House Ethics Panel Chief May Be Replaced

By Mike AllenWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A04

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is leaning toward removing the House ethics committee chairman, who admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay this fall and has said he will treat DeLay like any other member, several Republican aides said yesterday.
Although Hastert (Ill.) has not made a decision, the expectation among leadership aides is that the chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), long at odds with party leaders because of his independence, will be replaced when Congress convenes next week.

The aides said a likely replacement is Rep. Lamar S. Smith, one of DeLay's fellow Texans, who held the job from 1999 to 2001. Smith wrote a check this year to DeLay's defense fund. An aide said Smith was favored for his knowledge of committee procedure.

Republicans are bracing for the possibility that DeLay, who is the chamber's second-ranking Republican and holds enormous sway over lawmakers, could be indicted by a Texas grand jury conducting a campaign finance investigation that the party contends is politically motivated.

The effort by DeLay and his allies to preserve his leadership post, even if he faces criminal charges, is one of the most sensitive issues facing Republicans as the new Congress begins. If Hefley is replaced by Smith, it is another signal by House leaders that they will stand by DeLay. "It certainly seems they're circling the wagons," said a GOP staff member who declined to be identified.

The aides said the stated reason for Hefley's removal is likely to be that it is time for him to rotate off the committee after serving as chairman since January 2001. An aide to Hefley declined to comment.

Hefley, a conservative, was co-author of an October letter saying that certain DeLay actions "went beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct." A committee report said DeLay broke no House rules.

The chairman told the Denver Post in July and reported in October that he would handle charges against the leader "in the ethics committee like I would handle anything else."

Hefley took the job reluctantly, and the post is considered undesirable among lawmakers. Hefley represents Colorado Springs, home to more than 20 evangelical organizations, including Focus on the Family, the large Christian enterprise run by James Dobson.

Also yesterday, the House ethics committee announced an investigation into a Democrat's release of the transcript of a secretly recorded 1997 telephone conversation among GOP leaders concerning then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). It is the committee's first new inquiry in nine months. House officials said the committee is likely to seek a deposition of the member, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). In October, he lost a federal court ruling that could force him to pay $600,000 to Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who sued McDermott for releasing the call.

On another matter, the watchdog group Democracy 21 called on the committee to investigate whether House members had received improper gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The request cited a Washington Post report Monday that Abramoff made luxury skyboxes available to lawmakers, including Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.).

NOTABLE QUOTABLES FROM TOM DELAY

“ I don't think there is enough money in the system today.”

“It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments.”

“The EPA, the Gestapo of government pure and simple, has been one of major claw hooks that the government maintains on the backs of our constituents.”

WHAT TEXAS NEWPAPERS ARE SAYING ABOUT TOM DELAY

Headline: “DeLay seems to think the rules don't apply to him” Houston Chronicle, 10/9/04

“Like many powerful congressional figures before him, DeLay has overreached. He has used his power for self-aggrandizement and ruthless partisanship. And he has scoffed at the law, House rules and simple propriety. DeLay has abused his position and embarrassed the House.” Austin American-Statesman, 10/10/04

“When you add those rulings to the two warnings Mr. DeLay drew during the 1990s for retaliating against a lobbyist and soliciting contributions on federal property, the man's got a problem. …It smacks of a pattern of abuse. Worse, it reveals a contempt for how the House should work.” Dallas Morning News, 10/12/04

WHAT NATIONAL MEDIA ARE SAYING ABOUT TOM DELAY

“The day after the ethics ruling, DeLay was back on the fund-raising trail…” Newsweek, 10/18/04

“Rep. DeLay must step down from his position as House Majority Leader. He has shown that he is incapable of upholding the high standards necessary for House leadership.” Allentown (PA) Morning Call, October 11, 2004

“If he had any ethics, he would step down.” Wilmington (NC) Morning Star, 10/11/04

“[DeLay’s] angry reaction to being admonished by his peers shows that DeLay is too arrogant to mend his ways.” Chicago Tribune, 10/11/04

“House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a national embarrassment and should resign his leadership position, if not his office.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/10/04

“Instead of bristling and sputtering, House Republicans should be asking themselves whether House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, rebuked twice in seven days by his chamber's ethics committee, has become an unaffordable liability for them.” Denver Post, 10/11/04

“[It] shows a dismaying pattern of abusing official authority in pursuit of personal interests and purely partisan concerns.” Louisville Courier-Journal, 10/9/04

“The bipartisan rebuke is extraordinary, but it hardly puts to rest Mr. DeLay's use of power as a partisan cudgel.” New York Times, 10/8/04

“It’s taken too long, but House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's shady ethics may finally be catching up to him.” Washington Post, 10/8/04

Rep. Tom DeLay Accepted Lobbyists’ Contributions to Legal Defense Fund in Likely Violation of House Rules
Public Citizen Urges DeLay to Return the Funds and for the House Ethics Committee to Investigate This Alleged Violation

WASHINGTON -- December 6 -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) may have once again violated the rules of the House of Representatives, this time by accepting contributions to his legal defense fund from three registered lobbyists, according to an investigation by Public Citizen.

Under House rule XXV (5)(c)(3), registered lobbyists are prohibited from making contributions to a member’s legal defense fund. Yet Public Citizen’s investigation of the contributions made to DeLay’s Legal Expense Trust found three such contributions totaling $4,000:

Jeffrey Fedorchak of Impact Strategies, who donated $2,000 between April 1 and June 30, 2003. During that period, Fedorchak was registered as a lobbyist and his clients included Servicemaster Co. and Tuolumne Utilities District, according to U.S. Senate lobbying disclosure records.

Robert Odle Jr. of Weil Gotshal & Manges, who donated $1,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2001. During that period, Odle was registered as a lobbyist for Nomura International, according to Senate records.

