Outstanding!
DeLay's team continues to hit back, and in the process, scores hit after hit.
Posted on 10/11/2005 2:47:02 PM PDT by flattorney
AUSTIN -- Dick DeGuerin, lawyer for indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on Tuesday subpoenaed the prosecuting Texas district attorney in an effort to show he acted improperly with grand jurors.
The subpoena for Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, filed in Austin, asked that the prosecutor and two of his assistants appear in court to explain their conduct.
The lawyers, previously had filed a motion asking for dismissal of the conspiracy and money-laundering charges against DeLay, the former House majority leader who has stepped aside from that post because of the indictment.
Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's attorney, also asked that grand jurors be released from their secrecy oath so they could answer questions about the prosecutor's conduct.
Here some info about the Judge in the case and also DeLay's attorney Dick DeGuerin.
Texas is VERY different when it comes to politics. You can't get hung up in your shorts over the Dem vs Repub issue because a lot of it doesn't apply in Texas. Wasn't that long ago in Texas that there wasn't such thing as a Republican, only liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats.
ALSO, don't think for a minute that Judge Perkins is going to tolerate Ronnie Earle's misconduct in this matter. There is a LOT of Democrats in Texas that hate Ronnie Earle for Earle pissing all over the leg of the late great politician Bob Bullock.
Further, most of the media "legal experts" don't know squat about Texas politics and it legal system. Total horse dung what they are saying right now on this latest legal salvo by DeLay's attorney.
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About the Judge on the Tom DeLay Indictment Case
Judge Robert ("Bob") A. Perkins (JD-'73)
331st Judicial Criminal District Court
http://www.co.travis.tx.us/district_courts/criminal_courts/331.asp
Judge Perkins is a Democrat, but so is Dick DeGuerin. Judge Perkins donated $725 to the John Kerry Presidential Campaign in 2004. (Big spender, haa)
I posted this on another thread re DeGuerin:
FYI, DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, (one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the country) is a self-described yellow-dog Democrat who regularly votes in Democratic primaries. (Yellow-dog means these Dems would vote for a yellow-dog running on a Dem ticket before they would vote for a Repub, lol.)
Since the beginning of the 1988 election cycle, DeGuerin has contributed $15,800 to Democratic candidates, including $1,000 in 1996 to former Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas), who plans to challenge DeLay for his seat next fall.
DeGuerin also contributed $1,000 in 2002 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is pinning its hopes for the 2006 election on DeLay’s legal problems and their potential to taint all GOP House candidates.
In an interview, DeGuerin described himself as being “kind of raised in Austin and Democratic politics.” His father served as Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administrative assistant when the former president was a member of Congress. DeGuerin’s father later worked for the Johnson administration in the Commerce Department.
(Remember my previous post. It wasn't that long ago that there wasn't just a thing in Texas as a Republican. You were either a Liberal Dem or a Conservative Dem. Texas laws and political history are very different than the other 49 States)
Per DeGuerin: “I don’t know that I agree with [DeLay’s] politics, and I don’t have to,” DeGuerin said. “What’s happened to him is political, and I don’t agree with trying to affect the ballot box with the jury box, and that’s what Ronnie Earle is trying to do.” DeGuerin said he made his political persuasion “very clear” to DeLay and his supporters, and he said DeLay is comfortable with it.
Outstanding!
DeLay's team continues to hit back, and in the process, scores hit after hit.
Doesn't matter if it works or not....Delay and his lawyer are casting doubt about his integrity...see how it works?
First Earle casts doubt on Tom Delay's integrity.
And now it is payback time.
Ronnie is a crappy attorney and won't win. He's just trying to destroy a reputation and keep him out of the main seat in the house (as leader) while Supreme Court justice things are going on.
Come'on Texas Rangers, come get Ronnie and throw his behind in jail where it belong.
Perfect.
