$190,000 check is at center of case
WASHINGTON -- Tom DeLay's political committee faced a problem.
The Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, whose mission was designed to put the state Legislature under GOP control, was getting a lot of money from corporate donors. But under Texas law, the corporate cash could not go to local candidates for state offices.
Nevertheless, a DeLay associate arrived in Washington in 2002 with a check for $190,000 addressed to the Republican National State Election Committee, according to the indictment handed up yesterday against DeLay.
Later, the committee made contributions to candidates for Texas state offices.
That check is at the center of the case against DeLay, which forced the House majority leader yesterday to leave his post temporarily and which renewed ethical questions surrounding him and other prominent Republicans.
The indictment says the DeLay associates in effect laundered the contributions through the Republican National State Election Committee, which gave it to candidates whom DeLay's political action committee supported for the Texas House of Representatives -- thus avoiding a state ban on corporate contributions to local candidates.
While DeLay is accused of joining a conspiracy to violate state criminal laws, the indictment includes no details about his alleged role. Moreover, some analysts said Ronnie Earle, the Travis County, Texas, prosecutor who brought the case, lacked jurisdiction to bring potentially tougher charges of state election law violations.
The conspiracy charge that Earle filed is a broader allegation that could be harder to prove in court, analysts said.
Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, said the DeLay indictment was unusual because there was no accompanying charge specifically outlining the allegations of wrongdoing.
A conspiracy indictment ''is the count of last resort because you don't have any direct evidence of any kind of involvement, so it is an attempt to link someone to somebody by really indirect evidence," said Toensing, a Republican.
Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has long sought DeLay's indictment on money laundering charges, hailed the indictment yesterday, but said Earle may have wanted to go further. ''There were tougher charges that the prosecutor would have liked to bring, but there were jurisdictional problems," Sloan said.
In Texas, she said, Earle could not have used election laws to charge DeLay, because DeLay's home residence is outside the prosecutor's jurisdiction; by contrast, a prosecutor can bring a conspiracy charge regardless of where the accused person lives.
In the indictment released yesterday, Earle detailed how DeLay associates, John Dominick Colyandro and James Walter Ellis, conspired to pass the $190,000 in corporate donations through the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to the national Republican Party.
The indictment said the DeLay associates had given a party official the check for $190,000, along with a list of Republican candidates for the Texas House who should receive the money.
At a news conference in Austin yesterday, Earle declined to talk specifically about the case. ''I can't get into evidence," he said.
The DeLay indictment is the latest against those with close ties to President Bush and the White House, and several have a common connection: Jack Abramoff, the influential lobbyist indicted last month on conspiracy charges related to a loan for the purchase of a casino company. DeLay has called Abramoff ''one of my closest and dearest friends."
Last week, in another case related to Abramoff, the White House's top federal procurement official, David H. Safavian, was arrested on charges that he had made a false statement about a golf trip to Scotland that he took with Abramoff in 2002. 