For weeks, all we’ve heard from Tom DeLay and his allies is that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is on some kind of partisan vendetta. Earle wanted to force DeLay from his leadership post, we’ve been told. Earle wants to see DeLay in jail, the right has argued.
Except none of these claims seem to comport with Earle’s pre-indictment offer of a plea bargain agreement.
A Texas prosecutor offered Rep. Tom DeLay a deal to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and save his job as House majority leader, but DeLay chose to fight felony charges instead, the congressman’s attorney said Monday.
Dick DeGuerin, DeLay’s lawyer, described the offer in a letter to the prosecutor as he filed motions in Austin to dismiss felony indictments and — barring dismissal of the case — to seek a speedy trial. […]
“Before the first indictment you tried to coerce a guilty plea from Tom DeLay for a misdemeanor, stating the alternative was indictment for a felony which would require his stepping down as majority leader of the United States House of Representatives,” DeGuerin wrote Earle.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but why would DeLay’s legal team complain about a pretty generous plea offer from Earle? If DeLay had agreed to the lesser charge (a misdemeanor), he could have avoided indictment and kept his leadership post in Congress. Earle, in other words, offered DeLay a way out. Instead, DeLay’s legal team is now condemning the earlier offer as proof of Earle’s … well, come to think of it, they never quite explain why they’re whining about it.
As it stands, DeLay rejected the plea offer, has been indicted on felony charges, and will be booked in a Texas county jail this week — including a humiliating fingerprinting and mug shot process.
It couldn’t happen to a more appropriate person.