Vin Weber of Clark & Weinstock, who contributed $1,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2001. During that period, Weber was registered as a lobbyist and his clients included the Greek government, Microsoft and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Senate records show.

“Representative DeLay should promptly return these funds, and the House ethics committee should evaluate whether this was an intentional breach of House rules,” said Joan Claybrook, Public Citizen president. “Given the majority leader’s enormous power, Congress must ensure that other lobbyists with business before the House aren’t trying to curry favor by contributing to DeLay’s legal defense.”

Public Citizen also found three additional checks totaling $4,500 from Locke Liddell & Sapp and two of its lawyers. Locke Liddell & Sapp was a registered lobbying firm when those contributions were made in 2001. The firm of Becker & Poliakoff also made a $1,000 contribution in 2002, when it was a registered lobbying firm. However, it is unclear if House rules apply to firms and their non-registered employees in addition to individual, registered lobbyists.

Under House rules, donors may contribute a maximum of $5,000 per year to a legal defense fund, and contributions can be made by individuals, political action committees (PACs), and corporate and union treasuries.

Public Citizen’s probe also found that two corporations involved in an ongoing Texas district attorney’s investigation of alleged illegal campaign contributions into Texas state elections by PACs formed by DeLay also have contributed to DeLay’s legal defense fund.

Reliant Energy Inc. and Bacardi USA are alleged to have made the illegal contributions at the heart of the Texas prosecutor’s investigation. Bacardi has also been charged with making an unlawful political contribution. Public Citizen found that the two companies have contributed a total of $23,000 to help DeLay defray his legal costs.

“It’s ironic that the corporations financing the majority leader’s defense are the very same ones whose relationships with Mr. DeLay are being investigated,” said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.

Three top DeLay aides, John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren Robold, already have been indicted in the case. It has been speculated that DeLay himself may be the next target of the Texas grand jury.

DeLay’s legal fund was formed in 2000, soon after he was sued by Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The lawsuit alleged that DeLay had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) by engaging in money laundering and threatening legislative consequences to those who did not back Republican candidates or causes.

The Democrats dropped the lawsuit the following year. But the death of the legal action did not mean the demise of DeLay’s legal fund, which has continued to survive and even prosper. A complete analysis of DeLay’s Legal Expense Trust and background on his previous violations of House Rules is posted on Public Citizen’s Web site, http://www.DethroneDeLay.org.

Major findings of an analysis of the more than $748,471 contributed to DeLay’s legal fund since 2001 include:

A state-by-state breakdown shows that the largest amounts were contributed by donors from ($233,200), Kentucky ($112,800), Virginia ($47,500), the District of Columbia ($46,000), Florida ($39,500), California ($35,850) and Missouri ($22,750). The sizable amount from Kentucky came from a fundraiser organized by Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), who is seeking DeLay’s support in his bid to become the new Appropriations Committee chairman.

Sixty-eight percent of the contributions ($507,496) came from corporations and their employees. Leading industry contributors were energy and natural resources ($107,300); construction ($80,800); finance, insurance and real estate ($45,290); communications and electronics ($44,250); and lawyers and lobbyists ($39,000).

Current and former members of Congress and their PACs contributed $178,000, or 24 percent, to DeLay’s legal fund. Leading the pack are Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who contributed $20,000, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who contributed $15,000, and Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), who contributed $10,000.

DeLay's Unethical Behavior Grows

December 2, 2004

Reports yesterday confirmed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay took $100,000 from the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—a private prison company—at an August fund-raiser for his children's charity, the DeLay Foundation for Kids. CCA has a 20-year history of mismanagement and malfeasance and continues to lobby for a bill that would privatize up to half of the jails in the state of Texas. As one of Texas's leading politicians, and the chief architect of the behind-the-scenes campaign to redraw congressional boundaries in Texas that is now under grand jury investigation, DeLay's involvement with CCA is no accident.

DeLay's shady dealings with CCA are part of an ongoing pattern of unethical behavior in Washington and Texas. DeLay has been rebuked three separate times by the House Ethics Committee for improper fundraising methods and was caught last year using his children's charity as cover for collecting soft money for events at the Republican National Convention.

DeLay has no problem taking money from corporations in return for favorable access to the legislative process. CCA's "contribution" to DeLay was not by chance. In November 2003, Texas awarded the company a lucrative contract for the management of more than 8,300 beds in seven state prisons. Its lobbying effort to expand the share of state prison beds that can be privatized was thwarted last year only because of aggressive last-minute opposition from Texas's prison guards, who stood to absorb pay cuts of up to 40 percent.

Americans deserve to know all of DeLay's "charitable" donors and their legislative interests. Voters have a right to know whether their leaders are taking money from lobbyists, corporations, and other groups who have significant interests before Congress and state legislatures. Given DeLay's troubling ethical patterns, he should release the full list of donors to his charity for public review.

Daily Talking Points is a product of the American Progress Action Fund.

Tom DeLay and His Friends of Distinction

Published on Sunday, November 28, 2004 by the Boulder Daily Camera
by Christopher Brauchli

A man is known by the company he keeps. - A saying

They're just a bunch of nails and nails, as is well known, do Hammer's bidding. And that explains why, during the week of Nov. 14, there were two things that happened that were wonderful for Mr. DeLay and only one bad thing. That made it a really good week.

The first good thing was that his trucklers in the House of Representatives inoculated him against any bad results were he to face criminal charges in the future. (Three of his close Texas associates have been indicted. The district attorney who brought the indictments is continuing his investigation and it is not yet known whether the trail of criminal conduct will eventually lead to Mr. DeLay.)

