Sweet blog scoop: Hastert team to testify this week in Foley scandal probe.

The House ethics committee investigation of the House page program–in the wake of the Mark Foley page sex scandal–this week is poised to hear testimony from key staffers of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and perhaps the speaker himself.

The testimony is crucial in determining if the speaker’s team first learned of Foley’s “overly friendly” overtures to pages in November, 2005–as the speaker claims–or years earlier, as a former Foley chief of staff claimed. A special investigative subcommittee of the panel, officially named the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct started work on Oct. 4.

Key Hastert staffers: Chief of Staff Scott Palmer; Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Stokke and Ted Van Der Meid, chief in-house counsel.