Posted on 09/28/2005 10:52:59 AM PDT by kellynla
A Travis County grand jury today indicted U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on one count of criminal conspiracy, prompting the Sugar Land Republican to give up his leadership post in Congress.
"I have notified (House Speaker Dennis Hastert) that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County District Attorney today," DeLay said in a statement.
The charge, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years incarceration, stems from his role with his political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, a now-defunct organization that already had been indicted on charges of illegally using corporate money during the 2002 legislative elections.
The grand jury, however, took no action against Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, Texas Association of Business President Bill Hammond or state Reps. Dianne Delisi and Beverly Woolley, both of whom sit on the political committee's board, for their roles in the election.
The grand jury's term ended today.
Delay's defense team will hold a news conference in Austin later this afternoon. The team includes defense attorneys Bill White and Steve Brittain of Austin and Dick DeGuerin of Houston.
"It's a skunky indictment. It stinks to high heaven," White said.
DeLay and his associates insisted the corporate money was legally spent on committee overhead or issue advertising and not campaign-related activity.
An indictment does not force DeLay to resign as a member of Congress, but the GOP's rules demand that he resign his post as majority leader as he fights the charges. Congressional Republicans earlier tried to drop that requirement, citing Earle's investigation as a political vendetta, but they ultimately maintained the rule after withering criticism.
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
This is just to tie DeLay up in trial stuff till the '06 election. The Austin UNAmerican Statesman had a cow when Ronnie Earle, the Dem lap-dog DA in Travis Co., said he had nothing to indict DeLay on a couple of weeks ago. The national DNC pressured him into this phony indictment to take DeLay out of the picture for next year's elections. This should just about finish the Democrat Party in Texas because everyone knows this fool's tactics are just the Dems' vendetta for redistricting. If the Republicans in Congress weren't such passive sissies, they'd turn around and bring some indictments of their own against Ted Kennedy for manslaughter (no statute of limitations on that one) and Hillary for her blatant campaign finance violations in Hollywood.
"Earle knows this--and the awfuly truth is...he won just by getting the indictment. He's not interested in a trial."
Well, Dick may shove this in his face. Let them spend some time talking about "Dollars for Dismissal". I wonder who prosecutes bribery by the DA? FBI? Texas AG? Ronnie may have jumped the shark.
Well I hope DeLay is more innocent of charges than O.J. LOL
If you believe all politicians are guilty of everything they're charged with you don't understand hardball politics.
Where did I say I knew anything about the case. What I stated about Texas Grand Juries is true. I know all the players in the case, that is why I sated in another post that it would be a tough case to win. I would pick that team to defend me guilty or not. I assume by your statement "Break it, pay for it" you allow a trial first. After a trial, I agree with you 100%
Really kind of brilliant on the part of our opponents. I have to give the feeble little devils their due...they managed to find a darn effective pressure point in putting one little crook into office...
That's the damn truth, there. The bottom line is that even a partisan hack like Earle shouldn't be able to find anything. He should walk away shaking his head that *absolutely* everything is up and aboveboard, perfectly legal, without even a hint of dirt.
Dammit, that's what we as taxpayers and citizens deserve! HONESTY! Not someone who games the system, or who "technically" didn't violate any laws. Ethics and morals should hold you to a higher standard than the law. Like you, I don't give a rat's ass whether they're Democrat, Republican, conserative, liberal, libertarian, or flat earth vegetarian. We have to demand higher standards of ALL our elected leaders.
< /rant>
By the way, thank you for your service, and for giving my children and me a free country to grow up in.
In 1993 Kay Bailey Hutchinson beat Ann Richards' hand-picked, limp-wristed (I can't remember his name) candidate, Earle went on a fishing expedition for evidence he could use to indict her. He came up with some really bogus evidence and the judge refused to let him introduce it, instead empaneling the jury and directing them to acquit Kay.
Democrat party hack Ronnie Earle can find enough tinfoil hat lefties in the people's republic of Austin to indict Mother Teresa, if she were still alive. I expect the indictment of DeLay to be bogus and to be thrown out as well.
I agree with you 100% that these people should put themselves in a position to NEVER have their honesty and integrity questioned. If you skirt along the borders of breaking a law, at some point you are going to go over that line. You may run back across, but you did cross it, thus are guilty of breaking it. If you live by values, honesty, integrity, then you can stand up and defend your position. But, if you start dancing around, making excuses, trying to point out this above that, and I did it close, but not exactly right up to that point, etc., etc., then you run the risk of breaking the rules or law. Just live your stinking life by the rules. Be honest, have a little integrity. If that is too hard for them, then they need to get into another line of work, because millions watch their every move.
