Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was re-indicted today on a second charge related to the $190,000 in corporate money that DeLay is said to have illegally participated in laundering for use in a number of Texas state races from 2002.
Using corporate money to finance campaigns has been illegal in the state of Texas for nearly 100 years. Yet DeLay, who had previously been indicted on criminal conspiracy charges in the scheme, is now being charged with directly laundering the money. All of which, incidentally, Republican apologist Ann Coulter has no problem with.
…
Within hours, Mr. DeLay and his aides had been indicted on the new money-laundering charges, which can carry a prison sentence of up to life in prison.
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The new indictment was issued as Bush administration officials confirmed news reports in London that the Justice Department had asked the British police to question former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the circumstances of her meeting in 2000 with Mr. DeLay during a trip to Britain organized by the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The interview request was the first publicly disclosed evidence from the Justice Department that Mr. DeLay was under scrutiny in the department’s wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff.
Its just the beginning!
Culture of Pure Corruption
"Golf Trip to Scotland
Rep. Feeney (R-FL) traveled to Scotland — apparently to play golf — from August 9-14, 2003. Rep. Feeney initially claimed that the cost of the trip was paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research, but the Center denied paying for the trip. As a result, Rep. Feeney now claims to have discovered recently that the $5,643 bill was actually paid by lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Rep. Feeney claims he was "misled" and "lied to" about who actually paid for the trip.
House rules provide that a Member, officer or employee may not accept travel expenses from "a registered lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal." Thus, by accepting payment for his trip to Scotland from Mr. Abramoff, a registered lobbyist, Rep. Feeney appears to have violated House Rule 26, clause 5(b)(1)(A).
In addition, the rules require that all travel be related to official duties. Here, it appears that the primary, if not the only purpose of Rep. Feeney’s trip was to play golf at St. Andrews. This is a clear violation of Rule 26, clause 5(b)(1)(A) which states specifically that "[e]vents, the activities of which are substantially recreational in nature, are not considered to be in connection with the duties of a Member."
Finally, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has long taken the position that a Member may accept expenses for officially connected travel only from a private source that has a direct and immediate relationship with the event or location being visited. Here, it is unclear what relationship whoever paid for the trip had with St. Andrews golf course.
A full airing of this matter requires the Committee to consider: 1) who paid for Rep. Feeney’s trip to Scotland; 2) what activities Rep. Feeney engaged in while on the trip, other than golf; 3) what was the direct and immediate relationship between the sponsoring organization and the trip; 4) who were the actual sources of funding for the trip; 5) why were these private sources not disclosed as required by House Rules; and 6) did these private sources have a direct and immediate relationship with a golf trip to Scotland?
Trip to South Korea
Rep. Feeney visited South Korea on a trip sponsored by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council (KORUSEC), despite the fact that the organization is registered with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. House rules provide that a Member, officer or employee may not accept travel expenses from "a registered lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal." In addition, House rules also require that travel disclosure forms be filed within 30 days after the travel is completed. To date, Mr. Feeney has failed to file any forms in connection with this trip.
The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct should investigate whether Rep. Feeney violated House rules by allowing a foreign agent to pay his travel expenses, by failing to file the required travel disclosure forms and by omitting the trip from his 2003 financial disclosure statements."
Tom Feeney and all his friends belong in jail, alongside Rep. Cunningham, Blunt, and Delay!!! WOWZA!
Tom Feeney the guy up to his eyeballs in votergate scams, who hired Clint Curtis, who golfs with Abramoff, who violates every law on the book has not been indicted by a Grand Jury in Florida yet.
CAN WE PLEASE PICK UP THE BALL PEOPLE!!!!
Who knows special prosecutors in Florida?!??? In addition, maybe they can investigate the bribery of Bill Nelson(Democrat) taking money from Halliburton!
Doug E.
WATCH OUR NEW VIDEO! YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
ACT AMERICAN II
http://www.URBANTERRORISTS.com
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Why are they trying to bury the shit from GB
I think it has Delay and Thatcher already talking about a Bush pResidency way before the elections, like it was all
in the FIX at that time (as if we didn’t know this already)
"NEW CHARGE COULD BRING LIFE IN PRISON!" which COULD bring investigation(s) cooperation.
Hey gang~
This is great that he has a second indictment against him, though I did read somewhere that it may have come about to cover for an oversight in the first by Earle…but then I realized that was probably just GOP minipulation.
