Should DeLay resign

The DeLay Indictment
(Washington Post editorial)

Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page A22

YESTERDAY'S indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of conspiring to violate Texas campaign finance laws won't come as a surprise to anyone who's watched the Texas Republican operate over the years. In his drive to consolidate Republican power, Mr. DeLay has consistently pushed, and at times stepped over, ethical boundaries.

He is, as we said last year, an ethical recidivist -- unabashed about using his legislative and political power to reward supporters and punish opponents, and brazen in how he links campaign contributions and political actions. Among the DeLay activities that have drawn disapproval from the House ethics committee: threatening a trade association for daring to hire a Democrat; enlisting federal aviation officials to hunt for Democratic state legislators trying to foil his Texas redistricting plan; and holding a golf fundraiser for energy companies just as the House was to consider energy legislation.

Nonetheless, at least on the evidence presented so far, the indictment of Mr. DeLay by a state prosecutor in Texas gives us pause. The charge concerns the activities of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee created by Mr. DeLay and his aides to orchestrate the GOP's takeover of the Texas legislature in 2002. The issue is whether Mr. DeLay and his political aides illegally used the group to evade the state's ban on corporate contributions to candidates. The indictment alleges that TRMPAC took $155,000 in corporate contributions and then sent a check for $190,000 to the national Republican Party's "soft money" arm. The national committee then wrote $190,000 in checks from its noncorporate accounts to seven Texas candidates. Perhaps most damning, TRMPAC dictated the precise amount and recipients of those donations.

This was an obvious end run around the corporate contribution rule. The more difficult question is whether it was an illegal end run -- or, to be more precise, one so blatantly illegal that it amounts to a criminal felony rather than a civil violation. For Mr. DeLay to be convicted, prosecutors will have to show not only that he took part in the dodge but also that he knew it amounted to a violation of state law -- rather than the kind of clever money-trade that election lawyers engineer all the time.

Mr. DeLay's spokesman said this month that "to his knowledge all activities were properly reviewed and approved by lawyers" for TRMPAC. If so, the criminal law seems like an awfully blunt instrument to wield against Mr. DeLay. If not, we look forward to seeing the evidence. In the meantime, as required by party rules, Mr. DeLay has stepped aside as majority leader. Whatever happens in the criminal case, perhaps this latest controversy will cause his colleagues to rethink whether he is, in fact, the person they really want as their leader.

For G.O.P., DeLay Indictment Adds to a Sea of Troubles


By ROBIN TONER
Published: September 29, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - This is not what the Republicans envisioned 11 months ago, when they were returned to office as a powerful one-party government with a big agenda and - it seemed - little to fear from the opposition.




The indictment of Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, on Wednesday was the latest in a series of scandals and setbacks that have buffeted Republican leaders in Congress and the Bush administration, and transformed what might have been a victory lap into a hard political scramble. Republicans are still managing to score some victories - notably, Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s expected confirmation as chief justice of the United States on Thursday - but their governing majority is showing signs of strain.

In the House, Mr. DeLay's indictment removes, even if temporarily, a powerful leader who managed to eke out, again and again, narrow majorities on some difficult votes. In the Senate, Republican ranks have been roiled this week by an investigation of Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who is under scrutiny for his stock dealings from a blind trust.

Moreover, the string of ethical issues so close together - including the indictment and continuing investigation of the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was close to Mr. DeLay, and the arrest of David H. Safavian, a former White House budget official who was charged with lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Mr. Abramoff - is a source of anxiety in Republican circles.

"Even though DeLay has nothing to do with Frist, and Frist has nothing to do with Abramoff, how does it look? Not good," said William Kristol, a key conservative strategist and editor of The Weekly Standard.

At the same time, the White House is grappling with a criminal investigation into whether anyone leaked the name of a C.I.A. operative, an inquiry that has brought both Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, before a grand jury.

And the administration is struggling to steady itself after the slow response to Hurricane Katrina and defend itself against sweeping accusations of incompetence and cronyism in domestic security.

Joe Gaylord, a longtime Republican consultant and an adviser to Newt Gingrich when he was House speaker, said, "When you couple Iraq, Katrina, DeLay in the House, Frist in the Senate," and other ethical flaps, "it looks like 10 years is a long time for a party to be in power."