In order to avoid any adverse political effect on Mr. DeLay were he to be indicted, those who serve him in the House voted to get rid of the House rule that demanded that members holding leadership be purer than Caesar's wife. The revoked rule provided that a member of the leadership who was indicted had to temporarily step aside. Under the new rule an indicted leader may continue to serve. As Rep. Henry Bonilla, one of Mr. DeLay's sycophants put it: "Attorneys tell me you can be indicted for just about anything in this country, in any county or community. Sometimes district attorneys . . . could make a name for themselves by indicting a member of the leadership, regardless of who it may be, and therefore determine their future. And that's not right."

Being vaccinated against the untoward effects of suggestions he might face criminal charges was not Mr. DeLay's only bit of good news. Equally serendipitous was the House ethics panel's rebuke of Rep. Chris Bell. It was Mr. Bell's complaint against Mr. DeLay that prompted the ethics panel to admonish Mr. DeLay in September and October. Having acknowledged the validity of some of Mr. Bell's complaints, the committee nonetheless found that making his complaint, Mr. Bell had engaged in exaggeration and innuendo. Ignoring the reproofs he had received, Mr. DeLay said that his accuser was a "partisan stalker" and took the committee's rebuke of Mr. Bell as vindication.

Only one bad thing happened that week and it didn't affect Mr. DeLay — it simply reflected on him. In the middle of the week it was disclosed that another of his close aides may be a crook of some distinction. During that week Michael Scanlon, while testifying before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, took the Fifth Amendment seven times.

Mr. Scanlon served as Mr. DeLay's chief of staff and press spokesman from approximately 1997 until 2000 when he struck out on his own to make money as a publicist and, perhaps, a crook.

What is alleged is that he and Jack Abramoff, a major contributor to the Bush Cheney campaign and Tom DeLay paid Ralph Reed, leader of the Christian Coalition, $4.2 million between 2001 and 2003 for him to build religious sentiment against Indian casinos operated in competition with Indian casinos represented by the two men. Speaking Rock Casino operated by the Tigua Tribe in Texas was one of the rivals. In an e-mail to Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Reed said he had been successful in getting "our pastors" mobilized against the Tigua's casino. In 2002 it was shut down. Thereafter Messrs. Abramoff and Scanlon were paid $4.2 million by the Tigua tribe to correct what Abramoff told them was the "gross indignity perpetuated by the Texas state authorities." According to testimony before the Senate committee, the two men promised the tribe that they could get language inserted into a pending Congressional bill that would allow the casino to reopen. It never happened.

Mr. Scanlon was last in the news while serving on Mr. DeLay's staff. Commenting on the upcoming impeachment trial of President Clinton, Mr. Scanlon and another staffer exchanged e-mails. One of the e-mails, reportedly written by Mr. Scanlon said: "This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS. Not only do you kick him — you kick him until he passes out, then beat him over the head with a baseball bat, then roll him up in an old rug and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below." It is not unlikely that having heard Mr. Scanlon take the Fifth after bilking them of millions, there are a lot of Indians who hope that the justice system does just that to Mr. DeLay's former aide. Who can blame them?

Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder lawyer and and writes a weekly column for the Knight Ridder news service. He can be reached at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu

© 2004 The Daily Camera

A Moral Indictment

By RONNIE EARLE
Published: November 23, 2004

Congress
Ethics
DeLay, Tom
Earle, Ronnie
Track news that interests you.

Austin, Tex. — It is a rare day when members of the United States Congress try to read the minds of the members of a grand jury in Travis County, Tex. Apparently Tom DeLay's colleagues expect him to be indicted.
Last week Congressional Republicans voted to change their rule that required an indicted leader to relinquish his post. They were responding to an investigation by the Travis County grand jury into political contributions by corporations that has already resulted in the indictments of three associates of Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader.
Yet no member of Congress has been indicted in the investigation, and none is a target unless he or she has committed a crime. The grand jury will continue its work, abiding by the rule of law. That law requires a grand jury of citizens, not the prosecutor, to determine whether probable cause exists to hold an accused person to answer for the accusation against him or her.
Politicians in Congress are responsible for the leaders they choose. Their choices reflect their moral values.
Every law enforcement officer depends on the moral values and integrity of society for backup; they are like body armor. The cynical destruction of moral values at the top makes it hard for law enforcement to do its job.
In terms of moral values, this is where the rubber meets the road. The rules you apply to yourself are the true test of your moral values.
The thinly veiled personal attacks on me by Mr. DeLay's supporters in this case are no different from those in the cases of any of the 15 elected officials this office has prosecuted in my 27-year tenure. Most of these officials - 12 Democrats and three Republicans - have accused me of having political motives. What else are they going to say?
For most of my tenure the Democrats held the power in state government. Now Republicans do. Most crimes by elected officials involve the abuse of power; you have to have power before you can abuse it.
There is no limit to what you can do if you have the power to change the rules. Congress may make its own rules, but the public makes the rule of law, and depends for its peace on the enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy at the highest levels of government is toxic to the moral fiber that holds our communities together.
The open contempt for moral values by our elected officials has a corrosive effect. It is a sad day for law enforcement when Congress offers such poor leadership on moral values and ethical behavior. We are a moral people, and the first lesson of democracy is not to hold the public in contempt.

Ronnie Earle is the district attorney for Travis County, Tex.

Republican Ethics

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted November 18, 2004.

DeLay is one of the leading forces in making "Republican ethics" into an oxymoron.

Story Tools EMAIL PRINT

Also by Molly Ivins White House to 'Gut' CIA Purging for disloyalty makes us sick to our stomachs. Nov 16, 2004 Back to Work It's time to move on and compile a to-do list for the next four years. Nov 9, 2004 Mourning in America Stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country. Nov 4, 2004 More stories by Molly Ivins

My, my, gonna be a long four years.

