This is getting interesting: [1]
Rep. Tim Mahoney paid $121,000 to a former mistress who worked on his staff and sued him after he threatened her job when she tried to end the relationship, former and current staff aides told ABC News on Monday.
Mahoney, D-Fla., won his congressional seat in 2006 after Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican, was forced to resign in the wake of a scandal involving a congressional page.According to ABC News, Mahoney, who is married, started an affair with Patricia Allen while campaigning against Foley on a morality platform. Allen came on to his staff after he won the election in 2006, but when complaints about the alleged affair surfaced, Mahoney moved Allen to the campaign staff, aides told the broadcast network.
ABC reported Allen tried to break off the affair after learning Mahoney was supposedly cheating on her and his wife with other women. In response, he threatened her job, ABC reported.
“You work at my pleasure,” Mahoney told Allen in a taped Jan. 20, 2008, telephone call played for Mahoney staffers, ABC reported.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel spoke to Mahoney in early 2007 about his personal conduct, FOX News confirmed Monday. Emanuel formerly headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the panel charged with electing Democrats to Congress.
Sources told FOX News that Emanuel did not know the woman was a staff aide or that payments were being offered to her until informed by ABC News.
“Upon hearing a rumor, Congressman Emanuel confronted Congressman Mahoney, told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly and appropriately, and urged him to do so. They had no further conversations on this topic,” an aide to Emanuel said in a statement.
Bull cookies. The idea that Rahm Emanuel was even brought in speaks to the idea that he was running cover for Mahoney. Indeed, another feed from ABC [2]puts it this way:
According to the ABC story, senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign.
Leaders like, Nancy Pelosi, for example?
Which leads us to another question: Where’d the money for the payoff come from? Campaign contributions, per chance?
The idea that this occurred in Palm, Mark Foley’s old district, raises another question; Will the Democrats, and the press be as vigorous about getting Tim Mahoney out of office as they were about Foley?
Obviously, the answer is no, since we see in the ABC story that the Democrat leadership has been trying to sweep this under the rug.
Can we depend on the press to be running stuff on this case every hour on the hour as they did in the case of Foley?
We, no, we cannot, since it’s been going on for some time now and we’re just now staring to see some mentions of it. [3]
No, this stuff is going to be swept under the rug, as it has been with EVERY Democrat scandal in recent memory.