It’s hard to keep up with all of the developments surrounding Congress’ most repulsive member, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, but scandals surrounding him are reaching fever pitch. One controversy may lead to a DeLay indictment, the other will probably lead to nothing.
First, virtually everyone DeLay knows and works with in Texas is now under indictment.
A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, yesterday handed down indictments against three aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), including a first-degree felony charge of money laundering against James Ellis, who runs DeLay’s PAC.
DeLay said the indictments were the result of a partisan attack.
The first-degree felony charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
In addition to the charge against Ellis, who runs DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC (ARMPAC), the grand jury handed down indictments against John Colyandro, the executive director of DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), and Warren Robold, a DeLay fundraiser. Eight corporations, including Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Bacardi USA Inc., were charged with making a prohibited political contribution to TRMPAC.
That was yesterday. This morning, the indictment list blossomed and now includes nearly three dozen people with close ties to DeLay.
A grand jury handed up 32 indictments for an alleged scheme to make illegal campaign contributions through a political action committee associated with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
DeLay hasn’t been indicted yet, but he’s hardly in the clear.
Gregg Cox, director of the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, said that, despite yesterday’s charges, “more work remains to be done,” adding, “This is a continuing investigation into allegations of criminal activity related to the 2002 Texas elections.”
How long, do you suppose, until one of the 35 people now under indictment decides to flip and testify against DeLay? Hmm.
Of course, DeLay is also still the subject of a sweeping House Ethics Committee investigation. Unfortunately, while indictments are getting handed out down in Austin like candy at Halloween, the ethics probe appears to have crawled to a stop — but not because the charges lack merit.
The committee was supposed to meet this week to decide how, or whether, to proceed with the pending charges against DeLay. Indeed, the committee gave itself a 45-day window to consider the case and that deadline was Monday. Now, the panel is scheduled to meet next week to determine the outcome of the preliminary inquiry.
What should happen is that the Ethics Committee should appoint an outside special counsel to consider the charges in detail, interview witnesses, and get testimony from DeLay directly. Is any of this likely to happen? Of course not — the committee has five Republicans and five Democrats. To get any progress, one of the Republicans would have to agree that the charges, which are obviously true, are worth pursuing.
It’s painfully obvious that the lawmakers are simply terrified of the Majority Leader and would rather kill the investigation than let the truth come out.
The House ethics committee, ever the Capitol’s hibernating watchdog, has been dithering for months about allegations that the majority leader, Tom DeLay, abused his office when he engineered the gerrymander of Texas House seats to cushion his Republican edge in Congress. The committee should have at least approved a formal inquiry by now, but the latest reports indicate that the issue will soon be deep-sixed as the Republican Congress shows no appetite for investigating Mr. DeLay, one of Washington’s most feared and bare-knuckled partisans.
Committee leaders claim to be still fact-gathering, but it has becoming clear that their mission is to dismiss this hot potato yet not seem cowardly about it. One gambit is called the “option of last resort” under ethics rules: punting the issue to the evenly divided panel. Unless there’s a profile in courage in the wings, this would mean a 5-to-5 deadlock on party lines and no inquiry. The “option of last resort” is really a political magic wand to make the duties of office vaporize.
I’m disappointed, though not surprised, that GOP House members would let DeLay get away with obvious ethics violations, but if DeLay gets indicted over his fundraising scandals — and, in the process, has to give up his leadership post — it’ll be a lot easier to get over the disappointment.