Tom Delay: "I Am Innocent", Will Appeal Guilty Verdict

Texas Jury Convicts Tom DeLay On Money Laundering Charges


A Texas jury on Wednesday convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of illegally funneling corporate money to help elect GOP candidates to the Texas Legislature.

DeLay was found guilty of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, court bailiff Gilbert Soto said. He was accused of funneling $190,000 to help elect Republicans to the state House and Senate in 2002.

At the outset of the trial, DeLay predicted the jury would clear him, and he remained unrepentant after learning the verdict..

"This is an abuse of power. It's a miscarriage of justice," DeLay told reporters. "I still maintain that I am innocent, that the criminalization of politics undermines our very system, and I'm very disappointed in the outcome. But you know, it is what it is, and we will carry on and maybe we can get it before people who understand the law."

Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said the verdict showed no one was above the law.

"This case is a message from the citizens of the state of Texas that the public officials they elect to represent them must do so honestly and ethically, and if not they'll be held accountable," Lehmberg said.

DeLay's sentencing was set for December 20, and he faces a possible maximum prison term of 99 years on the money laundering charge and 20 years on the conspiracy charge.

Two other men facing charges in the case are awaiting trial.

DeLay, a conservative Republican, helped Newt Gingrich spearhead the GOP revival in 1994 that won control of the House and Senate in the first midterm election under Democratic President Bill Clinton.

While serving as the GOP's congressional whip, DeLay earned the nickname "The Hammer" for his strict enforcement of party discipline. In 2004, he was admonished three times by the House ethics committee, which warned him to "temper" his future actions to comply with House rules.

DeLay stepped aside as majority leader after his 2005 indictment on the money laundering and conspiracy charges and resigned from Congress the following year. He fought the charges on procedural grounds for several years, seeking unsuccessfully to have the trial held in his home county in suburban Houston instead of in the state capital, Austin, and blaming the indictment on a partisan prosecutor.

This past summer, DeLay said a separate, long-running federal criminal investigation of his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff had been closed with no charges.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Two former DeLay aides who joined Abramoff's lobbying team after leaving Capitol Hill also pleaded guilty during the wide-ranging influence peddling investigation.

The Justice Department has declined to comment on the status of the Abramoff investigation, which also resulted in prison time for Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney and for Steven Griles, the No. 2 official in the Interior Department for much of the administration of President George W. Bush.

In August, DeLay told CNN that his legal bills have topped $8 million.

Despite his legal troubles, DeLay found time last year to appear as a short-lived contestant on the television show "Dancing with the Stars." He dropped out of the demanding dance competition due to stress factors in both feet.


View Larger Map


Sources: CNN, Google Maps

Black Lawmakers Target Of Congressional Ethics Probe...Warrented Or No?

Racial disparity: All active ethics probes focus on black lawmakers



The House ethics committee is currently investigating seven African-American lawmakers — more than 15 percent of the total in the House. And an eighth black member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), would be under investigation if the Justice Department hadn’t asked the committee to stand down.

Not a single white lawmaker is currently the subject of a full-scale ethics committee probe.

The ethics committee declined to respond to questions about the racial disparity, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are wary of talking about it on the record. But privately, some black members are outraged — and see in the numbers a worrisome trend in the actions of ethics watchdogs on and off Capitol Hill.

“Is there concern whether someone is trying to set up [Congressional Black Caucus] members? Yeah, there is,” a black House Democrat said. “It looks as if there is somebody out there who understands what the rules [are] and sends names to the ethics committee with the goal of going after the [CBC].”

African-American politicians have long complained that they’re treated unfairly when ethical issues arise. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are still fuming over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to oust then-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) from the House Ways and Means Committee in 2006, and some have argued that race plays a role in the ongoing efforts to remove Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) from his chairmanship of that committee.

Last week’s actions by the House ethics committee are sure to add fuel to the fire.

The committee — which has one African-American lawmaker, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), among its 10 members — on Thursday considered three referrals from the recently formed Office of Congressional Ethics. It dismissed a case against Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), who is white, but agreed to open full-blown investigations of California Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson, both of whom are black.

The committee was already investigating five other African-Americans. Rangel is the subject of two different probes, one involving a host of issues he has put before the committee and another involving allegations that corporate funds may have been used improperly to pay for members’ trips to the Caribbean in 2007-08. Reps. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Donald Payne (D-N.J.) and Del. Donna Christensen (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) are also included in the second of those investigations.