They searched the house high and low
Then they tipped their hats
and said 'Thank You if you hear from him let us know'
Well the weeks went by and
Spring turned to Summer
And Summer faded into Fall
And it turns out he was a missing person
who nobody missed at all
Maybe the Dixie Chicks had a point?
Squash Ronnie Earle like the POS he is.
Go Tom, Go!!!!!!!!!
of course, he's a lawyer first.
And one of the best in Texas.
This city is a nest of libs fed by the U of Texas ultra leftist professors and their spoon fed kids.
It will be very difficult for the judge to exempt Earle's 2 aides who were subpoenaed.
DeLay's attorneys can get what they need from those two aides (they won't want to be indicted)...in fact, that very threat will probably make Earle **want** to tell his side of the story.
DeGuerin IS good.
I think that Earle has violated Delay's due process rights guaranteed by the 5th and 14th amendments.
What you see here in subpoenaing Earle is merely the investigative stage in which details about Earles abuse of Delay's due process to remove him from the House leadership during a crucial election cycle is the REAL goal that Earle has.Details of Earle's campaign to do so are below in an article which summarizes the campaign.
In any event, Earle is history, he has sacrificed himself to simply take DeLay out of the Republican party whip position.
Here are the details of Earle's prosecutorial transgressions:
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200510060733.asp
Ronnie Earle Should Not Be a Prosecutor
The abuses of power in the Tom DeLay case should offend Democrats and Republicans alike.
If there is one thing liberals and conservatives ought to be able to agree on, it is this: Ronnie Earle, district attorney of Travis County, Texas, has no business wielding the enormous powers of prosecution.
I don't know Congressman Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader. I certainly don't know if he's done anything illegal, let alone something so illegal as to warrant indictment. It doesn't look like it — and at least one grand jury has already refused to indict him (a fact Earle appears to have tried to conceal from the public as he scrambled to find a new grand jury that would). Yet experience shows it is foolhardy for those who don't know all the facts to hazard a judgment about such things.
One thing is sure, though, and it ought to make anyone who cares about basic fairness angry. The investigation of DeLay, a matter of national gravity is being pursued with shocking ethical bankruptcy by the district attorney — by Ronnie Earle.
For nearly 20 years, I had the privilege of being a prosecutor in the best law-enforcement office in the United States, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Being a prosecutor is the world's greatest job because it is honest work for the highest cause — service to one's own community. And it is work that has precious little to do with politics.
In their private lives, many of my fellow government lawyers were political independents, either by design (i.e., out of a conscious rectitude holding that law enforcement should be above politics) or because they were just apolitical. Most, as one would expect in New York, were Democrats. A large percentage, as, again, one would expect from a group of mostly young people educated in top schools, was proudly liberal. Over coffee, or lunch, or dinner, they and we few, hardy conservatives would have spirited debates over all manner of issues.
In the four corners of a case, however, none of that mattered a wit. Within those four corners, there were rules and responsibilities. There was recognition that prosecutors have breathtaking power over the lives of those they investigate. Power inarguably vital to the rule of law. But power which, if used recklessly or maliciously, can leave lives in tatters. The lives not only of the innocent and the guilty, but of the justice system itself.
This was especially so in investigations of political corruption. We prosecuted Republicans and Democrats, in about equal measure. The cases were hard, but checking your politics at the door was never hard, for at least two reasons.
First, there tends to be nothing ideological about the crimes committed by politicians. They are a stew of pettiness, greed and above-it-all arrogance over which neither party has a monopoly, and the offensiveness of which cuts across philosophical divides.
Second, some wrongs are simply not intended to be crimes. Among them are political wrongs: sleazy abuses of power, cronyism, most acts of nepotism, half-truths or outright lies in campaigns, etc. In a free society, these get sorted out in our bumptious political system. Usually, absent shades of financial fraud, bribery, and extortion, prosecutors should stay their hands. There are too many real crimes to waste resources on that sort of thing. More significantly, the risk of criminalizing politics would only discourage honest citizens from participating in matters of public concern.