Time to take the gloves off, Mr. President. You guys have been entirely too nice. Lets show them SOB's who's in charge!
Ronnie Earle needs to be relieved of his job.
I thought his name was Bawney Fwank. Oh well, my bad.
Transcript
DeLay's Remarks
Published: September 28, 2005
The following is the transcript of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's remarks on his indictment, as provided by CQ Transcriptions.
SPEAKER: U.S. REPRESENTATIVE THOMAS DELAY (R-TX), HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER
DELAY: How you doing? You got any news today?
QUESTION: A little.
(LAUGHTER)
DELAY: Just another day at the office.
Good afternoon. Thank you all for attending.
This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy: a reckless charge wholly unsupported by the facts.
This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history. It's a sham and Mr. Earle knows it.
It's a charge that cannot hold up even under the most glancing scrutiny.
This act is the product of a coordinated, premeditated campaign of political retribution; the all-too-predictable result of a vengeful investigation led by a partisan fanatic.
Mr. Earle is abusing the power of his office to exact personal revenge for the role I played in the Texas Republican legislative campaign in 2002 and my advocacy for a new, fair and constitutional congressional map for our state in 2003.
As it turned out, those efforts were successful. Texas Republicans did, indeed, win a legislative majority. A fair and representative congressional map was drawn and it was approved by the legislature. And the Texas congressional delegation now, after the 2004 elections, fairly represent the values and attitudes of the people of the state of Texas.
Over the course of this long and bitter political battle, it became clear that the retribution for our success would be ferocious. Today, that retribution is being exacted.
Mr. Earle, an unabashed partisan zealot with a well-documented history of launching baseless investigations and indictments against his political enemies, has been targeting a political action committee on whose advisory board I once served.
During his investigation, he has gone out of his way to give several media interviews in his office -- the only days he actually comes to the office, I'm told -- in which he has singled me out for personal attacks, in direct violation of his public responsibility to conduct an impartial inquiry.
Despite his longstanding animosity toward me and the abusive investigation that animosity has, unfortunately, rendered, as recently as two weeks ago, Mr. Earle himself publicly admitted I had never been a focus or target of his inquiry.
Soon thereafter, Mr. Earle's hometown newspaper ran a biting editorial about his investigation, rhetorically asking what the point had been, after all, if I wasn't to be indicted.
It was this renewed political pressure in the waning days of his hollow investigation that led to this morning's action, political pressure that also came from Democrat leaders.
In accordance with the rules of the House Republican Conference, I will temporarily step aside as floor leader in order to win exoneration from these baseless charges.
Now let be very, very clear: I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House. I have done nothing unlawful, unethical or, I might add, unprecedented, even in the political campaigns of Mr. Earle himself.
My defense in this case will not be technical or legalistic; it will be categorical and absolute. I am innocent. Mr. Earle and his staff know it. And I will prove it.
Here in Washington, there's work, very hard work ahead of our conference. We have a war to win, a region to rebuild, a budget to balance, taxes to cut, a government to reform and a nation to lead.
In the coming weeks, the House is committed to major legislation reforming our border security and immigration laws, alleviating the rising costs of gasoline and heating fuel before the winter, and saving tens of billions of dollars through reforming federal entitlement programs.
My job right now is to serve my constituents and our nation in support of this ambitious and needed agenda.
As for the charges, I have the facts, the law and the truth on my side, just as I have against every false allegation my opponents have flung at me over the last 10 years. Once exposed to the light of objective scrutiny, every one of their frivolous accusations against me has been dismissed, and so will Mr. Earle's.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you guys today. Thank you.
One tough Texan!
The game of "take out the quarterback" continues. It grows more outrageous and underhanded everyday in DC.
As I recall they were plainly and flatly stupid charges. When she left her previous job she had all her files backed up and properly archived, then erased from the PC she was issued in preparation for the incoming replacement to use the machine. Earle had her indicted for erasing files.
Yeah, I live in Texas and I know a LOT about Ronnie Earle.
If you'll calm down for a while and see what happens, you will find out a lot about him also.
And by the way, haven't you ever heard the saying, "you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."?
Bump that.
Partisan hack Ronnie Earle let a murderer off with probation about six months ago because his office was so intent on getting an indictment on Delay that they did not prepare their case properly and thus had to plea bargain a case that should have netted the perp 25 years of hard time.
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