WASHINGTON — A Louisiana congressman and sponsor of a page who later received questionable e-mails from Rep. Mark Foley went before a House ethics panel yesterday to explain how his office handled the teenager’s complaint last fall.

Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Republican, appeared yesterday morning and said he would address reporters after testifying. He says that after he and his staff learned of the e-mails to the former page, his aides contacted the office of the House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert, a Republican of Illinois, for advice on what to do about communications that the boy’s family thought were inappropriate.

Mr. Alexander’s account — that the matter was passed on to more senior House members and top staff — has not been challenged.And his testimony is a small piece of a more confusing puzzle that puts Mr. Hastert and his aides at odds with the accounts of other top GOP lawmakers and their aides.

Some of those figures, from the majority leader, Rep. John Boehner, a Republican of Ohio, to former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl, are expected to testify shortly.

Mr. Boehner has said he discussed the Foley situation with Mr. Hastert last spring after Mr. Alexander informed him of the e-mails. So has Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Republican of New York.Mr. Foley abruptly resigned from Congress last month after he was confronted with the contents of his messages to former pages.

Republicans are bracing for testimony this week by Mr. Trandahl — a top House aide who was the day-to-day overseer of the page program until leaving Capitol Hill last year. Mr. Trandahl confronted Mr. Foley about toofriendly e-mails sent to the ex-page.

Mr. Trandahl also has handled other alleged incidents regarding Mr. Foley, including a 2001 or 2002 episode in which the Florida congressman sent e-mails described as “creepy” to a former page sponsored by Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican of Arizona. Mr. Kolbe’s office went to Mr. Trandahl, and the e-mails stopped.

Mr. Trandahl also is in position to support testimony by a former top aide to Mr. Foley, Kirk Fordham, who has told the panel that he informed top House GOP aides of Mr. Foley’s inappropriate behavior toward pages years ago. Mr. Fordham has testified about an episode several years ago in which a drunken Mr. Foley is said to have tried to enter the page dorm.

Those top House GOP aides include Scott Palmer, Mr. Hastert’s longtime top aide and confidant, who denies Mr. Fordham’s account and who is not mentioned in an account by the speaker’s office regarding the 2005 incident with the Louisiana page.

Hastert aide Mr. Palmer has yet to testify; neither has the speaker.

On Tuesday, a member of the Page Board, House Sergeant-at-Arms Wilson Livingood, which oversees the program for high school students who basically function as congressional interns, was questioned for less than two hours. He would not comment afterward.

The ethics panel also heard Tuesday from Paula Nowakowski, chief of staff to Mr. Boehner. Mr. Boehner has said Mr. Hastert told him the Louisiana page’s complaint “had been taken care of.”

Separately this week, Page Board members discussed a camping trip that Mr. Kolbe took with two former pages and others to the Grand Canyon in 1996, a congressional official said Tuesday.The trip is under review by the Justice Department.

The three lawmakers and two House officials who make up the board took no action and did not have any information beyond recent news accounts of the trip, the official said.

The only openly gay Republican in Congress, Mr. Kolbe is retiring at the end of his term. He has denied through an aide that anything inappropriate occurred during the trip.