The code prosecutors live by is not a liberal or conservative one. It is a code of ethics — of nonpartisan, non-ideological honor. Of course many prosecutors are ambitious. Of course prosecutors want to win. But even the ambitious ones who care a bit too much about winning quickly learn that success is intimately tied to doing things the right way. And not least because that is the norm their colleagues follow — as well as the standard by which the defense bar and the judiciary (populated by no small percentage of former prosecutors) scrutinize them. It is, moreover, the standard the public demands they meet.
People want to see the guilty convicted, but they also want to feel good about the way it is done. The prosecutor is the public's lawyer, and his duty is not merely to get the job done but to get it done right. The second part is just as crucial as the first. They are equal parts of doing justice. No one expects perfection, which is unattainable in any human endeavor. But if the outcomes of the justice system are to be regarded as legitimate, as befitting a decent society, people have to be confident that if they stood accused, the prosecutor would enforce their rights and make sure they got a fair fight.
So there are certain things that are just flat-out verboten. Most basic are these: to resist public comment about non-public, investigative information; to abjure any personal stake in the litigation that could suggest decisions regarding the public interest are being made to suit the prosecutor's private interests; and — if all that is not Sesame Street simple enough — to remain above any financial or political entanglement that could render one's objectivity and judgment suspect.
In the profession, these things come under the hoary rubric of "avoiding the appearance of impropriety." In layman's terms, they are about having an I.Q. high enough that you know to put your socks on before your shoes. This is bedrock stuff. It is central to the presumption of innocence, due process, and equal protection under the law that prosecutors owe even the most despicable offenders. It is foundational to the integrity of the system on which rest our security, our economy, and our freedoms.
And Ronnie Earle has flouted it in embarrassing, mind-numbingly brazen ways.
As Byron York has been reporting on NRO (see here, here, and here), Earle has partnered up with producers making a movie, called The Big Buy, about his Ahab's pursuit of DeLay. A movie about a real investigation? Giving filmmakers access to investigative information while a secret grand-jury probe is underway? Allowing them to know who is being investigated and why? To view proposed indictments even before the grand jury does? Allowing them into the sanctuary of the grand jury room, and actually to film grand jurors themselves? Creating a powerful incentive — in conflict with the duty of evenhandedness — to bring charges on flimsy evidence? For a prosecutor, these aren't just major lapses. They are firing offenses. For prosecutors such as those I worked with over the years, from across the political spectrum, I daresay they'd be thought firing-squad offenses.
Attending partisan fundraisers in order to speak openly about an ongoing grand jury investigation against an uncharged public official. As a moneymaking vehicle.
Penning a nakedly partisan op-ed (in the New York Times on November 23, 2004) about the political fallout of his grand-jury investigation of DeLay, then uncharged.
Settling cases by squeezing businesses to make hefty financial contributions to pet personal causes in exchange for exercising the public's power to dismiss charges.
Secretly shopping for new grand juries when, despite the incalculable advantages the prosecution has in that forum, the earlier grand jurors have found the case too weak to indict.
Ignoring the commission by members of his own party of the same conduct that he seeks to brand felonious when engaged in by members of the other party.
Such actions and tactics are reprehensible. They constitute inexcusably dishonorable behavior on the part of a public servant, regardless of whether the persons and entities investigated were in the wrong. They warrant universal censure.
If Congressman DeLay did something illegal, he, like anyone else, should be called to account. But he, like anyone else, is entitled to procedural fairness, including a prosecutor who not only is, but also appears to be, fair and impartial.
Ronnie Earle is not that prosecutor. He has disgraced his profession, and done grievous disservice to thousands of federal, state, and local government attorneys. Prosecutors of all persuasions whose common bond is a good faith commitment to the rules — but who will now bear the burden of suspicions fostered by Earle's excesses.
The burden, but not the cost. That will be borne by the public.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
The Hammer isn't such an easy target. Heh.
Well, maybe it's not that amazing after all
I wish more republicans were like him...
Good! Use the little thug's own tactics on him.
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