Here's an overview that attempts to pull the entire Tom DeLay mess together. I've been following the story over at
Political Physics for almost a year now, and have some details in the various links that you may not have seen anywhere else, especially concerning his indicted henchmen. The Hammer is going down, sooner or later. You will note the various scandals really are interrelated.
Tom DeLay is up to his ears in legal heat. There are on-going investigations into illegal donations to and from his two PACs, and
one trial has just started in my hometown of Austin, TX, where Ronnie Earle, the honest-to-God HONEST Disrict Attorney, is prosecuting the case that it is hoped will bring down this heavy-handed manipulator who thinks he's above the law.
... Democrats argued that the treasurer of a committee formed by House Republican Leader Tom DeLay broke the law by using corporate money to get GOP legislative candidates elected.
"This case is about basic laws protecting the integrity of the political process," attorney Cris Feldman said in opening statements on behalf of five Democrats who lost legislative races to Republicans in 2002.
GOP victories that year gave the Texas House its first Republican majority since the 1870s and propelled Rep. Tom Craddick to speaker. Craddick and DeLay later pushed a redistricting plan through the Legislature that resulted in today's commanding GOP advantage in the state's congressional delegation.
This is directly related to
the original ethics complaint against DeLay that was filed in response to DeLay's illegal use of federal resources to interfere in a state legislative process. To continue,
The five Democrats are suing Bill Ceverha, treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority (a.k.a. TRMPAC - ed.). They contend the organization used $600,000 in corporate money for political purposes and did not report the money to the Texas Ethics Commission, all in violation of state election code. The use of corporate money for political purposes is illegal in Texas.
Plaintiffs' attorneys displayed in court e-mails and handwritten notes made by principals of the committee that they said proves corporate money was improperly spent.
You can find the in-depth backstory here, compiled from several news sources when his henchmen were in process of getting busted. They are presently dealing with the indictments on criminal charges, after which there will be civil charges to face. This is basically a story about a network of Repub activists that used corporate money to pay for 22 House campaigns, routed through DeLay's TRMPAC and ARMPAC. Ceverha is a "prominent Republican consultant" and a Bush Pioneer, meaning a top fundraiser. He is not charged in the criminal case involving DeLay's henchmen mentioned above, and DeLay is not specifically named in this suit. And of course his office usually declines to make a statement about any of this.
Why this is so important is that DeLay used the new-found Repub majority in the Texas lege to force a questionably legal redistricting plan that resulted in a 6 seat swing for the Repubs on a national level. You can bet they'd scream bloody murder if the Dems did that here in California. Maybe that's why Ah-nold wants to cut the deal he's trying to do as we speak. But that's another story altogether.
In the present fundraising scandal, TRMPAC raised $1.5M for Repub candidates, of which over $600,000 came illegally from corporations. From other news sources, we are told that the lawsuit alleges corporate money was intentionally used to support Repub campaigns, and the money was used to create lists of likely voters and pay for phone banks. Apparently the money was illegally laundered when it was diverted through the Repub National Committee which then disbursed it to Repub candidates. Ceverha was responsible to properly document contributions for Texas ethics officials, but for some reason didn't do it. Feldman sez "He took illegal money. He spent illegal money. And on top of that, he hid it." It seems as though both sides agree on a lot of the details; it's just that Ceverha's attorney asserts that the expenditures were legal, and that state laws were followed. His argument is countered by the assertion that Republicans are seeking to throw out the reporting system in place in Texas.
This is only one of several scandals involving a man whose nickname is "the Hammer." There is
another scandal involving the group USA Next, who published lies about the AARP and are an offshoot of the Swift Boat Liars, making very illegal payments covering Russian and European trips by DeLay, his wife, and some lobbyists. We originally broke the story
at this link. And here's the
story about the Enron donations to DeLay, also highly questionable given the illegal corporate monkeybusiness that left thousands of employees holding a dixie cup and a thread instead of a pension portfolio.
Then there's the strange effort by the Repubs to give the Texas Ethics Commission, all appointed by top elected officials (no ethical fuzziness there!) the power to quash the prosecution of a politician. A bill intended to strengthen oversight would actually create a special justice process for politicians who commit criminal acts. Talk about an elite class. They actually think they are above the law that applies to you and me. This is a blatant attempt to protect Republican felons. I wonder why Repubs and Dems alike don't come together for ethical and honest government, instead of trying to protect felonious behavior by members of their respective parties?