"And when you add to that gas prices and home-heating prices that are going through the ceiling this winter, it shouldn't give much comfort to the Republicans," Mr. Gaylord said. Such a wave of internal trouble is characteristic of a president's second term, particularly when his party controls Congress.

"We know that second terms have historically been marred by hubris and by scandal," said David R. Gergen, a former aide to presidents in both parties who is now director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

"We've seen the hubris," Mr. Gergen added, alluding to Mr. Bush's effort to restructure Social Security, now stalled. "And now we're seeing the scandals."

Ross K. Baker, an expert on Congress and a political science professor at Rutgers, argues that the lack of normal checks and balances, with each party controlling part of the government, is also a problem.

"What you're stuck with is oversight as a product of scandal, a product of catastrophe," Mr. Baker said. "It requires a blunder of major proportions, a calamity that is poorly addressed, before you get oversight."

Others say the intense competition of current politics - the ferocious ideological divisions combined with the narrowness of any majority - leads to a heightened emphasis on money and, perhaps, a bending of the rules to get it.

"We've constantly had leaders going down in the last 20 years for related issues," said Julian Zelizer, an expert on Congress at Boston University. "Those who are successful, there's a high chance they've pushed the boundaries of money in politics as far as they can go."

In recent months, conservatives have bemoaned the effects of power on their movement, like mounting deficits and ethics problems.

In the 10th anniversary issue of The Weekly Standard last month, Andrew Ferguson lamented the "ease with which the stalwarts commandeered the greasy machinery of Washington power."

"Conservative activists came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well," Mr. Ferguson said. "The grease rubbed off, too."

Eleven years ago, the Republicans took control of Congress - breaking a 40-year Democratic reign in the House - by campaigning as reformers out to derail a Democratic machine that Mr. Gingrich described as endemically, irredeemably corrupt. In fact, as the 1994 election approached, the Democrats endured several ethics scandals, including the fall of a speaker, a majority whip and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Now the Democrats are reaching for the reformers' mantle. More and more, they attack the Republicans as a party riddled with corruption and out of touch with the problems and concerns of ordinary Americans.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, telegraphed the assault in an interview on Wednesday. "Their party has run out of both legitimacy and intellectual steam," he said.

A year before the midterm elections, the polls show Congress with a strikingly low approval rating - 34 percent in the most recent New York Times/CBS News Poll, conducted from Sept. 9 to 13. One Republican strategist, who asked not to be identified because of his work with Republicans on Capitol Hill, said of the DeLay indictment: "When you pile it on top of everything else - Iraq, Katrina, gas prices - it's pretty grim. We're still waiting for some sign of good news, something our candidates can run on. This isn't it."

The strategist added: "The Democrats will make the case that Republicans are too busy dealing with their own ethical issues to care about the problems facing the country. And guess what? That charge worked pretty well for us in '92 and '94."

Whether Democrats will be able to make that case is another question; they have internal problems of their own, notably their chronic problem in unifying around a clear message , a challenge the Republicans met with the Contract With America.

But for the Republican majority, the problem in many ways is not the challenge from without, but the second-term problems within.

Legal experts say Earle better have 'smoking gun'
By MARY FLOOD
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Most legal experts looking at the conspiracy indictment of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay said Wednesday that either an insider has turned against DeLay or the prosecutor may have gone too far.

"I can't imagine indicting a majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives without having a smoking gun, and that means someone who flipped on DeLay," said Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer who filed a related civil lawsuit on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates. "He's got to have corroborating evidence, too, bills and things proving where DeLay was at key times."

Several lawyers and law professors said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle could have talked the grand jury into a questionable indictment if he hasn't secured key witnesses who were "in the room" with DeLay. Otherwise, this conspiracy case could be too hard to prove with just circumstantial evidence, they said.

DeLay was indicted, along with two political associates, by an Austin state grand jury Wednesday. The three were charged with conspiracy to violate a Texas election law that bars giving corporate money to candidates.

The brief indictment accuses DeLay's two co-defendants with specific acts such as collecting corporate contributions through a Texas political action committee. It says they sent a $190,000 check to a branch of the Republican National Committee with a list of Texas congressional candidates who were to get funding.

But all the indictment says DeLay did was "enter into an agreement" with one or both men to knowingly violate the election code. Earle must prove to a jury that DeLay agreed to a felony when he denies it.

