FOSSELLA MESS JUST KEEPS GETTING MESSIER AND MESSIER

Will Fossella be an excuse in Mississippi tomorrow?

Inside the Beltway Republican leaders, desperate to get Fossella and the image of drunken and hypocritical Republican congressmen with multiple wives out of the news as fast as possible, are threatening Fossella with serious criminal actions if he doesn't resign and making sure he knows there will be no financial support for him from the GOP. (Over the weekend he floated trial balloons about continuing on as a member of Congress and of even running again in November, trial balloons that were bolstered by a SUSA poll that shows Staten Island constituents still support him. Democrats are praying that he stays in the race as well.) This morning CREW called for Fossella to resign; wow, they agree with Boehner!

The serious criminal action alluded to above involves Fossella's boondoggle trips to Europe with his mistress-- at taxpayer expense. This morning's NY Daily News is all over it.

Democratic and GOP congressional officials are scrutinizing Rep. Vito Fossella's mysterious and pricey January 2003 trip to France, the Daily News has learned.

He was the sole lawmaker authorized to go-- and his mistress is suspected of joining him.

The Staten Island Republican visited La Hague, France, supposedly on a "fact-finding" mission.

Lawmakers commonly visit La Hague to tour its nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, which have 6,000 people on its payroll, making it the largest employer in the region.

But "it's highly unusual for a member to go on the France trip alone, as he did," said a committee source.

Now the question is whether Fossella was less interested in nuclear power than in fueling a relationship with retired Air Force Col. Laura Fay: Last week he admitted fathering Fay's 3-year-old daughter.

...House leaders are also eying Fossella's other overseas jaunts, since Fay is known to have traveled with him on official business more than once.

Fossella could be ordered to repay taxpayers for his whopping travel expenses if they conclude he mingled pleasure with business, sources said.

Team Fossella has refused to answer questions about the France trip, despite discrepancies in his official records.

Not that Fossella is the first Republican elected official in NY with multiple families. Way back in 1987 the Republican Party County chairman of the Bronx, state Senator Guy Velella, admitted he had two families, a legal wife and 4 children in NYC and a girlfriend and child in Albany, more conveniently situated. He was re-elected several times but was finally defeated after an unrelated criminal episode came out regarding fixed contracts and other typically GOP shenanigans.

Perhaps more damaging to Fossella's determination to rescue his political career are the reports that his wife (the legal wife, Mary Pat) is going to divorce him for adultry. The longtime "family values" Republican has been living a double lie, telling each woman that she was the only one.

A close family friend said Fossella's wife was considering divorce - and if so, planned to go after the house and custody of the couple's three children.

"She's mad," said the source, who asked not to be identified. "She wants to move on."

Fossella's court appearance for his drunken driving charges, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed.


UPDATE: VITO DOESN'T LOVE ALL WOMEN-- HE HATES HIS GAY SISTER

Self-righteous prig that he is, Mr. Two-Family Values Fossella "shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend." A vicious homophobe bordering on mental illness, Fossella "demanded housing funds be held back from San Francisco unless it repealed its domestic partnership law" and he "voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, a federal prohibition on gay marriage." Most repulsive of all-- and despite his sister and her partner having adopted twins-- Fossella "voted to prohibit any funding for joint adoptions by gay couples."