Posted on 09/21/2004 12:35:24 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
AUSTIN, Texas - Three people and eight corporations including Sears and Cracker Barrel were indicted Tuesday on charges of making illegal campaign contributions through a political action committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
DeLay, a Texas Republican, was not charged.
The grand jury has been investigating whether $2.5 million in corporate funds were used illegally to help Republican candidates win elections in 2002 that gave the GOP a majority in the Texas House for the first time since Reconstruction. The GOP later used its majority to redraw Texas' congressional districts to favor Republican candidates.
Those charged included three members of DeLay's PAC, Texans for a Republican Majority: John Colyandro, James Ellis and Warren RoBold.
Ellis was charged with money laundering. Colyandro and RoBold were charged with unlawful acceptance of corporate political contributions. The eight companies were charged with making illegal political contributions.
DeLay was not questioned or subpoenaed as part of the grand jury investigation.
Calls to the defendants or their lawyers were not immediately returned.
This ought to convince the House ethics committee to drop its investigation of DeLay.
Republican fund-raising leads to indictments of 3 DeLay aides
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
AUSTIN - A Travis County grand jury today returned 32 indictments related to Republican political fund-raising activity in 2002, including charges against three top aides to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
The grand jury returned indictments against DeLay political aide Jim Ellis and fund-raiser Warren RoBold and John Colyandro, who was executive director of DeLay's political action committee Texans for a Republican Majority. Colyandro faces 14 charges, RoBold was named in nine charges, and Ellis was named in one.
Colyandro and Ellis were indicted once each on a charge of felony money laundering.
They are accused of taking $190,000 in corporate money raised by the political action committee and giving it to the Republican National State Elections Committee. That committee in turn gave a like amount of legal donations to seven Texas House candidates.
The grand jury also returned indictments against corporate donors Sears Roebuck and Co., Westar Energy Inc., the Williams Cos., Questerra Corp., Diversified Collection Services, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Bacardi U.S.A. and the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care.
Texans for a Republican Majority raised about $600,000 from corporate donors in the 2002 election cycle, with much of the money going to pay for fund-raising and other political activities to help about 20 Republican candidates win seats in the Texas House. That gave Republicans a majority in the state Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.
That majority was crucial for DeLay last year as he pushed a major congressional redistricting bill through the Legislature.
Only a few of the corporations that contributed to Texans for a Republican Majority were indicted, but the indictments generally focus on violations of a Texas law that bans corporate donations from being used to promote individual political candidates.
Steve Brittain, who is representing DeLay, said the state law is clear on that but that it is "trumped" by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
He said Colyandro, Ellis and RoBold were all following the advice of legal counsel when they were running the Texans for a Republic Majority political action committee.
"All of these people felt very comfortable they were not violating the law," Brittain said. "We don't believe there's been any criminal conduct."
I bet the charges against the others are bogus as well.
This is just politics, the Democrats are angry at being bested by Delay (the Hammer)
I wouldn't relax, yet. Prosecutors like to indict lower guys to get them to rat out the higher-ups. DeLay isn't in the clear, yet.
Just a little to the left of Lenin.
You sound like one of those cynical, "all politicians are crooks" types. I see no reason to assume either the guilt of those indicted, or the guilt of someone (Mr. Delay) who is not indicted. I am troubled by Mr. Brittain's saying that the state law was "clear", but that the US Constitution and federal law "trumped" an existing state law. There may be a good legal argument there, but it's my belief that if you want to challenge state law successfully , you may want to get a ruling or an opinion from the Attorney General's office before you arbitrarily (and knowingly) violate the law in the expectation that you will prevail if a case goes to court.
Winning at trial and surviving the appeals process will be much harder for him.
Travis County? Nuff said.
Ronnie Earle DA
This is typical Democrat stuff-- criminalizing political dissent. They still haven't got over losing the election so they are trying to put people in jail. Make no mistake, we are in something close to a cultural civil war in which one side feels its power slipping away and will not let it go without fighting. In the Democrat mind they are so correct about the world that the only reason they could possibly be losing all these elections is that some sort of trickery and fraud is going on. They will never accept that the vast majority of Americans do not agree with them.
Ronnie Earl also indicted Kay Baily Hutchison (Present Senator from Texas) when she was running for the Senate. It went to trial and not "one damn word of testimony" was taken. The reason is the judge, a democrat by the way, threw the case out of court as without merit as presented by Ronnie Earl.
Time to investigate Ronnie Earle ping.
Off subject, but have I told you lately how nice it is to be back in Texas? Big sigh............
And it's nice to have you back in Texas!
Time to investigate Ronnie Earle ping.I second that !!
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