[JURIST] The US Attorney's office in Washington, DC has sent a letter to US House of Representatives counsel Geraldine Gennett asking her to save records from the office of former Congressman Mark Foley [JURIST news archive], who resigned last week at the outset of an e-mail sex scandal involving congressional pages. A US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] official who spoke on condition of anonymity has nonetheless said the action doesn't necessarily portend further activity potentially involving search warrants and subpoenas, although those can follow in circumstances like these. The official would not identify precisely which records prosecutors asked to be saved. At a news conference Tuesday, Foley attorney David Roth [PBP profile] said that Foley had undertaken to co-operate with the evidence-gathering process: “Mark has absolutely agreed on his own and with our counsel not to do anything with any computer, not to delete any messages.”

Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned September 29 when his online interactions with the pages became public. The FBI [official website] is conducting a preliminary inquiry to determine if Foley violated any laws during his internet contacts with the teenage boys. Bloomberg has more.