So, simultaneous indictments…seems like they figured one bullet wasn’t enough!! Can’t wait for Abramoff to be completely exposed…it’s gonna be ugly!!
On the matter of removing the GOP from control…we have to take back the vote from the Diebolds, Sequoias, Triads, ES&S, et.al.!! Let the law take care of crimes already committed, we the people have to smash the machinery that made this anti-Americanism possible!!
Steve Keller
Portland, OR
Aha…found a NYT article that explains things very clearly…
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/...s/04delay.html
A new indictment was brought on the first day of deliberations by a newly empaneled grand jury in Austin. The grand jury that brought the original conspiracy charges against Mr. DeLay, and which had been investigating the lawmaker for months, was disbanded last week.
Without an explanation from the prosecutors, local criminal law specialists seemed perplexed by Mr. Earle’s actions, saying they may reflect an effort by the prosecutor to ensure that some charge sticks to Mr. DeLay even if the conspiracy indictment is dimissed.
George E. Dix, a law professor at the University of Texas and a specialist in criminal procedures, speculated that prosecutors "saw a potential problem" with the conspiracy counts "and didn’t want to hassle over it, so they went with a legal theory on money laundering that wouldn’t present the same problems." He said if that was the case, it could be embarrassing to Mr. Earle because "it is a little awkward to have to change a theory before your horse is out of the gate."
The essential allegations are identical in the new and old indictment – that Mr. DeLay and his aides transferred $190,000 in corporate donations from a Texas political action committee to the Republican National Committee in September 2002, and that it was returned to individual Republican candidates for the Texas state house. A century-old ban in Texas prohibits the use of corporate money in the campaigns of state candidates.
Mr. DeLay’s lawyers argued in their court papers on Monday that the conspiracy statute cited in the original statute did not apply to election law violations that occurred in 2002; they said the law was not amended until the following year to allow electoral code violations to be prosecuted as a conspiracy.
In a letter to Mr. Earle on Monday, Dick DeGuerin, a lawyer for Mr. DeLay, repeated the arguments for abandoning the conspiracy charges and said that "since you have professed not to be politically motivated in bringing this indictment, I request that you immediately agree to dismiss this indictment so that the political consequences can be reversed."
Within hours, Mr. Earle responded with the new money-laundering indictment, brought before a grand jury that was in its first hours of operation. Mr. DeGuerin said in a telephone interview that the new grand jury could not have understood what it was approving: "These are 12 people who are newly sworn in, and just getting them oriented takes them all day."
hm. the times article is interesting in light of other info out there stating that delay’s atty had asked for a dismissal of the conspiracy charges based on the fact that the incidents took place during the 02 election, and the laws in question were not in effect until 03. so there was scrambling in the earle office to find a sitting grand jury to bring the criminal charges.
i have this suspicion: there is reason to believe that delay had already cut a deal with earle that kept the charges to conspiracy (in exchange for what, can’t speculate, but it’s food for thought). however, delay’s atty calling for dismissal based on the statute broke that deal, and actually smacks of a setup. i mean, wouldn’t that be a kicker for the atty to offer for delay to plead to the conspiracy chargew knowing full well it would not legally apply. and fie on earle for not catching it.
in any event, earle was thankfully able to get around all this. and of course (brad, you needed this in your bag of tricks with ann) earle did not bring the indictment; the grand jury did! prosecutors can only file the evidence; the grand jury determines if it is sufficient to stand up in court. and the foreman of the grand jury has been quoted repeatedly now saying that there was ample evidence. today there is word out from another on this criminal grand jury that there are ‘stacks’ of evidence.
and of course, now lady thatcher is involved! what a hoot. getting her to testify will be very tricky, not only because of the international red tape, but because she is evidently going a little batty, and has not been allowed to speak in public for quite some time.
so fasten your seat belts, folks; it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
(apologies for not linking to these data points, but i have given up logging each and every one because there are so damn many of them! but in addition to bradblog, i also hang at rawstory, huffingtonpost, americablog, and talkingpointsmemo, so the likelihood is high that the links are posted on one of those.)
S – W – E – E – T !!!!
I bet every corrupt politician (90%) is shaking in their boots.
These next couple months will be interesting.
Daaaaaaaaamn, can you imagine Bush’s drinking and yelling NOW? He’s got to be seeing the jail cell in his dreams. We’ll have to watch for how many WH staffers quit in the coming months lol.
