By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006

Likable and popular with female pages, a committed Republican who even as a teenager knew how to parlay chance meetings into political friendships, Jordan Edmund has emerged as a key figure in the Foley page scandal.

The former House page has been targeted by conservative blogs as the young man on the receiving end of former representative Mark Foley's sexually explicit online instant messages, which have engulfed the GOP in a scandal that could affect the outcome of the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

Edmund has hired a lawyer, Stephen Jones, who will not acknowledge whether his client was the one who corresponded extensively with Foley for nearly a year. Jones said he is going public with his client's name to help Edmund fend off conservative attacks and a barrage of media inquiries. He said he will represent Edmund when he is interviewed early next week by the FBI.

"I did not discuss the messages with him," Jones said. "I'm not saying they're his. At this time I don't know."

Jones declined to discuss his client's involvement in disclosing the instant messages to the news media.

"To me that's a side issue," he said. "The issue is whether Congressman Foley or anyone else violated the law, not whether Jordan had good judgment or not."

A student at the University of California at Berkeley, Edmund has taken time off this year to serve as deputy campaign manager on Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr.'s campaign for Oklahoma governor. Edmund contacted Jones, a well-known Oklahoma City trial lawyer and Republican Party member who was appointed to represent Timothy McVeigh after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Jones said he believed fellow Republicans referred Edmund to him.

The message transcripts show a humorous, sometimes self-conscious high school student who showed an easy familiarity with Foley. Engaged in a typical round of teen dances and lacrosse games, he at one point asked the congressman for help getting into a fundraiser for Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).

Cunningham, who resigned from the House last year after pleading guilty to taking bribes, was Edmund's sponsor in the 2002 page program.

Edmund's MySpace entry, where he goes by "EDMO!," also mentions lacrosse and dancing among his interests. But chiefly, he wrote, "Politics is my passion; I love the game . . . I grew up all over the place but I call San Diego home."

In the instant messages, Foley mentions a San Diego meeting with the former page to whom he is writing.

In the section headed "Who I'd like to meet," Edmund says: "I don't know, but I do know who I don't want to meet. Stupid people, people who don't like politics (politicians make your [expletive] laws)."

Edmund's allegiance to the GOP, say some, raises one of the biggest questions about him: Why would a young man with seemingly such a bright future in the Republican Party save messages so potentially damaging to it?

"He's a very personable guy and . . . certainly a rising star," said one page who served with Edmund in 2002 and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The page said Edmund was known among some fellow pages that year for boasting of his friendship with Foley.

In recent days, some blogs have published reports that the exchanges were a prank and that the teen in the messages, who seems uncertain about his sexual orientation, was actually trying to solicit sexually suggestive messages from Foley.

In daily online exchanges with fellow former pages over the last week, the former page who served with Edmund said, "Someone commented that if it was indeed a prank then it's very upsetting and disappointing that Jordan would do that. It would have been insensitive to Foley's sexual orientation."

Jones, Edmund's lawyer, said: "It was not a prank, not a practical joke, that pages played on a congressman."

Edmund "demonstrated integrity" by agreeing to cooperate in the investigation, Jones said. "I don't think Jordan intended for any of this to become public.

"I think he'd like to have his privacy respected. I told him I thought he was a victim."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.