House Republicans have rewritten the ethics rules so Tom DeLay won't have to resign if indicted after all. Let's hear it for moral values. DeLay is one of the leading forces in making "Republican ethics" into an oxymoron.

The rule was passed in 1993, when Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was being investigated for ethics violations. And who helped lead the floor fight to force him to resign his powerful position? Why, Tom DeLay, of course. (Actually, it's sort of a funny story. The D's already had a caucus rule that you had to resign from any leadership position if indicted. The R's changed their rules to match the D's, except they deliberately did not make their rule retroactive, so the highly indicted Rep. Joseph McDade, senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, could, unlike Rostenkowski, retain his seat.)

DeLay has already been admonished by the House Ethics Committee three times on separate violations of ethics rules. Please note, that is the Republican-dominated Ethics Committee. The hilarious rationale offered by the R's for the new rule to exempt DeLay is that no one can accuse them of taking the moral low road here because, "That line of reasoning accepts that exercise of the prosecutor in Texas is legitimate."

Uh, that would be Ronnie Earle of Austin, who is a known Democrat. On the other hand, Earle is quite noted for having indicted more Democratic officeholders than Republicans, so it's a little hard to argue that this is a partisan political probe. Or it would be, if facts made any difference these days to talk-show screamers.

Showing his usual keen sense of ethics, DeLay has already started a legal defense fund and raised $310,000 since last summer. According to the Austin American-Statesman, half the money has come from Republican House members, who are all dependent on the Republican Steering Committee for their committee assignments and chairmanships.

DeLay has three votes on the 28-member committee and, of course, more clout than anyone else in the House. (See Lou DuBose and Jan Reid's new book, "The Hammer," for more charming details on DeLay's House dictatorship). The other half of the contributions for DeLay's legal defense has come from political action committees, corporations and individuals.

Hey, no worries about corrupting influence there because DeLay already does favors for big contributors to his plain old political action committees, even without additional contributions to his defense fund. Moral values. DeLay is going to give born-again Christians a bad name.

In furtherance of moral values, Congress now has to raise the debt limit by another $800 billion. We actually reached the debt ceiling in early October, but obviously the R's didn't want that vote coming up before the election. Then after they finish spending a staggering amount of money, the R's will return to make Bush's tax cuts permanent.

Now I realize that the Bushies consider it a point of pride to pay not one iota of attention to what the rest of the world thinks about us. But I would like to point out that the rest of the world is holding our paper. And foreign investors have demonstrated elsewhere that they are quite capable of taking alarm over unsound fiscal practices and pulling out completely, leaving bankrupt countries behind.

Speaking of what the rest of the world thinks of us, the matter was nicely summed up by Britain's Daily Mirror with its classic tabloid headline, "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?" The Guardian just put a tiny, white-on-black headline: "Oh God."

I realize the "liberal elites" are not allowed to even quote the word "dumb" lest we be accused of "cultural condescension" toward our salt-of-the-earth red-state compatriots. Since I'm a populist happily living in the midst of a quite red state (some of my best friends are named Bubba), I never pay any attention to such horse poop. But I do resent it when the people running the country think we're so dumb they can rip us off and then tell us to pray.

Molly Ivins is a best-selling author and columnist who writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

Regressive Ethics in the HousePublished

NYTimes
November 19, 2004

Having picked up a handful of seats in this month's election, House Republicans seem to think they have a mandate to eradicate Congressional ethics standards.

On Tuesday, House Republicans unanimously elected Tom DeLay to serve another term as House majority leader, despite his unsavory record when it comes to abiding by accepted Congressional standards of conduct. He received two separate bipartisan rebukes from the normally timid ethics committee this fall.

Just in case Mr. DeLay gets into more trouble, G.O.P. lawmakers have followed up by repealing their wise party rule that barred indicted members from holding leadership positions. Only a handful of Republicans had the moral compass to object.

The Republican conference's worry about Mr. DeLay's relationship with the forces of justice stems from the same events that nailed down his current popularity. He muscled an egregiously partisan redistricting plan into Texas, and that helped Republican candidates pick up five Congressional seats there.

It is far from certain that Mr. DeLay will be charged with a crime in connection with the redistricting. During that effort, he strong-armed federal authorities into joining a search for Democratic state legislators who had left Texas to keep the plan from coming to a vote. But Mr. DeLay is plainly worried. Three of his aides were recently indicted on charges that they illegally laundered campaign money to help Texas Republicans, and prosecutors are said to be scrutinizing his own actions.

The Republicans also seem bent on reining in the ethics committee for having had the temerity to rebuke Mr. DeLay for some of his more outrageous conduct. The party's Rules Committee chairman, David Dreier, recently sent a letter to House members signaling that he plans to make it even harder than it already is for members to file an ethics complaint, and for outside groups to be heard in the process. Rumors also abound that come January, when the next Congress is seated, all five Republican members of the ethics committee, including its current chairman, Representative Joel Hefley, may be replaced.

The Republicans originally adopted the rule requiring indicted G.O.P. leaders to step down from their posts during the 1990's. At the time, the party was trying to demonstrate that it had firmer ethical standards than the Democrats, who then held the majority in the House.

Now it will be left up to party insiders on the Republican Steering Committee to recommend on a case-by-case basis whether a party leader should step aside after a state or federal felony indictment. The old era is clearly over, as are any doubts that the Republican House leadership has lost interest in the high moral ground now that it has further consolidated its power.

DeLay Supporters Move to Protect His Spot

Tue Nov 16, 6:45 PM ET

Politics - AP
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Supporters of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay proposed a Republican rules change Tuesday that would protect the Texan's leadership position if he were to be indicted by a Texas grand jury that already charged three of his associates.

House Republicans are likely to approve Wednesday the change in the rule that would force him to step aside if indicted. The show of support would be an endorsement of DeLay's position that the Travis County investigation is a partisan attack.

