Sen. Larry Craig’s Guilty Plea Is Latest Blow To Republican Party

WASHINGTON - Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was arrested in June by a plainclothes officer investigating complaints of lewdconduct in a restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Roll Call newspaper reported Monday.

The three-term senator pleaded guilty in Hennepin County Court to disorderly conduct, was fined $575 and given a 10-day jail sentence, which was stayed, Roll Call reported. Police Sgt. Dave Karsnia wrote in his report that he took a seat in a stall and saw Craig "look through the crack into my stall" repeatedly. Craig took a seat in an adjoining stall, and "moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area," Karsnia wrote in his report, Roll Call reported. "Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times," Roll Call said, summarizing the officer's report. Karsnia wrote that after he arrested the senator, Craig handed him a business card that identified him as a U.S. senator and said, "What do you think about that?" Craig, who is up for re-election next year, on Monday quit his job as co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Craig's hometown newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, reported today that the "June 11 encounter was similar to an incident [allegedly in 2004] in a men's room in a Washington, D.C., rail station described by a Washington-area man to the Idaho Statesman. In that case, the man said he and Craig had sexual contact."

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