying about FoleyGate. Glenn's argument goes as follows:



Absolutely not. In every meaningful sense of the word, Emanuel ducked the question in order to not lie. Ducking the question is not lying Glenn. It is really surprising to me to read a lawyer write those words. Witnesses duck and avoid questions all the time. UNDER OATH. In any meaningful sense, Glenn has misstated the meaning of lying. Emanuel expressly said he had not SEEN the e-mails. An obvious signal to anyone thinking here. What would a good questioner have asked as a followup? To me it is obvious - did you ever HEAR of the POSSIBILITY of the existence of such e-mails? From whom? What were you told? But Glenn plays the ingenue here for some reason. It is poorly done by him.

More.

And Glenn's reasoning after this really leads him to folly:



I strongly disagree, Any reasonable person would have come away thinking Emanuel was told about the e-mails but never saw them. Glenn continues:



This is just false. First, Emanuel did not run the House and could not decide who ran which committees. Second, Emanuel did not know have personal knowledge of the e-mails, no doubt he chose not to, whereas it was the DUTY of the REPUBLICAN leadership to know and see the e-mails. Rahm Emanuel had no such duty. IT is false to say, as Glenn does, that Emanuel did exactly what the GOP leadership did on this. Just plain false. Glenn should know better. More importantly, why does Glenn play the ingenue here? He writes:



It would be dishonest to argue that Emanuel taking a different approach on his ABC appearance would not have been reported any other way than as the Foley scandal being a Democratic dirty trick. Is Glenn pretending that he thinks it would have played otherwise? That Emanuel's ducking and weaving was not necessary to avoid a distortion of the story? Glenn, you are a big boy. Emanuel was not under oath, he was not pressed on his slippery answers, he was not doing anything that does not happen every day and has happpened everyday on political talk with the Media.

Your post is completely over the top. It is wrong.

More on Emanuel's Non Denial Denial
By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics

A followup to this discussion. In realtime, Bob Somerby and I had similar reactions to Rahm Emanuel appearance with George Stephanapoulos:



Folks, it is wrong to call this a lie and that is my point here.

Does Rahm's Foley Lie Matter?
By Matt Stoller, Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 12:44:03 PM EST

So surprise surprise, it turns out that Rahm Emanuel was lying about whether he knew anything about the Foley emails or IMs when he went on ABC's This Week at the height of the scandal. Sorry to move to come late to the party in terms of commenting on what I think might turn out to be a somewhat significant story. I don't like what Rahm did here. I don't think he had to do it, and I think he was wrong to do it. I'm not naive, of course. In politics you have to accept a certain level of cynicism in terms of the political operatives that run campaigns and the party. Dirty campaigning is an art, and it's more often than not the case that your side has to deal with people that are unseemly or lack integrity.

I just can't though let Congressman Emanuel's behavior pass without comment, so I'm going to quote Glenn Greenwald.



One of the main arguments that progressives must make to a cynical electorate is that both parties are not the same, that Democrats hold ourselves to high ethical standards and can be trusted to run the country. It's much harder to make this argument when people like Emanuel are highly regarded figures with esteem and power within the Democratic Party even as they cynically lie to a national audience.

There is the argument that he had to do this to win, that he had no choice but to lie to crush the Republican brand. But is that really plausible? Did Emanuel have to go on TV that day? Was there no other way to handle the Foley scandal? More to the point, was the Foley scandal the only reason the Democrats won?

I don't think we can conclusively answer these questions, but if you look at exit polls Iraq figured as large as corruption in the public mind, and clarity on Iraq - which Emanuel fought for months - has to be considered an incredibly important factor. But I'm not trying to prove that he did or didn't do a good job at the DCCC. We did after all capture Congress. What is very clear is that the level of cynicism and credibility that Democrats deserve from the electorate will ultimately relate to the level of integrity and honesty with which we conduct ourselves. And in that sense, Rahm is a problem.

I see Pie is posting something, but I like debating myself.

Ok....maybe she's not.

Alright, she did.

And herein lies a huge problem with the whole system.

I was going to go into a rant about lying politicians and the lack of integrity in the media these days... but I am just so disgusted with everything that I do not have the energy or the
clarity of thought to make it worthwhile.

Proceed, N !