Currently, rules of the House Republican Conference, which comprises all House GOP members, requires leaders to resign the party post if they are indicted for a felony punishable by two or more years in jail. The proposed change would eliminate the step-aside requirement for nonfederal indictments.

The Texas grand jury is investigating alleged campaign finance irregularities in 2002 state legislative races. Republican victories in those contests enabled DeLay ultimately to win support for a congressional redistricting plan that resulted in the GOP's gain of five seats in this month's elections.

The language was proposed by Rep. Henry Bonilla (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, who was helped by the redistricting. Bonilla was re-elected in 2002 with less than 52 percent of the vote. After the boundaries were changed, he won this month with 69 percent of the vote.

Jessica Boulanger, spokeswoman for third-ranking House Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri, confirmed the proposal and said Blunt supported it.

The majority whip "believes the allegations are baseless, and they were political in nature. So he supports the proposed rules change by congressman Bonilla."

Bonilla spokeswoman Taryn Fritz Walpole said the proposed change is intended to "prevent political manipulation of the legislative process" and reduce the possibility of "political exploitation and intimidation of House leadership and chairmanship positions."

The Texas investigation is led by a Democrat, retiring Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

In September, the grand jury indicted three political operatives associated with DeLay and eight companies, alleging campaign finance violations related to corporate money spent in the 2002 legislative races. The corporate donations were made to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee created with help from DeLay.

DeLay said he was not questioned or subpoenaed as part of the investigation.
The majority leader said after the indictments, "This has been a dragged-out 500-day investigation, and you do the political math. This is no different than other kinds of partisan attacks that have been leveled against me that are dropped after elections."

In October, the House ethics committee rebuked DeLay for appearing to link political donations to a legislative favor and improperly persuading U.S. aviation authorities to intervene in the Texas redistricting dispute.

Tom DeLay subpoenaed in civil lawsuit

U.S. House majority leader scheduled for deposition

Thursday, October 21, 2004 Posted: 3:13 PM EDT (1913 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been subpoenaed to testify in a Texas civil lawsuit about his role in using government resources to track down Democratic legislators who fled the state during last year's bitter redistricting dispute.

The subpoena was delivered Wednesday to the Texas Republican's attorneys in Houston after a failed attempt to serve him personally, said Lon Burnam, the Democratic state lawmaker from Fort Worth who filed the lawsuit.

The subpoena calls for DeLay to give a deposition Monday.

"This is a cheap publicity stunt on something that has no connection to Tom DeLay," Jonathan Grella, a spokesman for DeLay, said Thursday. "It's a frivolous matter that's already been rendered moot and everyone should consider the source."

Burnam said there is a "litany of questions with regard to misuse of public funds" to pursue Democratic members of the Texas House who fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma, and DeLay's role in searching for them.

More than 50 state House Democrats, including Burnam, went to Oklahoma in May 2003 to prevent the quorum needed to pass a congressional redistricting map engineered by Republicans and pushed by DeLay.

Texas state troopers were dispatched to find the Democrats and return them to Austin. The House ethics committee on October 6 admonished DeLay for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to locate a plane owned by one of the fleeing lawmakers.

Burnam's suit alleges that the Texas Department of Public Safety destroyed documents detailing their efforts to apprehend legislators and that its troopers had no lawful authority to arrest the Democrats.

Wrong `Hammer' for the job

Published October 11, 2004

Don't look now, but "The Hammer" is getting nailed. Unless Republicans win a landslide victory on Nov. 2 that silences his many critics, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay stands a good chance of being turned out of his post by year-end. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, considering how this patron saint of partisanship has earned his appropriately aggressive nickname.

In the clubby halls of Congress, getting spanked by the in-house ethics police is pretty rare. Last week, DeLay was walloped not once but twice, on top of a separate trip to the woodshed the week before.

Unfortunately, the Texas Republican's conduct lends support to the most cynical view of how the nation's top lawmakers carry out their duties. And his angry reaction to being admonished by his peers shows that DeLay is too arrogant to mend his ways.

The House Ethics Committee, in a unanimous, bipartisan vote , has rebuked DeLay for unethical conduct. The five Republicans on the 10-member committee, led by U.S. Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), should be commended for standing up to such a powerful member of their own party.

The facts, as revealed in the committee's investigative findings, are plenty damning. The most egregious example of misconduct involved DeLay's intervention in the Texas legislature's 2003 battle over redistricting. Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives had flown the coop, preventing state lawmakers from obtaining the quorum needed to ram through new districts that expanded Republican control.The speaker of the Texas House had heard that an airplane was shuttling the absent legislators out of state and wanted DeLay's help tracking it.

DeLay took down the tail number and directed one of his staffers to call the Federal Aviation Administration, which traced it to an Oklahoma airfield.

The Ethics Committee pointed out the obvious, namely that DeLay had no business using the resources of the federal government to further the partisan goals of his party in Texas.The committee also took DeLay to task for a smelly bit of fundraising in 2002. Just as Congress began a conference on high-stakes energy legislation, DeLay participated in a two-day event that included Westar Energy, a big contributor with an interest in the measure.

As DeLay and a pair of his senior advisers golfed and dined at a swanky resort, a Westar operative lobbied them for a special provision in the final bill. By all appearances, the committee concluded, Westar's $25,000 check to the "Texans for a Republican Majority PAC" had bought it special access to DeLay & Co.

Last week, the House panel also admonished DeLay for pressuring Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) to vote for the Medicare prescription drug bill. In exchange for the vote, DeLay offered to endorse Smith's son in a congressional primary. That quid-pro-quo stuff is certainly a no-no, though to us it sounds like small potatoes compared with DeLay's airplane and fundraising capers.

