U.S. Senator Larry Craig, who agreed to resign after being arrested for allegedly soliciting gay sex in a Minnesota airport bathroom, may reverse his plan to step down if cleared of the charge, his spokesman said on Tuesday night.
"As he stated on Saturday, Sen. Craig intends to resign on Sept. 30," Craig spokesman Dan Whiting said in a statement Tuesday.
"However, he is fighting these charges and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign."
Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30 after being caught in a sting by an undercover policeman at the airport in Minneapolis in June.
Craig has said his actions in the bathroom were misinterpreted by an undercover police officer as a sexual advance.
The officer reported the lawmaker's actions fit those typical of men seeking sexual activity in the restroom.
Despite having pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor misconduct charge for which he was fined 500 U.S. dollars and placed on unsupervised probation for a year, Craig said he was not gay and had made the plea in order to hush the matter up.
He's hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.
The resignation announcement was encouraged by national Republican leaders, worried that the scandal would taint all candidates belonging to the socially conservative party in the 2008 election cycle.
Within hours of the incident's becoming public, the Senate leadership initiated an ethics inquiry, stripped him of his committee leadership positions and let Craig know he could face public hearings into his conduct if he chose to try to survive the furor.
Source: Xinhua/agencies
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