Posted on 08/16/2014 2:40:46 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Saturday that the indictment against him was an “outrageous” abuse of power and vowed to fight it.
“This indictment amounts to nothing more than abuse of power and I cannot and will not allow that to happen,” Perry said at a news conference on Saturday.
Perry spoke a day after a grand jury indicted the Republican on two felony counts of abuse of power for making good on a veto threat. He dismissed the prosecution as a “farce.”
A special prosecutor spent months calling witnesses and presenting evidence that Perry broke the law when he promised publicly to veto $7.5 million over two years for the Public Integrity Unit run by the office of Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg.
Lehmberg, a Democrat, was convicted of drunken driving, but refused Perry’s calls to resign.
The possible 2016 presidential hopeful is dismissing the charges as nakedly political. Perry is the first Texas governor since 1917 to be indicted.
The governor said he was absolutely correct in seeking Lehmberg’s resignation, and given the chance to do it all over again, he would.
He predicted victory in the courts, and said that ultimately, the people who engineered the indictment will have a price to pay. “Those responsible will be held accountable,” Perry said.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
I hear Austin is the anti-Texas part of Texas..
Or should I say, a liberal enclave.. Surrounded by sane Texans all around?
GJs indict cold tamales in TRavis Co.
I wish I had better photoshop skills. I would put a Hannibal Lector mask on that DA.
Doesn’t need photoshopping.
The fact that it is a real unretouched photo speaks for itself.
It is a farce. I just hope Perry’s knees don’t buckle the way Tom DeLay’s did. Perry needs to cowboy up and get in the faces of these commie ‘RATS. Put THEM in jail.
It’s time to move the capitol of Texas out of Travis County so that the libs in Austin can’t keep pulling this crap.
Dallas County isn’t much better.
She looks like a nut raging liberal feminist who feels that she is not under law and of them who feel they can do whatever seems right in their eyes.
Shades of Lois Lerner over and over and over again as we see the left go ballistic even as they run illegal immigrants over the border to try and change election results in the upcoming elections. And many of the left are just like her as she is like Obamanation and other lawless peoples who desire power.
Thank you! You know, as I was watching the booking video I was sitting here wondering if there’s ever been a drunk who admitted to being drunk. I couldn’t even count how many times Rosemary said she wasn’t drunk. And each time she said it she looked just as drunk as the last time she said it. Crazy stuff.
Looks like prosecutor misconduct and abuse to me.
Irony, thy name is Lehmberg.
“I for one have emailed my state senator and rep to defrock the Travis County DA’s office of persecutory powers of this nature, and transfer these powers to the Texas AG, where it belongs. Again our state is conservative enough, where I think this can be pulled off.”
That is a very good idea.
A little background:
From:
http://www.texastribune.org/tribpedia/public-integrity-unit/about/
TRIBPEDIA: Public Integrity Unit
The Public Integrity Unit is a state-funded division of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office. It investigates public corruption, insurance fraud, and motor fuels tax fraud.
The Travis County DA holds the chief responsibility for enforcing the government and election code statewide.
The unit was created under the leadership of Ronnie Earle, who served as the Travis County DA for three decades until his retirement in 2008. Earle captured national attention with his investigations into U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and became the poster child for what Republicans view as the unit’s politically motivated prosecutions.
He told the Texas Tribune that he started the unit in the early ‘80s because “it made no sense to me to see an aggravated robbery case next to a case about a state employee cheating on travel vouchers.” At the time, Earle says the investigation of government crimes was “mostly left to the newspapers” because the Travis County DA spent most of its time fighting street crime.
Dismantling the unit is a perennial platform plank of the Texas Republican Party, and numerous members of the GOP, included DeLay and Hutchison, have criticized what they view as its politically motivated prosecutions. According to Earle, between 1978 and when he retired, in 2008, he prosecuted 19 elected officials, just five of whom were Republicans. Cathie Adams, the former Republican Party of Texas chair, filed an equal protection lawsuit over the issue in federal court last year. Her argument: Why should the voters of Travis County get to elect an official who has the power to prosecute offenses statewide?
