DeLay Indictment Roils House
Leader Vows to Fight Charge by Texas D.A.
Roll Call Staff
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A defiant House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) on Wednesday denied breaking any Texas law following his indictment as part of a criminal conspiracy to evade a state ban on using corporate campaign donations during the 2002 state legislative races.
The powerful Texas Republican predicted that he ultimately would be exonerated, despite having to step down from his Majority Leader post, and he blamed a “rogue district attorney” in Austin for ginning up a felony charge against him.
Dick DeGuerin, a Texas criminal-defense attorney recently retained by DeLay, said his client would seek an immediate trial on the conspiracy charges in an attempt to clear his name, possibly before the end of the year.
No details were available at press time on when DeLay would be arraigned in Austin, and Travis Country District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is leading the investigation into DeLay, did not answer questions on the issue when asked by reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
DeLay, a fixture in the House GOP leadership and a force in Washington, D.C., politics for more than a decade, savaged Earle for conducting what he described as a political witch hunt. DeLay claimed that Earle’s nearly three-year investigation into the 2002 state races was in response to DeLay’s successful plan to wrest control of the Texas Congressional delegation from Democrats. Earle himself is a Democrat.
“This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy — a reckless charge wholly unsupported by the facts,” DeLay told reporters on Wednesday. “This act is the product of a coordinated, pre-meditated campaign of political retribution — the all-too-predictable result of a vengeful investigation led by a partisan fanatic.”
DeLay, who will keep his seat in Congress while he contests the conspiracy charge, added: “This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history.”
DeLay could be sentenced to as much as two years in jail if he is found guilty of the criminal conspiracy charge. He also could be fined as much as $100,000.
With DeLay already facing a potential investigation by the House ethics committee over his relationship with former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff — who himself was indicted on federal mail and wire fraud charges last month — DeLay and other GOP leaders tried to paint him as a victim of a long-running campaign by Democrats to undermine the majority party.
“Democrats resent Tom DeLay because he routinely defeats them, both politically and legislatively,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), one of DeLay’s closest confidants in the House.
Republicans also wasted little time in beginning their own campaign to discredit Earle.
DeLay’s allies privately suggested that they would seek retribution against Earle, although DeLay himself will have no role in that effort. Charges of prosecutorial misconduct may be lodged against Earle, and a public-relations effort to discredit Earle personally had already begun on Wednesday, with GOP insiders repeatedly pointing out that Earle unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in the midst of the 1994 Senate race in Texas.
“Everything will be in play,” said one high-ranking House Republican aide. “We will throw everything we can at Ronnie Earle.”
In his own press conference in Austin following the surprising announcement of the DeLay indictment, Earle said he was just doing his duty as a law-enforcement officer and that he had no personal animosity against DeLay.
“Our job is to prosecute abuses of power,” Earle said. “Our job it to enforce the laws as written.”
Earle has been investigating whether DeLay and other Texas Republicans illegally used hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate funds to help win control the Texas Legislature during the 2001-02 election cycle. That victory helped propel House Republicans to pick up five of Texas’ seats in Congress last November and further cemented DeLay’s reputation as the power behind the throne in the House.
DeLay and two of his political operatives — John Colyandro and Jim Ellis — were indicted on Wednesday by a Texas grand jury for criminal conspiracy to make a corporate political contribution in violation of the state’s corporate donation ban.
In the indictment, DeLay, Colyandro and Ellis were charged with entering into an agreement with one another or Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee to “knowingly” make a political contribution that violated state law. DeLay served on TRMPAC’s advisory board, while Colyandro was executive director of the group. Ellis runs Americans for a Republican Majority PAC, DeLay’s federal leadership PAC.
The indictment also mentioned another prominent Republican, Terry Nelson, who was President Bush’s campaign political director, as being involved in the transaction. Nelson was not charged him with any crime.
Ellis, Colyandro and Warren Robold, a TRMPAC fundraiser, were first indicted in September 2004 on criminal charges of money laundering and illegally accepting campaign contributions from corporate donors. Ellis and Colyandro were then re-indicted on those charges this month, and were also hit with a criminal conspiracy charge at that time.
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