Kolbe’s conduct with pages suspected

WASHINGTON – The House committee looking into allegations that former congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., had improper contact with male former pages has been asked by lawmakers overseeing the page program to look into allegations involving a second lawmaker, House sources said Tuesday.

Members of the Page Board sought the review after news reports last week that the Justice Department had opened a preliminary inquiry into a camping trip that Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., took with male former pages in 1996. That report sparked a conference call Monday among board members.

But because the Page Board, which consists of three House members and two senior House officials, does not have the authority to investigate members of Congress, the matter was turned over to the House ethics committee, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

“It was about other allegations and I’d like to leave it at that,” Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., a member of the Page Board, told reporters Monday as he exited a closed-door meeting of the ethics panel. “Let me just say” that the allegations are “not about Mr. Foley,” he said. “It’s only been allegations.”

It was not clear what allegations the board was concerned about. But the Washington Post has learned of a potentially inappropriate incident involving Kolbe and a male page. The man recently told the House clerk’s office and the FBI about an encounter with the Arizona Republican that occurred about five years ago when he was 16, according to someone familiar with the man’s account. The page told authorities that he was “uncomfortable with a particular social encounter” that involved physical contact when he and Kolbe were alone, the source said Tuesday.

The incident was not reported at the time, said the source, who emphasized that the encounter was based on the perception of a teenager five years ago.

Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, will retire this year.