Posted on 10/27/2014 3:59:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
If you tried to find out what recently happened in court ending the criminal case against former GOP Congressman Tom DeLay, almost all the results that come up are from conservative sites. The left-wing news media deliberately ignored the story of his total legal exoneration earlier this month. Contrast this with the multiple, lengthy front-page articles than ran for years gleefully covering the progression of the politically motivated attacks on him.
I saved an article taking up the top half of the front page of The New York Times from 2006 - with a huge photo of DeLay high-fiving my cousin, a Congressional staffer - announcing that DeLay was being forced to leave Congress due to the indictment. In contrast, the Times printed a tiny, three-sentence paragraph about the exoneration that was buried in the print edition on page A20.
When DeLay was indicted in 2005, most people around the country did not understand how politically motivated the left-wing Travis County District Attorney was. Now that sitting Texas Governor Rick Perry is being prosecuted by current DA Rosemary Lehmberg, a convicted drunk driver, the targeting by that Democrat-controlled office is finally coming to light. The Austin-based office badly overstretched going after the popular governor, and now its history of corrupt prosecutions are all coming to light.
Former GOP Senator Kay Bay Hutchinson was also indicted by the same office, and fortunately for her, then Travis County DA Ronnie Earle’s bogus witchhunt was thrown out. DeLay describes what happened to Earle’s prosecution, “The case [against Sen. Hutchison] did go to court, and his case absolutely imploded the day they went to trial. The judge kicked them all out of his courtroom.”
DeLay achieved a respectable 95.39 percent rating in Congress from the American Conservative Union after serving 21 years. He became a born-again Christian in 1985. This combined with moving up to the powerful position of Majority Whip followed by House Majority Leader explains why the left came after him so viciously. He is far from a criminal, but rather a kind and decent man. He and his wife founded a Christ-centered foster community called Rio Bend near Richmond, Texas. They fostered three boys themselves.
The targeting of conservative DeLay for political reasons began way back in 1996. DeLay told WND’s Jerome Corsi that “Nancy Pelosi and Patrick Kennedy, then a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island and the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, announced publicly that they were going to take me out of politics.” They filed ethics charges against him in 1996 and 1998, which were both dismissed. Democrats next filed more ethics charges against him in 2011, followed by a racketeering charge in 2012 - all dismissed.
While House Majority Whip from 1995 to 2003, DeLay established a congressional leadership federal political action committee called Americans for a Republican Majority (“ARMPAC”). The purpose of the PAC was to elect more Republicans to the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, in order to affect redistricting so Republicans would get more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2002, Earle filed criminal charges against DeLay for allegedly laundering $190,000. The money had been transferred from ARMPAC to another committee, where it was then donated to candidates in Texas. Earle claimed that since the donations ultimately went to candidates, instead of things like administrative expenses, money laundering occurred. While it is illegal for corporations to contribute directly to a candidate, it is not illegal per se to contribute to a PAC, which then contributed to candidates - especially if both parties did not “knowingly” violate the law. The corporate entities, which included Cracker Barrel and Sears and Roebuck, had consulted with their legal departments and determined the donations complied with all laws.
Eight long years of trial later, DeLay was convicted in 2010 by the trial court, and sentenced to three years in prison plus probation. He appealed, and the first appellate court overturned the conviction last month, ruling that the evidence in the case was “legally insufficient to sustain DeLay's convictions.” But the politically motivated prosecutors wouldn’t let up squandering taxpayer dollars, appealing the verdict up to the next court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Just a few days later, perhaps to make a statement, that court - the final court for state crimes - issued an 8-1 ruling affirming the lower court’s dismissal of the conviction, acquitting DeLay of all criminal charges.
Both appeals courts held that there was no evidence that either the contributors or ARMPAC knowingly made and accepted illegal contributions. The second court reiterated the lower court, opining, “...the State’s evidence failed to show that the corporations harbored the requisite intent to violate Section 253.003(a) of the Election Code,“[g]iven the testimony of the corporate representatives [of the lack of any intent to violate Texas law] and the undisputed facts that the corporations could lawfully make donations to TRMPAC and TRMPAC could lawfully transfer the corporate funds out of state[.]” It strains credibility that several large corporations with substantial legal departments and a lot to lose, would coincidentally all happen to knowingly break the law.
