DeLay indicted on new charges

By Hilary Hylton

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A Texas grand jury on Monday
indicted U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on two new felony charges
including money laundering, following a conspiracy indictment
last week which forced him to step aside as the second-ranking
Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The new indictment accuses DeLay of money laundering and
conspiracy to commit money laundering in a campaign finance
scheme and greatly raises the legal stakes for the
once-powerful Texan because it includes a potential punishment
of life in prison if convicted.

The Travis County, Texas, grand jury in Austin handed up
the indictments shortly after DeLay’s lawyers sought to dismiss
last week’s charge, which carried a maximum sentence of two
years, on a legal technicality.

The Austin American-Statesman said prosecutors sought the
new charges because of concern the original one would be thrown
out, but Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle could not
be reached for comment.

DeLay denounced the latest action as an “abomination of
justice.”

“Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of
prosecutorial abuse,” he said in a statement.

The charges accuse DeLay of conspiring with associates John
Colyandro and Jim Ellis to launder $190,000 in corporate
contributions to his Texans for a Republican Majority political
action committee, or TRMPAC, through the Republican National
Committee for distribution to candidates for the Texas
Legislature in 2002.

Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in political
campaigns.

TRMPAC’s efforts contributed to Republicans taking control
of the Texas Legislature for the first time since the
post-Civil War Reconstruction era and led to a controversial
remapping of congressional districts that increased the number
of Republicans from Texas in the U.S. House.

DeLay, who represents a Houston area district, had been
House majority leader from 2002 until last week’s indictment.

Because of House Republican rules, he quit the leadership
post, where he had played a key role in passing President
George W. Bush’s agenda including tax cuts and a prescription
drug benefit for older Americans. He was able to keep his
congressional seat.

NO RULING ON DISMISSAL

Throughout Earle’s three-year-long investigation into
TRMPAC, DeLay has accused him of being a partisan Democrat
conducting a political witch hunt to get revenge for the
congressional redistricting.

“He is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a ‘do-over’
since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me
last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate. This is an
abomination of justice,” DeLay said.

His legal team’s dismissal motion to state District Judge
Bob Perkins in Austin argued that the original conspiracy
charge did not apply to Texas elections until September 2003.
Perkins is on vacation, so there has been no ruling.

DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin accused prosecutors of rushing
to cook up new charges just so DeLay could not return to his
leadership position in the House.

“If this (new indictment) doesn’t prove that the motivation
behind this indictment is political, then I don’t know what it
is,” DeGuerin said in a news conference in Houston.

DeLay has said his resignation was temporary and that he
will continue to exert influence in the House through close
ties with Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Some moderate
Republicans, however, have cast him as a possible liability for
the party.

Apart from the TRMPAC investigation, DeLay has been under
fire the past year for ethics problems involving fund-raising,
foreign travels and his dealings with lobbyists.

Monday’s indictments were the latest in a growing number to
come out of Earle’s TRMPAC investigation.

Colyandro, Ellis and Warren Robold were indicted last year
and are awaiting trial. They have been charged with accepting a
total of $600,000 in illegal corporate contributions.

TRMPAC and lobby group Texas Association of Business were
indicted on charges of illegally funneling corporate donations
into the Texas campaigns. Eight corporations also were indicted
for their part in the finance schemes.