A document leaked to The Washington Post last week showed that nearly three dozen lawmakers have come under scrutiny this year by either the House ethics committee or the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog created in 2008 at the insistence of Pelosi. While the list contained a substantial number of white lawmakers, the ethics committee has not yet launched formal investigative subcommittees with respect to any of them — as it has with the seven African-American members.

The OCE has also been a particular target of ire for the Congressional Black Caucus. Black lawmakers, including CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), met with OCE officials earlier this year to raise their concerns. Spokesmen for Lee and the OCE both declined to comment.

A number of CBC members opposed the resolution establishing the OCE, arguing that it was the wrong response to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which helped Democrats seize control of the House in 2006.

Setting up the OCE “was a mistake,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) told The Hill newspaper recently. “Congress has a long and rich history of overreacting to a crisis.”

Cleaver, though, now finds himself part of the four-member subcommittee that will investigate Waters, who voted against the OCE. Waters is being probed over her intervention with the Treasury Department on behalf of a minority-owned bank in which her husband served on the board and owned at least $250,000 in stock.

While she has flatly denied engaging in any unethical or improper behavior in her dealings with OneUnited, Waters was described by colleagues and Democratic aides as “livid” over the ethics committee’s decision to investigate her.

“She was hopping mad,” a Democratic lawmaker said of Waters. “She feels this is a complete miscarriage of justice.”

Another CBC member said black lawmakers are “easy targets” for ethics watchdog groups because they have less money — both personally and in their campaign accounts — to defend themselves than do their white colleagues. Campaign funds can be used to pay members’ legal bills.

“A lot of that has to do with outside watchdog groups like [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] that have to have a level of success to justify OCE,” the CBC member said. The good-government groups were strong backers of the OCE’s creation.

But these same groups won’t go after Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), this lawmaker claimed, “because she has plenty of money to defend herself,” and the outside groups don’t want to take a risk. The Democrat said the ethics committee would be going up against Harman’s lawyers and “going up against” the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee if they push the OCE to pressure the ethics committee to act.

Harman was allegedly recorded on a 2005 federal wiretap discussing with an Israeli operative her bid to become Intelligence Committee chairwoman. Harman has denied any wrongdoing, but an attempt by the ethics committee to get a transcript of the taped call was rebuffed by the Justice Department.

What especially galled black lawmakers was that the ethics committee voted to move forward with the Waters and Richardson probes following the OCE referrals, while Graves — who OCE also thought should be investigated by the ethics committee — saw his case dismissed.

Even worse, the ethics committee issued a 541-page document explaining why it wouldn’t look into allegations that Graves invited a witness to testify before the Small Business Committee — on which he sits — without revealing his financial ties to that witness.

“It is kind of crazy,” said an aide to one senior black Democrat. “How can it be that the ethics committee only investigates African-Americans? It doesn’t make sense.”

White lawmakers have certainly been the subject of ethics committee investigations before. Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was admonished by the committee for his dealings with corporate lobbyists, while ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) was the target of an investigation over his dealings with teenage male House pages in late 2006. Foley resigned after the sex scandal was revealed.

And the document leaked to the Post last week shows that a number of white lawmakers — including senior House Appropriations Committee members John Murtha (D-Pa.), Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) — have drawn the attention of the committee and the OCE.

The two congressional ethics watchdogs are looking into these members’ ties to the PMA Group, a now-defunct lobbying firm that won tens of millions of dollars in earmarks from members of the Appropriations Committee. The lawmakers who arranged for the earmarks received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from PMA’s lobbying clients.

But it seems unlikely that the PMA case will become the subject of a full-blown ethics committee investigation. The Justice Department is also looking into the PMA allegations; the FBI raided PMA’s office last year, and Visclosky and his former chief of staff have been served with document subpoenas. And under ethics committee rules, the panel cannot conduct an investigation of any member or staffer already being probed by a law enforcement agency.

The nation’s only black senator, Roland Burris of Illinois, is currently under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. It’s not clear whether that committee is currently investigating any white members, although Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) is likely to be in its sights if the Justice Department doesn’t pre-empt a committee investigation.


Sources: Politico

Conservatives Are Paving Their Own Political Yellow Brick Road...Values, Freedom

Conservatives take aim at leaders, Charlie Crist, other races



The conservative coup in upstate New York did much more than lay bare the power of conservative activists: It exposed how little control GOP officials hold over this surging and formidable political movement.

