Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Other Washington Sex Scandals

Some other Washington sex scandals from the past:

- In July, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., acknowledged "a very serious sin in my past" after his Washington telephone number was linked to an escort service that prosecutors say was a prostitution ring. He went into seclusion for a week, apologized and has returned to the Senate.

Vitter was elected to fill the vacancy left by fellow Republican Bob Livingston, who quit in 1999 after acknowledging marital infidelity.

- Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned in September 2006 after his communications with former congressional pages were exposed, setting off months of recrimination during the election campaign over the stewardship of young people working on Capitol Hill. A criminal investigation continues in Florida over whether Foley tried to seduce underage boys.

- President Clinton gave evasive and misleading testimony under oath and publicly denied having sexual relations with "that woman," former intern Monica Lewinsky, only to be forced into a humiliating reversal.

He was impeached and then acquitted in a 1999 Senate trial.

- Jack Ryan dropped out of the 2004 Illinois Senate race after the release of divorce papers in which his former wife alleged he had taken her to "bizarre clubs" and asked her to have sex in front of other people.

Ryan denied that. He acknowledged only that they went to one avant-garde club in Paris where they both felt creepy. Democrat Barack Obama easily defeated Ryan's late replacement in what had been a GOP seat, and now Obama is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

- Rep. Livingston, R-La., was on the verge of becoming House speaker in 1998 when he acknowledged straying in his marriage. He resigned from Congress the next year.

-Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., was an early favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1987 when The Miami Herald reported he had spent a night and a day with a young woman while his wife was away. Hart, who had challenged the press to check on rumors of philandering, initially denounced the report as preposterous. But his liaison with Donna Rice, who had also been photographed sitting on his lap near a yacht named "Monkey Business," sank his campaign.

-Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., resigned in 1995 amid allegations he made unwanted sexual advances to 17 female employees and colleagues, solicited jobs from lobbyists for his former wife and altered his personal diaries to obstruct an ethics investigation.

-Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., lost the Democratic primary in his district in 2002 after the disappearance of former Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy. Her remains were found in May 2002 in a Washington park, and no one has been charged in her death. Condit reportedly told police that he and Levy had had an affair, although he swore in a deposition they were just friends. He denied involvement in her disappearance.

-Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was reprimanded by the House in 1990 for using his influence on behalf of prostitute Stephen Gobie. Frank admitted paying Gobie for sex - with his own money, he said - and writing a letter on Gobie's behalf.

A repentant Frank faced constituents at a meeting until they ran out of questions, saying, "I did not handle the pressures of having a public life, of being a closeted gay man, nearly as well as I should have."

He's won re-election ever since.

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