I can appreciate that it’s growing difficult to keep track of all of Tom DeLay’s various crises/scandals. (Think Progress came up with a pretty helpful list.) While the past couple of weeks have raised questions about DeLay’s problems with congressional ethics, let’s shift gears again back to DeLay’s pending indictment for illegal fundraising in Texas.
The Houston Chronicle reported today that DeLay’s federal PAC was more closely linked to Texas fundraising than had been previously known.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s federal leadership political fund apparently coordinated with a Texas committee to deliver $23,000 in contributions to Texas House candidates, according to documents filed in a civil lawsuit.
The documents draw DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority deeper into the ongoing controversy over whether Texans for a Republican Majority illegally used corporate money to help finance the GOP takeover of the Texas House in 2002. Republicans contend the money was spent legally.
DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and his aides have maintained that TRMPAC had nothing to do with his leadership political committee, ARMPAC, though some of his associates worked for both. But the new documents show a working relationship between the groups.
The story paints (yet another) damning portrait for the embattled and ethically-challenged House Majority Leader. It also suggests DeLay’s federal PAC (Americans for a Republican Majority) may soon face the same questions surrounding the Texas PAC (Texans for a Republican Majority).
The new information “weaves the web a little broader,” said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, an advocacy organization that filed the first criminal complaint against TRMPAC in March 2003.
“It has the potential to draw ARMPAC into the criminal investigation,” McDonald said. “We haven’t seen the level of coordination that ARMPAC checks were being funneled through TRMPAC operatives. So it’s a new revelation on how the two PACS might have been working hand in hand.”
The noose, as the saying goes, continues to tighten…