But, hey, we're from Chicago.

DeLay has responded to his comeuppance with irrelevant bluster. Perhaps that's to be expected, given the uncompromising character of a fellow who has done as much as anyone to polarize Congress.

He's still not out of the woods on the Texas redistricting controversy, which has led to indictments against three of the majority leader's associates and eight companies.

DeLay has rejected Democrats' calls for his resignation. These may not be fireable offenses--they may be more common than anyone in either party wants to admit. But this much is certain: The Republicans need a new majority leader.

Eventually, House Speaker Dennis Hastert will retire, and the GOP will be looking for a successor if they still control the House. DeLay will be in line for speaker. The Republicans will make a terrible mistake if they hand it to him.

Far more than ideological zeal, voters want to see honesty and ethical behavior in public office. DeLay doesn't fit the job description.

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Eyebrows raised by fund-raiser
Panel: DeLay's golf outing for energy executives looked improper

By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - The U.S. House ethics committee's rebuke of Majority Leader Tom DeLay this week focused on an issue never raised publicly before: the appearance of impropriety created by an exclusive DeLay fund-raiser for energy executives held just before he served on a conference committee dealing with major energy legislation.

The ethics committee said the Sugar Land congressman gave the small group of executives direct access at the 2002 fund-raiser, a golf outing, and that a memo written by a former DeLay aide spelled out exactly what each of the executives attending the event wanted out of the energy legislation.

While there was no evidence DeLay took official action because of the event, the ethics investigators said the fund-raiser left the impression that beneficial action could be obtained with campaign contributions.

"At a minimum, his (DeLay's) conduct created at least the appearance that donors were being provided with special access to Representative DeLay regarding the then-pending energy legislation," the bipartisan committee said.

"Representative DeLay was in a position to significantly influence the conference, both as a member of the House leadership and, by action taken about a week and a half after the fund-raiser, his appointment as one of the conferees."

'Wild-eyed allegations'DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella responded to questions about the report by focusing on complaints filed by U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, rather than on the ethics committee's findings. Bell had complained that Republican DeLay had acted improperly on behalf of Westar Energy Inc. of Kansas for a $25,000 donation the company gave to a DeLay-founded Texas political committee.

"Lame duck Chris Bell's allegations contained libelous and wild-eyed allegations of serious crimes," Grella said.

Bell lost his seat in Congress in large part because of a major redistricting bill DeLay pushed through the Texas Legislature.

Grella noted that the ethics committee said Bell's complaint about Westar was based on "unsubstantiated allegations."

While the committee cleared DeLay of wrongdoing involving Westar, the panel said it was led into questions about the energy fund-raiser while investigating the Westar portion of Bell's complaint.

The complaint about Westar revolved around e-mails that company executives and lobbyists wrote to secure a "place at the table" by giving $25,000 in corporate donations to Texans for a Republican Majority, founded by DeLay.

Two Westar executives were among the energy leaders who attended the golf fund-raiser DeLay had in June 2002 for his Americans for a Republican Majority PAC and TRMPAC at The Homestead resort in Virginia.

The fund-raiser was organized by former DeLay energy aide Drew Maloney, in coordination with ARMPAC staff. Energy executives were told they could play golf with DeLay for corporate contributions of $25,000 to $50,000 to either ARMPAC or TRMPAC.

At the time, Westar was trying to get legislation passed to remove the company from regulation under the Public Utility Holding Company Act.

A company lobbyist, Richard Bornemann, had written executives a memo explaining how campaign contributions could help the firm gain influence with House leaders, including DeLay.
But at first, Maloney did not want Westar participating in the golf excursion because the company was not a traditional electric-producing energy company. Bornemann told company executives in a memo they still might get into the event if they were willing to make a corporate donation to a DeLay committee.

"We think we can get by with that if we beg," Bornemann wrote.

4 companies attendedA May 8, 2002, memo from Maloney to DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, who organizes fund-raisers for her father, said energy companies that had confirmed attendance at the golf event were Reliant Energy of Houston with $50,000; and Williams Energy of Oklahoma, Mirant Corp. of Georgia and Westar, with $25,000 each.

Executives of those companies were the only ones to attend the golf event. But other companies donated, for a total of $152,500 raised at the two-day event, according to a memo from Maloney to an ARMPAC employee, Chris Perkins.

In a separate memo to Perkins before the event, Maloney detailed what the companies attending the golf tournament needed from federal legislation.

"Reliant's primary goal for the conference is to make sure the progress that has been made to deregulate the wholesale electricity markets are not rolled back," Maloney wrote.

As for Westar, "the company has a unique problem that was addressed in the House bill."
Donation questionedWhen Westar wrote its check to TRMPAC in May 2002, one vice president questioned why the company was making a donation to DeLay. "DeLay is from TX what is our connection?" asked Westar Vice President Douglas Lake in an e-mail.

Douglas Lawrence, Westar vice president for public affairs, replied: "DeLay is the House Majority Leader. His agreement is necessary before the House conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill."

DeLay actually was majority whip at the time.

The ethics committee noted that when attendees got to the golf event, two members of DeLay's leadership staff were there: Jack Victory, who handled energy issues, and office counsel Carl Thorsen.

Attorneys for Lawrence and another Westar executive who attended the event said DeLay spoke to the group on June 2, 2002, and asked them "to advise him of any interest we had in federal energy legislation."

Lawrence said he spoke with DeLay that night about Westar's needs in the legislation. After golfing with DeLay the next day, Lawrence said, he again talked to DeLay about the bill.

DeLay told the ethics committee his staff members were at the event on their own time. He said he had no specific memory of what he said there, but he questioned the Westar characterization of his remarks at the opening meeting.

