Update: Raw Story implies ABC News is going with “fake but accurate”:

Sources inside ABC News tell RAW STORY that the evidence of widespread misconduct by Foley is overwhelming and rules out the possibility that the entire scandal is based on a prank or a sting.

Note the idea the overall picture is correct, therefore the entire thing couldn’t be a sting. Is it me or is ABC News in denial about the gullibility and sloppiness.

Update: Let’s think about the implications of all this if it is true and Jordan Edmunds – Republican – was simply a person in on joke IMs from 2003 with Foley. It means ABC News did not perform minimal due dilligence since bloggers Wild Bill and Ms Understimating were able to get a brief glimpse at the AOL account name and find the young man in Oklahoma in a few short days. Can we assume ABC was able to get that far? Why not – they should have been able to. Then how is it they did not get the potentially damaging story that these were pranks emails – not for real? How could they miss that? And how could ABCNews miss the fact the source was a Democrat operative?

Well, there are only so many reasonable conclusions we can speculate about. Option (1): The Democrat operative could have pretended to be Edmunds and lied to a lot of people about a lot of things. But recall these IM messages came AFTER a well publicized leak regarding questionable (but legal) emails from 2005. So were these two different sources? Still, how is it ABCNews missed the real Jordan Edmunds? Option (2): Edmunds was approached about the IMs and provided them to the Democrat operative, possibly for something in return (e.g., cold hard cash, keeping quiet). This way Edmunds would pretend to be the victim to ABC News when it caught up to him. Option (3): ABCNews was so sloppy (or negligent) they printed anything they got and did no due diligence whatsoever – or were never inclinded to for other reasons.

One thing is for sure, if this was a prank used for dirty tricks, then this story is not over and the Democrats and ABCNews have a lot of explaining to do to America. Because what happened was nearly the equivalent of yelling ‘fire’ in a theatre. Peoples’ lives have been trampled in the stampede of a media feeding frenzy. And that is real damage to a person’s well being and livilihood. End Update

Drudge is now claiming the explicit emails were only a Page prank that got into the hands of democrat political operatives. This may be a case of pure BDS blindness setting. It may also be the case where Rogers and Aravosis and CREW screwed themselves and the Democrats. It now makes sense why someone might hold onto the IMs – as a memory of a joke. Apparently the young man exposed by Passionate American is giving up the ghost (which is great news). I do regret assuming they had outed a young child victim. But my fatherly instincts are reasonable. What excuse do the Democrats have! Anyone doubt the timing of the Drudge headline with Hastert presser? Not me.