{"id":3162,"date":"2004-12-08T09:28:44","date_gmt":"2004-12-08T14:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3162.html"},"modified":"2004-12-08T09:28:44","modified_gmt":"2004-12-08T14:28:44","slug":"the-guy-just-cant-follow-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-guy-just-cant-follow-the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The guy just can&#8217;t follow the rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a shocker &#8212; part of Tom DeLay&#8217;s political machine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chron.com\/cs\/CDA\/ssistory.mpl\/nation\/2937016\">violated campaign finance laws<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>House Majority Leader Tom DeLay&#8217;s legal expense fund accepted improper contributions from two registered lobbyists in 2001 and this week returned the checks, totaling $3,500, fund trustee Brent Perry said Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p>House rules prohibit lobbyists from making contributions to a member&#8217;s legal defense fund. The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust has raised more than $900,000 since its creation in 2000, said Perry, a Houston attorney.<\/p>\n<p>The reimbursement was prompted by Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group, which combed through DeLay&#8217;s fund and identified the improper contributions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In light of all that&#8217;s happened, I practically <i>expect<\/i> DeLay to accept illegal contributions from lobbyists, so this hardly comes as a surprise. Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations, DeLay could start accepting bribes on the Capitol steps and I&#8217;d say, &#8220;Yep, sounds about right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m wondering, why did it take three years to return the ill-gotten donations?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Asked why it took the fund so long to return the checks, Perry said &#8220;no one realized they were a mistake&#8221; until Public Citizen raised the alarm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s quite an efficient operation DeLay is running there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a shocker &#8212; part of Tom DeLay&#8217;s political machine violated campaign finance laws. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay&#8217;s legal expense fund accepted improper contributions from two registered lobbyists in 2001 and this week returned the checks, totaling $3,500, fund trustee Brent Perry said Tuesday. House rules prohibit lobbyists from making contributions to a member&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}