In the wake of conservatives’ role in forcing liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava out of Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 23rd District, GOP officials are trying to make it seem as if they are helping to stoke the passion — and can harness it to upend President Barack Obama and Democrats. They didn’t — and they can’t.

Many of the activists who helped knock out Scozzafava told POLITICO that the passion is building despite — and sometimes to spite — Republican leaders in Washington.

“I don’t give a crap about party,” said Jennifer Bernstone, a tea party organizer for Central New York 912, which helped to lead the anti-Scozzafava charge. “Grass-roots activists don’t care about party.”

Says Everett Wilkinson, a tea party organizer in Florida: “We are not going to allow our [movement] to be stolen by the GOP or by any political party.”

This energy on the right seems to exist outside the control of the conventional political structure, and GOP politicians and operatives are as likely to be victims of this anger as beneficiaries.

GOP leaders are about to learn the lesson again, several conservatives warned. Grass-roots activists are ready to turn their fire on Republicans in a host of races across the country, said Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, an organization that helped gin up the tea party protests and town hall flare-ups.

“If you look at other bellwether races, we’re still going to be on opposing sides,” said Brandon, who pointed to the Florida Senate race, where a conservative former state House speaker is taking on GOP-establishment-backed Gov. Charlie Crist as the next major conservative electoral stand.

“There are going to be other conflicts,” said Brandon. “We have a lot of work to do. The [Doug] Hoffman campaign was the beginning. It was not the climax.”

Tom Davis, former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said this rage against the GOP machine might feel good for disgruntled conservatives, but it could also land Republicans deep in the minority for years to come.

“It becomes a challenge for Republicans to harness this energy in an appropriate fashion,” he said. “Part of the responsibility of the minority is to harness the energy against the majority.”

Still, he warned, load on too many conservatives, and they will “sink the boat.”

To be blunt, many conservative activists couldn’t care less what Davis and top party officials think about them and their brand of politics.

They feel they were had by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who urged them to stomach earmarks for the good of the party; by George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who urged them to stomach a massive expansion of education and Medicare for the good of the party; and by the rest of the Washington gang that collaborated in the largest expansion of government in their lifetime for the good of the party.

Erick Erickson, founder and editor of the conservative RedState blog, said grass-roots activists are done listening.

“Republicans are going to have to come our way,” he said, before going on to trash NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for backing Scozzafava.

Their “level of disingenuousness ... is disgusting,” Erickson said.

His influential blog is now calling for Sessions to get the boot from the NRCC as a penalty for mishandling the race.

Erickson’s bombast may seem overboard, but it captures the depths of anger over the handling of this special election. It’s not just that Scozzafava wasn’t conservative — she was very liberal on abortion, unions and gay marriage and even left the impression she might join the Democrats once elected.

Indeed, on Sunday, the day after pulling out of the race, she endorsed Democrat Bill Owens.

“There is already a party for people who think like that,” conservative columnist George Will said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“It’s called the Democratic Party.”

Right now, the power, the energy, the momentum — and the results — are on the side of the conservative activists.

The newest incarnation of confrontational conservatism — driven more by animosity toward government and Obama than by the social passions of the 1990s — has plenty of energy and bodies to turn out big crowds at tea party events, hijack congressional town hall meetings as it did in August and defeat a GOP-establishment-backed House candidate.

It also has leaders with louder microphones than those of House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Facebook page, Rush Limbaugh and his radio show and Glenn Beck with his popular 5 p.m. slot on Fox News.

Those commentator-entrepreneurs are far better known and are considerably more influential with the conservative grass roots than the GOP’s Washington leaders — congressional Republicans such as Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey and even Steele have both been forced to call Limbaugh to apologize after making critical statements about him to the media — yet they carry unmistakable downside risk. Not only are they unpopular with many moderate voters, but they also have histories of saying wildly impolitic things.

Make no mistake: There is a huge divide between the public rants of this activist wing and the private angst of party leaders in D.C.

Numerous GOP officials have told POLITICO they worry that the party has been hijacked by a noisy and powerful minority that will keep the GOP in a noisy and not-so-powerful minority for a long time.

It will be impossible for GOP leaders to make this case anytime soon. The trick, instead, will be to find common ground on running conservative candidates who appeal to activists but can also run campaigns not entirely predicated on the hardest edges of their conservatism.

The Virginia governor’s race, which will also be decided Tuesday, could be the prototype for this kind of compromise. Until then, Charlie Crist should get ready for a rumble.


Sources: Politico