"It would not be typical for me at such events to have 'asked the group to advise' me of 'any interest' the attendees had in 'federal energy legislation,' " DeLay said. "That is not at all consistent with the manner in which I normally would interact with attendees at such an event."
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, who had DeLay's proxy, cast a vote for the Westar legislation on the conference committee.

But Barton withdrew the legislation after the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission notified the committee that Westar was facing investigations by a grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and said it would be a mistake to remove the company from federal regulation.

Westar's then-CEO David Wittig met with DeLay in September to see if there was a chance of reviving the legislation. DeLay told him there was not, according to the ethics committee report.
Several days later, Lawrence sent an e-mail to company executives stating: "Things are grim in DC. The DeLay staff has asked us to release people from their commitment to support our provision."

DeLay told the ethics committee he was "not aware" of any commitments he or his staff had made to Westar.

No improper actionThe ethics committee concluded that "DeLay took no action with regard to the Westar provision that constituted an impermissible special favor or was otherwise improper."

But the ethics committee said the golf event violated the House standard that some fund-raising opportunities need to be passed over "solely because they create an appearance of improper conduct."

"In view of the circumstances of the June 2002 energy company fund-raiser ... Representative DeLay's facilitation of and participation in that event were contrary to those standards," the committee said.

"Those circumstances included not only the nature of the event, but also its timing in that it took place just as the House-Senate conference on the energy legislation — legislation of vital importance to the contributors at the fund-raiser — was about to commence."

DeLay Draws Third Rebuke
Ethics Panel Cites Two Situations

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01

The House ethics committee last night admonished Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) for asking federal aviation officials to track an airplane involved in a Texas political spat, and for conduct that suggested political donations might influence legislative action.

The two-pronged rebuke marked the second time in six days -- and the third time overall -- that the ethics panel has admonished the House's second-ranking Republican. The back-to-back chastisements are highly unusual for any lawmaker, let alone one who aspires to be speaker, and some watchdog groups called on him to resign his leadership post.

The ethics committee, five Republicans and five Democrats who voted unanimously on the findings, concluded its seven-page letter to DeLay by saying: "In view of the number of instances to date in which the committee has found it necessary to comment on conduct in which you have engaged, it is clearly necessary for you to temper your future actions to assure that you are in full compliance at all times with the applicable House rules and standards of conduct."
DeLay said in a statement that he believed the complaint "should have been thrown out immediately," but, "I accept the committee's guidance. . . . For years Democrats have hurled relentless personal attacks at me, hoping to tie my hands and smear my name. All have fallen short, not because of insufficient venom, but because of insufficient merit."

DeLay's lawyer, former representative Edwin R. "Ed" Bethune (R-Ark.), told reporters that the committee's findings stopped far short of some of the most serious allegations, such as bribery, contained in the complaint filed in June by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Tex.). Bell's complaint triggered the ethics committee investigations of DeLay.

DeLay, 57, a 10-term veteran, helped orchestrate the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and became renowned for his bare-knuckled tactics as majority whip and an unrivaled fundraiser. Democrats long have reviled the former exterminator from the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, but now they are finding fodder in the bipartisan ethics committee.

While DeLay continues to enjoy broad support within his party, some independent analysts warned recently that another ethics rebuke could seriously impair his ability to continue to lead the Republicans or to advance his career.

The ethics panel faulted DeLay's actions in asking the Federal Aviation Administration last year to help locate a private plane that Republicans thought was carrying Texas Democratic legislators. Some Democratic lawmakers were leaving the state to prevent a quorum that Republicans needed in Austin to pass a bitterly disputed congressional redistricting plan engineered by DeLay. DeLay's staff asked an FAA official to help find the plane in a bid to force the legislators back to the capital.

The ethics report cited House rules that bar members from taking "any official action on the basis of the partisan affiliation . . . of the individuals involved." It noted that the FAA official later said he felt he "had been used" for political purposes. DeLay's role in the matter "raises serious concerns under these standards of conduct," the report said.

The redistricting plan, ultimately enacted, now threatens the reelections of five Democratic U.S. House members from Texas. Their losses would boost the GOP's congressional advantage and DeLay's power. Bell lost his reelection bid earlier this year in the Democratic primary, a result of the redistricting plans' movement of borders and voter blocs. DeLay's allies have accused him of seeking revenge, a charge that Bell, a Houston lawyer, denies.

The committee also admonished DeLay for his dealings with top officers of Kansas-based Westar Energy Inc. Some of the officers wrote memos in 2002 citing their belief that $56,500 in campaign contributions to political committees associated with DeLay and other Republicans would get them "a seat at the table" where key legislation was being drafted.

The ethics report said lawmakers may not solicit political donations "that may create even an appearance" that they will lead to "special treatment or special access to the member." DeLay's participation in Westar's "golf fundraiser at The Homestead resort on June 2-3, 2002, is objectionable in that those actions, at a minimum, created such an improper appearance," the report said. The golf tournament, which raised money for DeLay's political committees, "took place just as the House-Senate conference on major energy legislation . . . was about to get underway. . . . That legislation was of critical importance to the attendees."

The report said DeLay was "in a position to significantly influence the conference."

The ethics panel, formally called the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, deferred action on a third component of Bell's complaint. It dealt with the fundraising group Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, or TRMPAC, to which DeLay is closely linked. A Texas grand jury last month indicted three of DeLay's political associates on charges of using TRMPAC to illegally collect corporate donations and funnel them to Texas legislative races.

The ethics committee said it will take no action on the matter "pending further action" concerning the indictments or the Texas-based investigation that prompted them.

Just as it did six days ago, the ethics committee released its report shortly before 9 p.m. Last night, word of the report seeped out as House members lingered near the Capitol for late votes. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told reporters that DeLay "is a good man and a strong leader, and these politically motivated attacks will not deter him. . . . Shame on Chris Bell."

