- Former Congressman Tom DeLay high-fives staff members outside his Washington, D.C. office back in April 2006 — before he was convicted on felony money laundering charges
A week ago, on Friday, Nov. 6, John Wright posted this item on Instant Tea about the conviction of former Texas Congressman Tom DeLay on felony charges of money laundering for illegally funneling corporate dollars into Texas state legislative races in 2002, and how Travis County’s lesbian district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, helped get that conviction.
Now comes word, from the Austin American-Statesman, that members of Texas’ State Republican Executive Committee plan this weekend to consider a resolution calling on Gov. Rick Perry to pardon DeLay. The proposal — submitted by SREC member Clint Moore of Spring — was to be considered today by the SREC’s Resolutions Committee and, if approved, then advance for consideration by the full SREC.
DeLay, in case you don’t remember, represented a Houston-area House district from 1984 to 2005, and was known as one of Congress’ most anti-gay members.
Although I was rather stunned to read that the SREC is considering calling on Perry to pardon DeLay, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised. After all, that’s pretty much par for the course for the party whose state platform calls for LGBT people to be declared criminals.
The resolution uses the word “desperately” a lot in describing how former Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle Jones worked to get DeLay indicted, and calls the trial that culminated with DeLay’s conviction “a mockery of a show trial.” The resolution says Perry should grant DeLay a complete pardon on all charges “to end the absurd political circus and gross abuse of our judicial system by Earle and his successor, as well as the corrupt Democrat judges of that county,” and concludes by calling on the Texas Legislature to “permanently eliminate the authority of the Travis County District Attorney’s office to prosecute state and federal elected officials like Tom Delay, due to the grossly politicized environment of Travis County, as well as to devise a special prosecutor system for cases involving state and federal elected officials, to be overseen and administered jointly by the Attorney General and the Governor of Texas.”
Go ahead and read the full text of the resolution after the jump.
“Whereas, then-Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle desperately tried to get five Travis County grand juries to indict then-U.S. House Republican Majority Leader, Tom Delay, on criminal political money laundering charges, based on Earle’s politically-biased beliefs and partisan interpretation of history,
“Whereas, five Travis County grand juries that Earle went to for an indictment, refused to indict Tom Delay on Earle’s abusive charges,
“Whereas, Earle desperately tried again to indict Tom Delay, again going to yet another Travis county grand jury, lead by longtime Democrat primary voter William M. Gibson Jr., but this one, called by Democrat State District Judge Mike Lynch, thereby allowed Earle to succeed with his desired indictment,
“Whereas, a mockery of a show trial of Mr. Delay was recently held in a Travis County court, one of the most Democrat counties in Texas, where Mr. Delay could not possibly get a fair and impartial jury, let alone a fair trial from yet another Democrat judge, where an expectedly biased and partisan jury found him guilty of Earle’s indicted charges,
“Be it resolved, that the State Republican Executive Committee calls upon Governor Rick Perry to immediately issue a total pardon of Mr. Delay on all charges, in order to end the absurd political circus and gross abuse of our judicial system by Earle and his successor, as well as the corrupt Democrat judges of that county,
“Be it further resolved, that the State Republican Executive Committee calls upon the Texas Legislature to permanently eliminate the authority of the Travis County District Attorney’s office to prosecute state and federal elected officials like Tom Delay, due to the grossly politicized environment of Travis County, as well as to devise a special prosecutor system for cases involving state and federal elected officials, to be overseen and administered jointly by the Attorney General and the Governor of Texas,
“Be it further resolved, that this resolution be immediately forwarded via postal and e-mail to Governor Rick Perry. “
If politicians, illegally elected from laundered money of criminal DeLay, return the favor by pardoning this criminal….we should throw them all in jail under federal RICO charges.
Republicans are jumping the gun on the calls for a pardon and in fact are embarrassing themselves by acting prematurely.
Sadly for those who dislike Tom DeLay, he is likely to be acquitted by the appeals court (not simply granted a new trial but outright acquitted) since the evidence presented at trial is legally insufficient to sustain a conviction.
Money laundering is a highly technical crime, and as such, it is necessary to establish a series of highly technical elements. The prosecution failed to do this, and the jury was apparently not sharp enough to figure this out. Specifically, the prosecution failed to prove that there were any proceeds of criminal activity, as that term was defined under 2002 law. Under the 2002 version of Chapter 34 of the Penal Code, checks are excluded from the list of items that could be deemed ‘proceeds’, and since all transactions were by check there were no ‘proceeds’. Also, it is fairly certain that an appeals court will rule that any proceeds of criminal activity must be from an antecedent crime and the prosecution failed to allege or prove any antecendent crime, only a concurrent election code violation. A concurrent violation will be ruled insufficient to sustain a money laundering conviction. And finally there is the issue of the election code violation (for which the grand jury failed to invite Tom DeLay) but which would need to be proven as an element of any money laundering charge. Sadly for the prosecution, the evidence clearly shows that all donations received by candidates can be traced to non-corporate sources. So the Republicans will get what they want if they chill out and let the appeals process play out.
strike ‘invite’ and insert ‘indict’…oops
Looks like a third grader wrote that proposal but from the looks of Clint Moore and his coke bottle glasses he can’t see what he’s writing.