A frequently proposed solution — and one that state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, put forth unsuccessfully during the last legislative session — would be to put state corruption probes under the statewide-elected Attorney General.
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What I want to know now is, by what authority did Ronnie Earle start this fiasco? There must be some legislative bill that was passed to do this ...
That is truly some bizarre Texas thing!
It’s totally a farce. The prosecutor indicting Perry for doing anything a sane person would do is the abuse of power.
I wonder if she was drunk when she wrote up the indictment, sent it in and now is like “OOOPS”. This dumbass is gonna be FORCED to resign, and probably lose her right to practice. Much like the Moose in the WH.
It is a farce Rick. This is going to backfire on the Dems so bad.
From a post at:
http://acahnman.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-more-complete-picture-of-rosemary.html
Thursday, October 17, 2013
A More Complete Picture of Rosemary Lehmberg’s Drinking
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Interesting:
Does Rosemary Lehmberg have a drinking problem?
The embattled Travis County District Attorney says no. She contends her DWI was a one-time mistake.
Others say Lehmberg may be an alcoholic, and there is new evidence supporting claim. It comes in the form of receipt after receipt after receipt. Lawyers subpoenaed Twin Liquors for records of Lehmberg’s purchases. It shows in a 15 month period, Lehmberg bought 72 bottles of Cirroc vodka.
….
When going through filings he found receipts from seven different Twin Liquors stores. They show Lehmberg’s credit card was used to buy more than $3,000 in vodka. The 72 bottles purchased Total more than 23 gallons.
“If somebody is buying 23 gallons of vodka within 15 months’ time, is caught with it, three times the legal limit all those things, being that coherent, all suggest that Ms. Lehmberg has probably had some sort of problem for a long time,” O’Brien charged.
He also noticed something else. “She would always go to a different store every two weeks or so to buy her next stash of vodka.”
Some Thoughts:
- 72 bottles of vodka in 15 months translates to 4 1/2 bottles per month; that’s not necessarily a problem level, but it’s close.
- This is only a record of her credit card purchases at Twin Liquors. How much did she purchase at other locations?!? How frequently did she pay with cash?!?
- That being said, the reason for Lehmberg’s removal is her willingness to abuse the power of her office, not her personal party habits; unfortunately, this development indicates that there could be another incident in the future.
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Also Brietbart has this:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/08/15/Political-Payback-Rick-Perry-Indictment
Subpoenaed receipts from Twin Liquors showed her buying 72 bottles of Cirroc vodka—totaling more than 23 gallons—in a 15-month period, and that Lehmberg spread her purchases out among different stores.
This amount only covers purchases made with her credit card at that one liquor store chain, not cash purchases or alcohol obtained elsewhere.
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Alcoholism is a terrible addiction. It appears this woman is an alcoholic and needs help. The greatest act of kindness in the videos are the officers who were so patient with her and they saved her life by puling her over and arresting her. She should be glad they saved her life! And as a sign of responsibility and respect she should have resigned because her behavior is not that of a professional district attorney. In fact it is the behavior of a common criminal.
“The Dems are about to make a hero of a gutless, frat boy corrupt crony capitalist RINO.”
The cronyism is what got Perry in this mess in the first place.
I know this won’t be a popular opinion here but IMO Perry can be seen as having abused his office on the coercion charge anyway.
The link below is from an article from last year. It states why Perry was being investigated by the PIU.
To my knowledge Perry had no authority over the Travis County DA so he had no authority to try to get her to resign. He’s the Governor, not Captain Justice and there are rules.
I think this indictment is politically motivated, but I also think Perry may have made a blunder.
BTW the dash cam tape of the drunk DA has less than zero bearing over whether or not Perry used felonious coercion to try to remove an elected official that wasn’t under his jurisdiction.
It doesn’t matter how drunk or obnoxious she was Perry doesn’t have the authority to legally remove her or he would have just fired her.
The veto threat is where he screwed up. That can be seen as coercion.
I expect the DA to get bounced in the next election.
http://www.statesman.com/news/business/cprit-fallout-clinical-trials-network-suspends-ope/nT9SH/
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