Should DeLay resign

Whoever Earle is, he's got it right; both sides are corrupt. The latest being that offshore companies are getting government contracts without bids. Throw the whole slew of them out on their seats, and fire them.

Yesterday, Meghan blogged about Phil Shenon's New York Times piece on an audit of DeLay's leadership PAC, ARMPAC. When I saw the story my immediate reaction that DeLay and his handlers released the story early to take the sting out of the real news. The spin they put on it was that it involved the committee was "cleared" -- in fact that's the headline the Times put on the story. Lawyers for DeLay spun out a line that the audit involved a small amount of money, that it was a routine audit, and that they were cooperating fully with the Federal Election Commission.

Pardon me for my skepticism.

But clearly the lawyers for DeLay know much much more than what they were willing to say yesterday. Today's Washington Post gives more details, after the newspaper compared old filings with the updated ones submitted recently by ARMPAC. It's a good piece of reporting by Jeffrey Smith and Derek Willis.

Here are some findings of the Post's analysis that DeLay and his lawyers don't want people to know:

1. ARMPAC's revised filings omit $15,523 in contributions previously reported. (Psst, Post: From whom? And why? And did this money go to ARMPAC's soft money committee? Or to TRMPAC?)

2. ARMPAC's revised filings add $51,755 in expenditures not previously reported. (Psst, Post: For what?)

3. ARMPAC is carrying debt -- $5,732.90 to be exact -- for a Puerto Rico fundraiser in 2002. (Psst, DeLay beat reporters or other enterprising researchers: Let's know more about that fundraiser DeLay and company failed to disclose.) An unpaid debt at some point has to be classified as a donation, right? And if this outstanding bill is from a corporation, then it can't be made to DeLay's hard money operation. In 2002, DeLay's ARMPAC also had a soft money committee (more on that in a minute). But that committee doesn't exist anymore.

But here's the big ticket item, and one in which additional attention is needed:



The revised filings also for the first time list a debt of $121,456 from ARMPAC's regulated campaign account to a separate ARMPAC account that took in unregulated donations in those years.

Jan Baran, a Republican lawyer who specializes in campaign law, said the listing of this debt evidently means that ARMPAC improperly used unregulated campaign contributions to finance certain expenses during those years and now must pay that sum back to comply with the rules.

Unregulated contributions are typically those donated directly by corporations, unions or other wealthy donors, often in excess of the limits imposed on contributions to regulated funds. The use of unregulated contributions by federal lawmakers was prohibited by a campaign finance law enacted in late 2002, forcing ARMPAC and similar committees to disband them.

That circumstance adds a wrinkle to the issue of how ARMPAC can now redress its mistake. Essentially, its debt is to an entity that no longer exists.

Baran says he could not assess whether any of the revisions made by ARMPAC represent serious mistakes until the FEC releases a final audit report and he sees whether the errors have attracted the interest of its office of general counsel, which can bring legal action and assess financial penalties.



One final item that has my mind racing this morning:

ARMPAC's executive director is none other than the indicted Jim Ellis, who in 2002, the period covered by this audit, was deeply involved in another of DeLay's political activities -- raising corporate money for Texans for a Republican Majority PAC for state races in Texas.

Do any of these possible violations or revised filings or debt, etc. involve Ellis and TRMPAC? Inquiring minds want to know.

Maybe Smith and Willis, or Shenon and his team of researchers can look deeper on this one. Or, maybe there's a District Attorney down in Travis County who is reading the Post story and asking himself the same question.

UPDATE: Another question pops to mind: Have there been any audits or revised fiilings in Texas for TRMPAC? Hmmm.

Whoever Earle is

HOUSTON - A political committee formed by U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay broke Texas law by not disclosing more than $600,000 in mostly corporate contributions, a judge ruled in a case that adds to ethics questions swirling around the powerful Republican.

State District Judge Joe Hart in Austin made the ruling on Thursday in a lawsuit filed by five Democratic candidates defeated in 2002 by Republicans who received money from Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee founded by DeLay to help his party capture the Texas Legislature.

Hart awarded the Democrats a total of $196,660 in damages.


DeLay, the second-ranking Republican in the House, was not a defendant in the suit, which was filed against committee treasurer Bill Ceverha.

But the ruling was the latest setback for DeLay, who has been under fire recently over ethics questions involving fund-raising, foreign travel and his relationships with lobbyists. The finding could be a harbinger of the outcome of a criminal probe into the committee's activities, said the head of a campaign-finance watchdog group.

DeLay has said he was not involved in daily operations of the committee, created before the 2002 elections, and has accused Democrats of using partisan attacks to weaken him politically.

His attorney, Bobby Burchfield, said of Hart's ruling: "Tom DeLay is not mentioned anywhere in the decision, nor should he be. He wasn't involved at all in the case."

The Democrats charged that the committee did not report the corporate money and that it was used illegally, because Texas law forbids the use of corporate donations in political campaigns.

Ceverha argued that the money went toward administrative costs, not campaigns.

SHIFT IN CONTROL

The committee's efforts helped Republicans capture the Texas Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War. The shift led to a remapping of the state's congressional districts which ultimately increased the party's majority in the U.S. House.

Contributions to the committee should have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission because "they were used in connection with a campaign for elective office," Hart wrote in his decision, which followed a trial in March.

He did not rule on whether the money was raised and spent illegally, but did find that most of the campaign contributions "were not, in fact, to finance the ... administration" of the committee.

The decision was a victory for clean politics, said Joe Crews, attorney for the Democrats.

"This is the first step in upholding the integrity of the Texas electoral process," Crews said. "It sends a very clear message to corporations and lobbyists and other folks that this sort of secretive, underhanded activity is against the law."

Ceverha attorney Terry Scarborough said in a statement that Hart's decision was "wrong" and would be appealed.

"Our client was exercising his constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association," he said.

The national Democratic Party, which has made DeLay a top target in the 2006 election, welcomed the decision.

"The long arm of the law finally caught up to the rule-breaking, power-abusing Tom DeLay," spokesman Josh Earnest said. "Tom DeLay can no longer assert that the rules of law and justice don't apply to him.

Although DeLay, who represents a Houston area district, was not a defendant in the suit, he is under investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle in Austin for his part in the committee's activities.

He has not been charged, but three men with close ties to DeLay have been indicted for illegal fund-raising activities by the committee.

Hart's decision could be a harbinger of the criminal investigation because it found illegal actions by the committee, said Craig McDonald, head of Texans for Public Justice, a research group that tracks money in politics.

"I think this just bodes very badly for the criminal case and will have a major political impact on DeLay down the road," McDonald said.

DeLay angered by 'Law & Order' mention



Friday, May 27, 2005 Posted: 3:03 AM EDT (0703 GMT)




WASHINGTON (CNN) --
....The controversy centers around Wednesday's episode in which a police officer investigating a murder of a federal judge suggested putting out an all points bulletin for "somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt."