10-08-05, 9:22 am
After a second indictment on the charge of money laundering by a Texas grand jury this week, a Houston newspaper is reporting that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) has changed his story about his involvement in illegal campaign finance transactions.
Early in the investigation, the former House Majority Leader told Travis County Prosecutor Ronnie Earle that he knew about a $190,000 donation from his Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC) to the Republican National Committee (RNC). The $190,000 was turned over in September 2002 with the request that the RNC make non-corporate donations to several Texas Republican candidates.
It would have been illegal to give the $190,000 to the Texas Republicans as several corporations had donated the money. The Texas grand jury has already indicted DeLay and two other TRMPAC officials on criminal charges for conspiring to use corporate donations to finance political campaigns illegally. The new indictment says that DeLay laundered the additional $190,000 to try to skirt this law.
Claiming he 'misspoke,' DeLay told ultra right radio personality Rush Limbaugh earlier this week that he tried to changed his story about knowing about the $190,000, but that the prosecutor wouldn't let him.
DeLay's lawyer, however, has two other stories about when DeLay knew about the check. On the same day that DeLay complained to Limbaugh about not being able to change his tune, his lawyer told the Houston Chronicle that DeLay didn’t know about the check until an October 2, 2002 meeting with his indicted co-conspirators.
Two days later, DeLay’s lawyers changed his story. He now claims that DeLay didn’t know until much later.
OK, why can't DeLay get his story straight?
Originally, DeLay believed he would never be indicted, so it didn't matter if he told the truth. But as soon as the indictment was handed down, it appears that he scrambled to cover his tracks and came up with the October 2 story. Then when it was pointed out that it would still fall within the timeframe of the money laundering charge, it appears that a new story had to be concocted.
Unfortunately, papers from a related matter discovered by the prosecution show that a report about the $190,000 was prepared for DeLay in September, making his scramble to come up with an alibi moot.
But as the DeLay indictment rattles the Republican Party, the chair of the House Ethics Committee, Rep. 'Doc' Hastings (R-WA) says his committee won't investigate the charges and described the indictment as politically motivated.
Hastings took over the chair of the ethics committee after a shake-up by the Republican Party leadership earlier this year. In a controversial move viewed as an attempt to protect DeLay from ethics committee investigations, the Republican leadership altered ethics committee rules to make investigation parameters more stringent.
The Republicans undermined the bi-partisan tradition of the committee by refusing to allow the Democrats vote on the rule changes.
Additionally, the Republican leadership removed Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) who chaired the committee when it delivered several ethics rebukes to DeLay for campaign improprieties.
Hastings and several other Republican Party leadership loyalists who donated several thousand dollars to DeLay’s legal defense fund were appointed to the committee.
Hastings' statement came despite a decision by his committee to postpone an investigation until the criminal charges are dealt with. In June 2004, ethics charges were filed with the committee related to the matter for which DeLay has been indicted. Before Hastings took over as chair, the committee agreed to deal with the charges but wait for the ongoing investigation to be completed.
Now Hastings appears to be unilaterally and without authority overturning the decision of the committee. He also made a statement that indicated his opinion of a matter that was pending before the committee before the committee had the chance to investigate or debate the matter.
This can only be interpreted as an unethical attempt to influence that matter before it has come up for consideration.
Is Hastings’s preemptive attack on the matter just another case of cronyism and the abuse of power to protect a Republican Party big shot?
The Seattle Times reported this past week that Hastings' campaign took almost $6,000 from a PAC controlled by DeLay in the 1990s.
--Reach Leo Walsh at