Even the left-leaning Slate magazine admits, “There were good reasons to think that DeLay’s prosecution in Texas for violations of state campaign finance law, like the federal prosecutions of former presidential candidate John Edwards and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, involved politically motivated charges brought by overzealous prosecutors.”
This is all about trying to accomplish through the courts - even criminally - what the left has not been able to do at the ballot box. DeLay told WND, “What the Democrats did to me is right out of the pages of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals … I’m very excited that I can now get on with my life, and whatever the Lord has got for me, that’s where I’m headed … Hopefully I can get a job. I am not a rich man.” He is now 67 and has not ruled out another run for office.
The 18-year war waged by Democrats against DeLay has cost him an estimated $12 million in legal fees. Where is the apology from then-DA Ronnie Earle? Tom DeLay is considering a lawsuit against the Travis County District Attorney’s Office for prosecutorial misconduct. Let’s hope he does, because until this targeting is stopped, it will continue against conservatives - especially those in Travis County.
Considering? With what this cost the state, the state should go after them too for the waste of taxpayer money! Why isn't there an"downside" or "accountability" in this "new brave world?"
Just to keep the story straight on Alabama’s Don Siegelman, mentioned in this episode....he WAS convicted for mail fraud and bribes...in particular to HealthSouth’s executive. $500,000 was the magic number, and went into his campaign fund.
With all the efforts to drag the US Attorney General into this...failing...he finally was sentenced in 2009. Six and half-year sentence. He had hopes of some appeals that went nowhere. End of the story. Nothing political about this except the $500,000 were campaign funds. The guy is a four-star crook....taking profits from the HealthSouth pocket (their customers), and using it for campaign purposes.
The travesty gives new meaning to the thought “justice Delayed is justice denied”
The DA needs some justice that denies him to continue living
There is no law when lawyers and judges use it for political vendetta
Doesnt matter to the liberals. They got what they wanted: Tom Delay neutered and out of power.
If it weren’t for corrupt lawyers the 1 or 2 good lawyers wouldn’t have anything to do.
I’d like to seem Tom get back involved in politics. He was brutal on the Liberals. It was great!
Tom Delay for Senate — anywhere versus a lib or RINO — in 2016!
“The 18-year war waged by Democrats against DeLay has cost him an estimated $12 million in legal fees...”
18 YEARS!
And where was the GOPe ??? (...crickets...)
ping
You can't say it was a "waste of taxpayer money", because 2 plead guilty.
The fact that Jim Ellis and John Colyandro(Tom Delay's aides) plead guilty allowed Tom DeLay to plausibly deny that he knew anything about the campaign money being laundered thru the RNC.
A lot of people lose sight of what these court decisions were actually about. The Appeals Court decision and Court of Criminal Appeals decision were not about Tom Delay's guilt or innocence, but about what evidence could be used.
But as you point out it is also another example of the Democrats getting their partisan advantage financed by the public. Another example, when teachers dues were compelled to be paid to Democrat unions which were then washed and funneled to Democrat candidates who then obligingly passed legislation favoring Democrat teachers unions. Eric Holder has converted the Justice Department into another arm of communism in America, all funded by us. The entire edifice of federal grants and subsidies to universities, federal student loans etc. is a way of getting the public to pay for Democrat think tanks.
One might even view the entire federal income tax structure as a way of extorting money from Wall Street and big business to pass relief legislation, a disreputable practice which favors politicians of both flavors but especially Democrats.
The list goes on and on and Tom Delay is just one more victim among, literally, millions who have fallen to this practice one way or another.
You just put your finger on why he was proseuted.
Delay is innocent - the corrupt MSM is guilty. Who’da thought?
And the GOP tarnished as being corrupt...
So right all Dem care about is getting anyone that maybe going places in GOP…its happened over and over. U can look back and see how many in GOP was on way to bigger things and Dem step in place anything they can to harm them. God save us from all these kind of people. Bring them to light for all to see and hear there wrongs.
Where’s humblegunner whining about someone pimping a web site?
My sense is in Texas this can be pursued against them individually.
The Democrats in Travesty County consider it a crime to be a successful Republican politician. Austin is the toilet bowl of Texas. The Capitol should be moved to Ft. Worth.
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