Delay Indicted

Ari Gold

Ari Gold

2
Indicted DeLay leaves House leadership post


The second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, said on Wednesday he would step aside temporarily from his leadership post following an indictment on a campaign-finance charge.

A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, indicted DeLay on a single felony conspiracy charge related to fund-raising activities by a political action committee he created, CNN and the Austin American-Statesman newspaper reported.

"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County District Attorney today," DeLay said in a statement.

Republican Party rules require DeLay to step aside in response to an indictment, although he can remain in Congress.

DeLay dismissed the charges as having "no basis in the facts or the law."

"This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat," he said in a statement.

DeLay represents a Houston-area district. He has been under investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle for possible illegal fund-raising and use of corporate funds by his Texans for a Republican Majority committee, or TRMPAC.

DeLay's lawyer, Bill White, said in a quote reported by CNN: "It's a skunky indictment if they have one. Like a dead skunk in the middle of the road, it stinks to high heaven."

DeLay's lawyers will hold an afternoon news conference in the Texas capital Austin, where the grand jury met, the American-Statesman reported.

Texas law generally prohibits corporate money from being used for campaign activities.

On September 8, TRMPAC and lobby group Texas Association of Business were indicted on charges of illegally funneling corporate donations into the 2002 elections for Texas Legislature.

Three men -- John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren Robold -- with links to DeLay and the committee were indicted last year in the case and are awaiting trial. They were charged with accepting a total of $600,000 in illegal corporate contributions.

TRMPAC's money and expertise helped Republicans win control of the Texas Legislature for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

At DeLay's urging, the Legislature then conducted a controversial remapping of congressional districts that resulted in more Republicans from Texas being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

DeLay has denied any wrongdoing, saying he was not involved in TRMPAC's day-to-day activities.

DeLay has repeatedly accused Earle, a Democrat, of conducting a political witch hunt. DeLay met with Earle several weeks ago to explain his limited role in the committee.

The grand jury, whose proceedings are not open to the public, has focused in recent days on DeLay's possible role in one particular transaction, the American-Statesman reported. The newspaper said if convicted on the conspiracy charge, DeLay would face a sentence of up to two years.



In September 2002, Colyandro, TRMPAC's executive director, sent a blank check to Ellis, who was DeLay's primary fund-raiser in Washington. According to a money-laundering indictment against the two men, Ellis is accused of having the Republican National Committee launder $190,000 of corporate donations into noncorporate money that was distributed to seven candidates for the Texas House of Representatives.



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dirty

dirty

EOG Master
<!--StartFragment --> [font=arial,helvetica]Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005 10:27 p.m. EDT[/font]


What embattled House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay has been accused of doing is "what happens every hour of every day in American politics - it happens all the time," said top political guru and former Clinton advisor Dick Morris.

Morris, the chief architect of some questionable Clinton-era campaign practices, called "really gross" some of DeLay's tactics in manipulating the 2002 elections so he could "finagle the [congressional] district lines and guarantee a whole bunch of extra Republican seats."

Appearing Wednesday night on Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes show, Morris said proving the case against DeLay would require a large paper trail, which he does not believe exists. Morris added "everything that DeLay said about [Texas state prosecutor Ronnie] Earle is absolutely accurate. This guy is not just a loose cannon, he's a loose hand grenade."

After a tirade by co-host Alan Colmes - who insisted that Earle is bipartisan and known as "Mr. Clean" - Morris chided Colmes, saying, "I know Texas politics and you don't.

"There are good prosecutors and there are crazy ones. This guy makes Garrison - the guy who made that whole deal about the Kennedy assassination - look like a model of respectability," Morris said.

Asked by co-host Sean Hannity if Earle is "too political and too personal to prosecute - does he have any credibility?," Morris said: "I don't think he'll have much credibility, I think DeLay will beat the charge.

"But did DeLay do what they said he did?" Morris asked, rhetorically. "Probably."

 
dirty

dirty

EOG Master
IF A REPUBLICAN WERE DOING THIS TO A DEMOCRAT




Oh ... the howls of anguish you would hear from the media.

Here's the story. When Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle got that first indictment against Tom Delay he made a bit of a mistake. He indicted Delay for a crime that did not exist. The law that would have made Delay's alleged activities a crime was not passed until a year or so after Delay's actions! For those of you who attended government schools, this would be an ex post facto law, and is unconstitutional.
So, when Earle figured out that he had mightily screwed up he rushed back to a brand new grand jury and managed to get yet another indictment! This time he used the very same fact situation to get an indictment -- this time for money laundering. Now, a judicious mind might ask if the fact situation led to an indictment for money laundering why didn't he go after that in the first place?

Guilty? Don't know. If he is, remove him from office and flog him. One thing I do know however, if this were a Republican prosecutor and a Democrat majority leader the media would be howling with outrage.
 
dirty

dirty

EOG Master
Looks like Ronnie Earl is a real piece of work......He is on a witchhunt and the Truth is slowly coming out.....This doesn't even mention that he has siged a Movie deal and has allowed a Movie crew to film the investigation of Delay for the last 2 years......He had to come up with charges or be laughed out of Texas especially after he let the cameras in the Grand jury room and they spent all that time Filming over the last 2 years



Now check this out about the trumped up charges




<!--StartFragment --> You've heard this one, haven't you? Well, maybe not. I'm not sure --- just guessing --- but this won't make it to the Washington Post or the New York Times, unless you find it buried in the lower inside corner of page 25. It's about the foreman of the Texas grand jury that returned that first indictment on Tom Delay. The foreman's name is William Gibson. He is in his mid-70s. Yesterday morning he told our Austin affiliate KLBJ that he had made up his mind to indict Tom Delay long before he heard one piece of evidence presented by prosecutor Ronnie Earle. And why was he determined to indict Tom Delay? Because, it seems, he didn't like some campaign advertisements that Delay ran in the newspapers during his last reelection campaign. Here's what Gibson told
KLBJ:

"All this came out way before i was on the grand jury, these (ads)
were in your paper, in Austin paper, everyone else's paper, they was
flooding the market around here. But those were way before i ever
went on the grand jury and my decision was based upon those, not
what might have happened in the grand jury room."

So .. here you have the foreman of the first grand jury to indict Delay making a rather astonishing admission that his decision was made on the bases of campaign ads he just didn't like.

Wait! There's more!

We learned yesterday that last Friday Ronnie Earle made what some people call a frantic attempt to get yet another grand jury to indict Delay on new charges; this after he learned that his first indictment was fatally flawed. The second grand jury returned what is called a "no-bill." That is, they refused to return an indictment. The procedure is for a no-bill to be made public the day it is returned. This didn't happen. It was returned last Friday, and only made public on Wednesday of this week.
Some excuse is being floated about not finding a judge to sign it. So ... while this no-bill was sitting around waiting for a judge's signature, Earle rushes to yet another grand jury on Monday ,,, a brand-spanking new grand jury. He presents the same evidence to this grand jury that he gave to the grand jury on Friday. The new grand jury didn't know, however, that the Friday grand jury had refused to return an indictment. The no-bill, which should have been public by then, was mysteriously sitting around waiting for someone to find a judge with a pen. The new grand jury then returns an indictment for money laundering.
 
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