BATON ROUGE - U.S. Rep. Richard H. Baker, R-Baton Rouge, issued the following statement today in support of Speaker Hastert on the issue of former Rep. Mark Foley’s behavior:

"First of all, Congressman Foley's behavior was unconscionable, reprehensible, and beneath contempt. But some of the clamor being raised in criticizing Speaker Hastert over this matter has, to my mind, been outrageous, unfair, and at times outright misleading.

“An Advocate editorial this week, for instance, alleges an ‘institutional coverup’ - a charge that is as ridiculous as it is irresponsible based on the facts we currently know. Similarly, this week a liberal attack-dog outfit calling itself America Family Voices placed ‘robocalls’ in my district accusing Republican leaders of having ‘covered up for a child sex predator’ and proclaiming that ‘the answer is arrests, resignations, and a new Congressional leadership.’ In this, and in other commentary, I see a misleading attempt to lump together and blur the lines of an inappropriate email exchange that was known to Congressional leaders and the disgusting and sexually explicit instant messages that the evidence shows were not known. Consequently, if the purpose of these robocalls was to arouse anger, I can report that they certainly accomplished that, but not in the way they intended. In fact, they have backfired, as some nine out of 10 constituent callers to my office, seeing through this blatant over-the-top politicization of the issue, have expressed solidarity with the Speaker and outrage at the calls themselves.

“Based on the facts that I have seen, I have confidence in Speaker Hastert and believe he acted as best he could to address this problem in light of the information presented to him. In retrospect, is it possible more might have been done to unearth all the facts in this case? Sure. But I would demand to know from all those critics with 20-20 hindsight just how they would have gone about discovering the private communications sent by a sitting member of Congress to former pages no longer in Washington.

“What we know now is that when the parents of a Louisiana teenager had legitimate concerns about the inappropriateness of what was called an 'overly friendly' email exchange with their son, Congressman Foley was confronted, agreed to stop, and reportedly gave strong assurances of his innocent intent. Then, last Friday, when the more lurid and vulgar instant messages came to light, showing that Mr. Foley had lied about the extent of his behavior toward pages, he was immediately asked to resign and did so. I can't imagine anyone could have suspected such vile behavior, and obviously if the Speaker had known about these other messages he would have taken the prompt corrective action he took last week. But somebody knew about them, perhaps as long as three years ago, and, what's more, knew that they represented behavior that put other young people at risk. And I believe the Speaker has acted correctly in calling for an investigation to find out who knew, when they knew, and why they didn't act sooner to protect the innocent.

“I remain strongly supportive of the Speaker and have communicated that support to him. There has not been a presentation of any facts that should lead a reasonable person to have doubts about his performance. Nevertheless, Congresswoman Pelosi has stated that all Republican leadership should be put under oath to determine what they knew and when they knew it. If that happens, I think the same requirement should be made of Democrat leadership. The heart of the Democrats’ accusation is that Republicans knowingly covered up Mr. Foley’s vile actions and risked the safety of pages all for political purposes - a horrible act, if true. However, somebody clearly knew about these instant messages and, for whatever reason, stayed silent for three years, and the whole point of an investigation will be to find out who and why. When we find out, I imagine it will be an equally horrific discovery. And time will tell.”