Honestly, folks…why are we concerning ourselves with what Ann Coulter thinks?
Did anyone elect her to anything? Has she ever once uttered a thought other than right-wing propaganda? Has she ever contributed anything to society, done anything constructive as a citizen?
No…she’s just a right-wing blowhard whose blonde hair and miniskirt give her a uniqueness among political commentators.
The more we talk about her, the more legitimacy she attains. Let’s think of her as a visible troll who likes to have people look up her skirt on television.
The NYTimes needs to issue a retraction, if they are going to keep any credibility whatsoever because the story about the first indictment not being "prosecutable" is a full faced lie.
Delay was not re-indicted on a technicality
The Grand Jury and Lawyers reviewed the case, and found that the law has been in effect even before they fully enforced the law in 2003. It was ammended in 2003, but that does NOT exclude it from being in operation since 2000 and before.
The Grand Jury reviewed the statutes meticulously, and the new Grand Jury also reviewed the evidence. This was completely dissected top to bottom.
Doug Eldritch
The caption under the picture of DeLay, should read, "I’m a saaaaaaaaad panda…"
Republican National Committee guilty of Money Laundering!
GOP Caught in the middle of Tom Delay’s web of corruption
"he RNC Helped Tom Delay Funnel Corporate Money To Right- Wing Texas Candidates And Violated Texas Laws Through Deputy Chief Of Staff Terry Nelson. According to the indictment, Jim Ellis, DeLay’s co-conspirator, asked Terry Nelson, the RNC’s deputy chief of staff, to make contributions to select candidates for the Texas House of Representatives with a contribution from TRMPAC."
Take the whole racketeering scam down!
Doug
Life in Prison!
Be still my beating heart.
BEND OVER TOM DELAY YOU BE MY FUCKING BITCH
#1 Doug E, Say it ain’t so about Bill Nelson (Fl Dem Senator) !!! Do you have a link on that please? Katherine Harris is going to run against him! What a mess
The first indictment will go away. In other words, they won that. It was not against the law at the time the act took place. The law was later created because of people like Delay. But, he cannot be prosecuted for something he did which, while clearly immoral, was not illegal.
They are spinning the second indictment like crazy. But, it doesn’t seem to be working out for them this time. We’ll see.
It’s hard to imagine that this bunch would let one of their own go down. But, maybe it is all comin apart, FINALLY.
Actualy there are 3 charges pending:
"DeLay defense attorney Dick DeGuerin believes the new indictment replaces the first. But District Attorney Ronnie Earle, in a statement released Tuesday, said prosecutors would press ahead with all three charges, and the final decision would be resolved by a judge."
More here
WayneMadsenReport.com has a great story on the DeLay indictments (now 3) and the connection to the Thatchers of England.
WayneMadsenReport.com 10/05/05
How DOES he get the information? He must have 6 or 7 great connections in the intelligence and foreign service fields.
I worked almost 6 years in a DA’s office in the victim/witness program. There are multiple steps to protect individuals from wrongly being prosecuted for felony charges. A judge or grand jury hears the evidence every step of the way. Anyone ever hear of probable cause? At any time, if a judge or grand jury doesn’t like the evidence the case can be thrown out. My DA sometimes used the preliminary hearing or grand jury to avoid charges he really didn’t want to go to trial. This avoided political or personal agenda behind the individuals who filed the charges. The system is set up to PROTECT THE ACCUSED not the other way around. Delay should read the Constitution.
"DeGuerin said in a telephone interview that the new grand jury could not have understood what it was approving: "These are 12 people who are newly sworn in, and just getting them oriented takes them all day."
That is true – GJ can take a while just to set up. THe evidence must be pretty easy to see!
Babba his back got no bone !!!!
Give him a few for all those black texas childen that he
pulled The life support from because they could not
come up with the money
Nearly there!
According to Delay,
Those children really were having fun in their FEMA camps at Texas.
Then Delay’s home city in Texas nearly got wiped out in Rita. Go figure. Guess women really have a ‘thing’ for Delay and sicked Earle, Healey and the whole prosecution on em!!!
Damn them all, Delay didn’t break anything…..NO WAY!
😛
Doug
BEND OVER TOM DELAY AND SPREAD THEM CHEEKS
BABBA GONNA FUCK YOU LIKE U BACK GUT NO BONE.