(Edited to reflect release of actual WaPo article, and not the Drudge piece upon which this post was originally based.)
The Washington Post gives us the week's big scoop -- emails suggesting that DeLay personally pressured Enron lobbyists to contribute corporate funds toward winning the Texas state legislature.
In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.
DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.
The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.
The big news is not so much the direct link between DeLay and Enron, but the efforts to infuse corporate funds into the state races. Texas law explicitly prohibits such donations, and a wide-ranging investigation by a Texas DA threatens to put many people behind bars. But is DeLay one of them?
Roll Call reported that DeLay has gotten lawyered up (subscription only):
DeLay has rehired former Rep. Ed Bethune (R-Ark.), currently a lawyer with the firm Bracewell & Patterson, to represent him against an ethics complaint filed by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas), DeLay aides said.
Bethune was DeLay¹s lawyer in 2000 after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee filed a civil-racketeering lawsuit against the Texas Republican, and he also defended former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) during the latter part of his ethics battles with House Democrats.
Meanwhile, in Austin, sources close to the Texas Republican said DeLay has hired two criminal-defense attorneys, Bill White and Steve Brittain, to represent him in an investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is probing the activities of a DeLay-founded PAC during the Texas 2002 legislative races.
District Attorney Ronnie Earle is investigating the use of corporate money to retake the Texas legislature, which then did its redistricting dirty deal. A DeLay indictment was seen as increasingly unlikely as the investigation dragged on, since DeLay probably
covered his tracks well.
DeLay's lawyers Bill White and Steve Brittain, both of Austin, said that they have been meeting with prosecutors since DeLay hired them several weeks ago.
After 20 months, White said prosecutors have no evidence of DeLay committing any crime. He said DeLay created the Republican majority committee but others ran it.
"He reads his name in the newspapers every day as a target of investigation because he came up with the concept," White said. "It's like coming up with the idea of the Boy Scouts and having a troop go bad."
There's no doubt DeLay was involved, the question is whether Earle has the evidence to indict DeLay.
DeLay has not been named as a target of the investigation. The prosecutor has said he is focused on the activities of political action committees linked to DeLay and the redistricting effort. But officials in the prosecutor's office say anyone involved in raising, collecting or spending the corporate money, who also knew of its intended use in Texas elections, is vulnerable.
Documents unearthed in the probe make clear that DeLay was central to creating and overseeing the fundraising. What the prosecutors are still assessing is who knew about the day-to-day operations of TRMPAC and how its money was used to benefit Texas House candidates.
It looks like DeLay will be making much more use of those criminal defense attorneys.
(This is just one of three high-profile criminal scandals in which DeLay or his cronies are involved. It's looking more and more like Dan Rostenkowski's final days in the House.)