When compared to other Congressional scandals, this one is almost quaint. A married Republican Congressman from New York, Chris Lee, sent some flirty messages to a woman on Craigslist in which he misrepresented his age and marital status and eventually sent her a shirtless photo. It’s like a scandal from the MySpace era! The guy didn’t even bother to use a fake name or anonymous e-mail address and the woman who received the messages googled him, figured out he was a married member of Congress and sent all the evidence to Gawker. Three hours later, Lee resigned from Congress, admitting he’d “made profound mistakes.” I’m sure the shirtless stuff was the tip of the iceberg, but it’s not like he was laundering money or screwing interns. (That we know of.)

Rep. Christopher Lee is a married Republican congressman serving the 26th District of New York. But when he trolls Craigslist’s “Women Seeking Men” forum, he’s Christopher Lee, “divorced” “lobbyist” and “fit fun classy guy.” One object of his flirtation told us her story.

On the morning of Friday, January 14, a single 34-year-old woman put an ad in the “Women for Men” section of Craigslist personals. “Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?” she asked, inviting “financially & emotionally secure” men to reply.

That afternoon, a man named Christopher Lee replied. He used a Gmail account that Rep. Christopher Lee has since confirmed to be his own. (It’s the same Gmail account that was associated with Lee’s personal Facebook account, which the Congressman deleted when we started asking questions.)

By email, Lee identified himself as a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist and sent a PG picture to the woman from the ad. (In fact, Lee is married and has one son with his wife. He’s also 46.)

By modern day standards, the conversation was relatively banal: No prostitutes, escorts, or madams were involved. Just good old fashioned lying and an apparent willingness to cheat on one’s wife.

The woman says she cut off contact when she searched for Lee online and concluded he’d lied about his age, occupation, and marital status. Then she forwarded us the correspondence.

Yesterday, we reached out to Rep. Lee, whose support for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and vote to reject federal abortion funding suggests a certain comfort with publicly scrutinizing others’ sex lives.

A spokesman for the Congressman confirmed that the email address belonged to Lee, and that he had deleted his Facebook account because our initial inquiry had him fretting about “privacy.”

[From Gawker, which has the texts]

Lee initially tried to use the “I was hacked” defense, popular among public figures busted for bad behavior, but it’s safe to assume that was a bogus excuse now that he’s resigned. What a lame way to throw away a government career. At least get laid or get a free apartment out of the deal.

Image credit: Gawker.