WASHINGTON — The website that revealed the e-mail flirtation that ended Rep. Chris Lee’s political career published more allegations Friday about the former lawmaker from Amherst, saying he corresponded with a transsexual and a transvestite prostitute he encountered on Craigslist.

Gawker, the gossip blog that published a now-infamous shirtless photo of Lee that led to his downfall, said it initially received separate e-mails from two transgender individuals who offered descriptions of their e-mail contact with the lawmaker. In subsequent e-mails over 10 days between Gawker and the two, Gawker said it obtained more details about the e-mails they exchanged with Lee.

“One sent us an ad that Lee allegedly posted on Craigslist in search of trans women; the other sent us a

never-before-seen photo that she says Lee sent her after they started chatting by e-mail,” Gawker reported.

Gawker also reported it had spoken with one of the transgender individuals, described as a “pre-op transgender woman from Arlington, Va.” that it identified as “Fiona.”

“When we spoke to Fiona by phone, she sounded entirely genuine,” Gawker reported. “She told us that she’d corresponded with Lee by e-mail several times and he told her that he’d dated a transsexual woman while ‘in college in California.’ (Lee went to business school at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.)”

Both the transgender individuals eventually broke off contact with the website.

Gawker also posted the new photo, which shows a man whose face is blacked out but who is in a shirtless pose similar to the earlier shirtless Craigslist photo of Lee.

Lee resigned Feb. 9 only hours after Gawker posted its initial shirtless picture of the congressman along with some of his e-mail banter with a 34- year-old Maryland woman.

The speed of Lee’s resignation surprised many in Washington and in Buffalo, but Friday’s Gawker story by Remy Stern suggests that the tales the two transgender individuals tell could shed some light on the matter. “Taken together, they present a possible explanation to those who have wondered why such a tame ‘sex scandal’ forced Lee’s hand so quickly,” Stern’s story said.

Lee did not immediately respond to e-mails that The Buffalo News sent him seeking comment.

Gawker said Fiona told the gossip blog about a “casual encounters” ad posted on Craigslist on Jan. 14 — the same day Lee replied to an ad from Yesha Callahan, 34, the woman whose contact with Gawker led to Lee’s resignation.

What’s more, the ad that Fiona sent to Gawker echoes some of the wording in the e-mail Callahan received, and included the same photo Callahan received, although this time edited to remove Lee’s face.

“Sexy Classy guy for passable TS/CD-m4t -39 (Cap Hill),” the headline said. (“TS” stands for transsexual, while “CD” is short for cross-dresser).

And the ad itself said: “Very fit classy, successful guy. 39, 6ft 190lbs, blond/blue. smooth hard body. Looking for a sexy ts/cd that i can spoil. I promise not to disappoint.”

Craigslist ads are removed from the website after seven days, but Gawker was able to find a cached version on Google that showed the ad’s headline.

Fiona, who, like Callahan, identified herself as 34 and black, said she exchanged several e-mails with Lee before finding out who he was just as Callahan had: by posting his Gmail account into Facebook and doing a search.

Fiona said she told Lee she knew who he was on Jan. 21 — the very day Lee told his staff his Gmail account had been hacked. Gawker pressed Fiona for more details, but she got cold feet about her interactions with the website.

“She was worried about being unmasked,” Stern wrote. “And after corresponding with us for more than a week, Fiona went silent.”

Separately, Gawker received an e-mail from someone it called “Holly.”

“The first thing Holly sent us was a never-before-seen picture of Chris Lee’s now-familiar torso and red Blackberry,” Stern wrote. “She edited the picture to obscure the Congressman’s face, however, and printed her e-mail address over his chest.”

(Gawker removed the e-mail before publishing that picture Friday).

“If we wanted to publish the unedited image, Holly explained, we’d have to pay her for it,” Stern wrote.

Gawker then determined that Holly was a prostitute, finding her e-mail address on an escort service website — a fact that Holly later confirmed to the website.

“A man using Lee’s e-mail address had responded to a ‘Trans for Men’ ad she’d posted on Craigslist,” Stern wrote.

Gawker offered to pay Holly for the full photo of Lee and the e-mails Holly exchanged with him, but over the course of a week, she grew reluctant.

“I kinda feel sorry for him at the moment,” she said in one of her last e-mails to Gawker.

jzremski@buffnews.comnull