'Someone in the meetings'
Houston lawyer David Berg said the case against DeLay could possibly be proved with a lot of circumstantial evidence such as cryptic e-mail, hotel and travel bills placing him at meetings, and his "fingerprints" somehow on the transactions.

"But what a prosecutor wants is someone in the meetings. I think someone has to have rolled over on DeLay," Berg said.

He said prosecutor Earle has too much at stake to move forward without strong evidence. Earle has to be careful because he has taken heat over his public anti-DeLay comments and is marked by his failure to convict U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, some years ago, Berg said.

Attorneys familiar with the case said that key anti-DeLay cooperators, if they exist, could be co-defendants, insider Republicans or even witnesses from the contributing corporations.

Criminal conspiracy charges are common in federal court where they are used against drug gangs, organized-crime types and white-collar criminals.

The Texas conspiracy law is used infrequently. State courts are filled with murder, robbery, burglary and other cases that often don't lend themselves to conspiracy charges.

The Texas law invoked against DeLay is loosely worded and casts a wide net. It merely requires that a conspirator must intentionally agree with at least one person that they or someone else in the conspiracy will commit an act to further a felony.

University of Houston professor David Crump said the government is nevertheless going to have to show the jury, no matter how many Travis County Democrats are sitting on it, that DeLay did something to promote a campaign-fund transfer that was against the law.

"Yes, it's possible to have a conspiracy in which one conspirator didn't do anything but merely agreed. But I've never seen it happen in reality. The agreement can't be that passive or tacit," Crump said.

Moonshine cases
Crump said a "granddaddy of conspiracy cases" comes from moonshine charges. "Courts said delivering sugar, knowing it would be used for moonshine, just wasn't enough," Crump said. "They required an agreement with the intent to promote (moonshine production)."

Crump said he doesn't know all the DeLay case background but doesn't "necessarily infer that there has to be a turncoat insider." His reading of the indictment is that the case against DeLay looks "dubious and vague."

Dick DeGuerin, an attorney for DeLay who beat Earle in the Hutchison case, said Wednesday that the prosecutor doesn't have just one cooperating witness ?- he has many. "I think everybody has cooperated with the government, and the evidence showed Tom DeLay did nothing wrong," he said.

He said none of the three accused men committed a crime since the funds were never improperly used.

The indictment does not follow the corporate-sponsored $190,000 into any specific account from which it was then used to improperly pay candidates. DeGuerin says it wasn't alleged in the indictment because it didn't happen. Any money sent to the candidates came properly from a separate individual donor account.

"Still, no case is easy when somebody's career is at stake. It won't be a walk in the park," DeGuerin said.

Explosive case in store
Mike Ramsey, a Houston criminal defense lawyer, said the case will be easy for the prosecutors only if they have a turncoat witness with a lot of credibility.

He said no matter what the evidence, the case promises to be explosive.

"At any rate, this is a wild card indictment," Ramsey said. "There's a wild card prosecutor and a wild card defendant."

I don't know if DeLay is guilty or not and what the procecution can present at court or not.

I still think, one should await the presentation of evidence in court and the jury's decision.

But I'm sure, all those, who think and express that DeLay is innocent will do the very same if it would happen to a Democrat.

The Left doesn't give a flying fig whether Delay is convicted or not or even if the Judge throws out the case in disgust which, based on what we know, is a distinct possibility. The Left will have achieved its purpose: all kinds of wonderful little soundbites to use in the next campaign: House Majority Leader indicted on campaign racketeering charges; Delay has had his own ethical problems. . .; yadda yadda. This will go nicely with this week's propaganda phrase: "Culture of corruption" which is thrown in by just about everybody whenever a Republican or the GOP is referenced.

No left of the aisle politicos will care one whit if Delay is acquited of all charges. The 'seriousness of the charge' will be quite enough for them to use to their own advantage.
.

Surely Fox, even you can see the irony in your post.. :wink:

It's the perjury not the sex.. :wink:

Those that live by the accusation... ah well. turn about is fair play.

There is no irony in my post whatsoever which is obvious to anybody who actually reads it, Parados.

Oh, its there.. perhaps unintended, but definitely there.

"Not a complaint, but both sides do it" - right before you go off on your rant about the left. It's priceless.

The Left doesn't give a flying fig whether Delay is convicted or not or even if the Judge throws out the case in disgust which, based on what we know, is a distinct possibility.