Correction appended Aug. 6, 2009
Scandal: Pled guilty to disorderly conduct
How he was outed: Arrest record, court records
The Washington-based newspaper Roll Call broke the news that, more than two months earlier, then Idaho Senator Larry Craig had been arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, before pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. The record of Craig's arrest flew beneath the radar of the local and national media, but when Roll Call reported the sordid details on Aug. 27, 2007, it exploded into the headlines. According to the police report, Craig entered an airport bathroom, tapped his foot, gestured with his hand and moved his foot beneath the bathroom partition, pressing it up against the foot of an undercover officer. "I recognized this," read the police report, "as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct." It wasn't until 19 days after the court had filed Craig's guilty plea that the media caught wind of the scandal. Less than a week later, Craig announced his intent to resign (though he later recanted that statement and said he would serve out the remainder of his term).
The original version of this story misidentified the publication to break the news of Craig's arrest. It was Roll Call that was first to report on the story in August 2007, not The Hill.