What is he accused of doing? The above article makes it sound like he had money in his PAC and he gave it to other GOP candidates who were running. Is that right?
So, donors gave to him because he was a big name. That sounds like that part of it was OK.
The bad part appears to be that he shared the wealth with others.
Forgive me, but I always thought that's the way it worked. I'm still trying to figure out what about that strategy makes it wrong/illegal.
There’s a law about corporations not being able to give money to candidates. Yeah, like, whatever. Supposedly, he took the corporations’ donations and then wrote out checks to the candidates for similar amounts. They are going to appeal it because the law at the time said the candidates couldn’t be given the money by “cash” but it didn’t put any stipulation on “checks” but the prosecution will come back claiming checks are the same as cash. Another option is that the law has since changed on who can give donations so that however money exchanged hands isn’t illegal under today’s law but the prosecution will come back with it was the law at the time the act was committed.
There wasn’t any proof he’d done anything but the judge told the jury not to decide on “proof” but on “intent.” When the jury still couldn’t come to a decision, the judge told them they’d have to work through the holidays so they quickly voted guilty and went home for the turkey.
It sounds like a picky point of accounting, at worst. DeLay had $190K of private funds in his PAC. Corporations added $190K more. Delay accounted for the two sums separately within the PAC and doled out the private $190K to purposes that could only be funded privately, keeping the corporate funds for some unspecified future use. The Rat railroaders got fuming mad that Delay did not commingle the funds which of course would bar any of them from being used.