By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

Five months ago, the third-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House gave U.S. Rep. Mark Foley nearly $5,000.

The contributions by U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., were part of a nearly $48,000 blast of campaign money poured into Foley's re-election campaign by House Republicans through the summer - after some Republicans in Congress claim the two ranking House GOP leaders had been told of the problem that now has led to Foley's resignation.

Blunt, the House majority whip and one of the most lucrative fund-raisers in Congress, had no knowledge about Foley's alleged inappropriate messages with former congressional pages, or that other Republicans in the House knew about them, according to his spokeswoman.

Burson Taylor Snyder, communications director for Blunt, said the Southwest Missouri congressman learned of allegations that Foley sent suggestive e-mails, and later more graphic instant messages, to a 16-year-old male page only after the story became public last week. Foley, who was co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, resigned Friday.

"He had no prior knowledge," Taylor Snyder said of Blunt. "He was not involved in any of the conversations (that took place before the news became public) with respect to the Foley matter."

Blunt contributions

House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader John Boehner, who beat Blunt for that position in February, have not said when they specifically learned of the allegations.

Hastert said Monday that he was not aware there had been a complaint against Foley until the news broke last week, but that his staff knew about the problem last fall.

But Boehner and U.S. Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., said they spoke with Hastert this past spring about the problem after learning about it from U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who learned of Foley's messages from the page's parents nearly a year ago.

Reynolds is head of the House Republican election effort.

Whether Hastert or Boehner knew about the matter before April 28 is not clear.

That's when Blunt's Rely on Your Beliefs political action committee gave Foley two contributions totaling $4,999.

In all, Foley, who previously had collected only $5,000 from Republican leadership PACs in September 2005, received $42,999 in 13 donations from 11 GOP leadership PACs between April 19 and June 29. Reynolds' PAC, Together for Our Majority, gave Foley $5,000 on May 10.