This is not about liberal or conservative; this is about allowing illegal activity to prevail over the rule of impartial law. As imperfect as our system is, we should NOT be doing anything to undermine what little judicial evenhandedness that we still have. Otherwise, the next time the Dems get into power, it'll be payback time and you can bet the Repubs will howl, but it won't matter, because the rule of law will be that whoever is in power gets to bend or break the rules, whether it disadvantages the other party or not. That's no way to run a political system, and guarantees chaos not that far down the road.
From a story by Scott Gold in the LA Times we are told that
"... the bill doesn't stop there. It also says that a district attorney, including the one in Austin who is overseeing the fundraising investigation, would be prohibited from continuing such an inquiry if the Ethics Committee did not agree that charges were warranted."
Counsel for the Ethics Commission sez the Commission did NOT request the legislation, and that it was the first she'd heard of it. Of course, the rub regarding the "Ethics Commission" deciding anything is that the aforementioned Craddick appoints two of the Commission, and therefore "his appointees could, in theory, play a role in determining whether legal action against him could proceed." Craddick of course sez he hasn't read anything and won't comment. Honest Ronnie, on the other hand, sez "This is a slap in the face to the public." From a related story in the NYT:
Asked whether Mr. DeLay was under scrutiny by a grand jury, Mr. Earle replied: "I have not said whether Mr. DeLay is or is not a target of any investigation by this office. I have said that anyone who committed a crime is a target of this investigation."
While Mr. DeLay has said he has nothing to fear from Mr. Earle's investigation, he has been gathering donations for a legal defense fund to deal with the grand jury inquiry. In Washington on Tuesday, Mr. DeLay described the civil trial here as "frivolous" and said, "I'm not watching it at all."
He has accused Mr. Earle, a Democrat who was first elected district attorney in 1976, of a partisan witch hunt intended to "criminalize politics" in Texas. Mr. Earle said on Wednesday that being accused of partisanship by Mr. DeLay was "like being called ugly by a frog."
From which we can only deduce that Mr. DeLay is disingenuous at best and a liar at worst. ("Not watching it" AND taking donations to deal with a grand jury investigation? That's pretty bizarre.) And that Mr. Earle draws interesting Texas analogies that may offend frog lovers everywhere, unless he's somehow making a roundabout reference to the French or some such thing, which may constitute a retort to an attack on Texas pride in some before-the-fact way.
From the same
NYT piece:In testimony this week on behalf of the five defeated Democratic candidates in the lawsuit, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter, said that Texans for a Republican Majority was "a highly sophisticated political operation" that had clearly violated state election laws.
Mr. Potter suggested he was especially disturbed by a September 2002 transaction in which the Texas committee donated $190,000 in corporate money to the Republican National Committee, which then quickly sent out checks totaling the same amount to several Texas candidates.
The indictment of Mr. Ellis alleges that he delivered the check to the Republican National Committee and provided it with the list of candidates who should receive the contributions. "It raises the obvious question whether this was money laundering," Mr. Potter said.
Eight of the donor companies were also indicted last year, including Sears, Roebuck & Company and Bacardi U.S.A., the rum manufacturer. The charges against Sears were dropped after the company agreed to cooperate in the investigation.
A little more:
Mr. DeLay was a member of the committee's advisory board and participated in a number of its fund-raising events, in which the committee sought donations from some of the nation's largest companies, including several with little obvious interest in Texas politics. Mr. DeLay's daughter was paid to organize fund-raising events for the committee.
Mr. Colyandro and Mr. Ellis were originally named as defendants in the Democratic lawsuit, but they were dropped from the civil trial this week in light of the criminal indictments.
The remaining defendant in the trial, Bill Ceverha, a former Republican member of the Texas House who was treasurer of the political action committee, testified that he had no role in day-to-day management of the committee and that major decisions were left to Mr. Colyandro.
So a Repub formerly of the FEC sez that TRMPAC has "clearly violated state election laws." and that there seems to be a possiblity that this is money laundering. Sounds like a good man to me. Not just because I think the Hammer is a slimeball, but because he really has overstepped his bounds and involved himself and others in blatantly illegal activity.
If we are to remain a nation of laws and not the jungle where whoever happens to be stronger gets to savage the opposition, then illegal activity in both parties must be thoroughly investigated, and the miscreants punished appropriately. Otherwise, if the Repubs keeps rewriting the rules to allow their extremists to indulge in illegal activity while hammering Dems, what's to prevent the Dems from doing the same thing whenever history restores them to power, whenever that may be? And if both parties engage in MAD, then little else will matter, given the amount of damage that can be done in a short time. We the people are getting screwed by the privileged political class of both parties trying to rewrite rules and laws to suit their selfish interests. That is not in the interests of liberals or conservatives anywhere, regardless of party affiliation.