Bell said that the ethics committee "agrees that Mr. DeLay acted inappropriately and unethically in the course of conducting his duties," and called for DeLay to step down as majority leader. House Democratic leaders had no comment.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement that the committee has admonished DeLay for three separate incidents in six days -- in addition to the admonishment issued against him a few years ago. She said that "clearly shows that he believes himself to be above the law."

"If the Republican Conference wants the American people to believe that it takes ethics seriously," she continued, "it must insist that Mr. DeLay resign his post as majority leader."

GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Tom DeLay

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash.com GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Like Bush, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay claims to be on a mission from God. And like a Texas rattlesnake, he slithers across the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives pushing a GOP Biblical worldview upon the United States and pounding colleagues and opponents into voting against their constituents better interests.

"The Hammer," as some call DeLay, uses unethical and bullying tactics more indicative of the Anti-Christ than an angel of God. Fortunately, for us, those tactics have him facing possible legal indictments and House ethics investigations.

Ending Tom DeLay's reign in Congress is important for all voters, because many Republican congressfolk who claim to be moderates, shrink under DeLay's pressure and vote for his Paleolithic legislative agenda.

And if a politician doesn't do what Tom DeLay says, they get their political kneecaps blown off by this zonked out Republican "rapture" mob enforcer and his Tim LaHaye "Left Behind" extra-religious cohorts.

He's a hit man for corrupt Republicans who fashion themselves fundamentalists, but have more in common with the mob than with the clergy.

Tom DeLay is an uber-hypocrite because he works hard to ensure a reign of evil will fall over the U.S. for years to come, but, like Bush, he does this by using God's name in vain. It's the old bait and switch: you know, the stern, sanctimonious minister who embezzles from the church funds and runs off with the choirmaster's wife.

Calling Tom DeLay a radical would be an understatement. A former exterminator, he once said that Dioxin was good for you. Calling him a hypocrite requires no statement. Tom DeLay is the pure embodiment of it.

A BuzzFlash Reader comments on the corrupted thinking of DeLay:
Dear Buzz,I noticed in this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/01ethics.html) that Tom DeLay's defense for bribing a fellow Republican over the Medicare legislation implies that he does this kind of thing all the time:

In a statement, Mr. DeLay said that he had not meant to violate House rules and that the panel had never ruled on this type of activity before.

Read that again, "...never ruled on this type of activity before." So just how many times has DeLay and the GOP leadership resorted to bribery to advance their corrupt agenda? I'm almost afraid to know the real answer to that question.
Troy Torstrick

Ethics report on DeLay gives insider look at arm-twisting

By Larry MargasakAssociated Press
Published October 2, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Arms have always been twisted during close congressional votes on major legislation, but an ethics report rebuking House Majority Leader Tom DeLay added something the public rarely learns: What lawmakers really say to each other.The House ethics committee report even reveals what Republican members didn't say but were thinking as they unsuccessfully pleaded with Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) to support a prescription drug benefit in Medicare.

The following are thoughts, comments and remembrances of the events last November, as told to ethics committee investigators for their report on attempts to pressure Smith.

As DeLay (R-Texas) approached Smith in late November 2003, he was thinkingthat he would be "stuck" talking with the Michigan lawmaker for a long time. He had talked with Smith before.That might explain why the following conversation lasted only eight seconds. DeLay: "I will personally endorse your son [a candidate for Congress]. That's my last offer."

There was, in fact, no first offer. DeLay said it was his exit strategy to end the conversation quickly.It was long enough, though, for the House ethics committee on Thursday to criticize DeLay for trying to trade a political endorsement for a vote.

The committee also rebuked Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) for a heavy-handed attempt at persuasion, and Smith himself, for making exaggerated statements about the pressure he received.

On Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, "This offer of a quid pro quo further taints the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug bill."

The attempts to link Smith's vote to his son's candidacy was pervasive throughout the ethics report. Brad Smith eventually lost in the primary as he tried to succeed his retiring father. Most of the approaches occurred during the predawn hours of Nov. 22, 2003, when the Medicare vote was held open by GOP leaders from 3 a.m. to 5:51 a.m. Normally, a typical 15-minute vote may be held open about five minutes for late-arriving members. The Medicare legislation passed 220-215 without Smith's support.

"Well, I hope your son doesn't come to Congress," Miller recalled saying as Smith stayed on the House floor after voting. Smith, rising out of his seat, said he responded, "You get out of here." Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) was sitting nearby. He was thinking: "It was not pleasant."

After the marathon vote finally ended and members were leaving, Smith encountered Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.). Smith said Cunningham began waving what appeared to be a billfold."We've got $10,000 already ... to make sure your son doesn't get elected," Smith recalled Cunningham saying. Cunningham said he didn't recall waving the billfold and denied mentioning any specific amount.

Besides DeLay, two of the most important Republicans to approach Smith were Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. Members of the president's Cabinet are allowed in the House chamber. Thompson said he asked Smith if he "had any questions on the bill that I could answer, or if there was any information that I could provide." Smith said "no. "Was there "any chance" of a yes vote, Thompson asked. Smith said "no."

Hastert joined the conversation. He recalled telling Smith that a "yes" vote would be "good for the Republican Party" and "good for the president." He also recalled telling Smith that a vote for the bill would be a legacy that Smith could pass on to his children and grandchildren.

Rep. James Walsh (R-N.Y.) said he was thinking how hard he had worked on the Medicare bill, and how "frustrated" and "impatient" he was awaiting the outcome of the vote." Can't you help us on this one?" Walsh recalls asking Smith. Smith: No. Walsh: "Well ... then, Nick, maybe you ought to think about sending me back that check that I sent to your son."

Walsh, in fact, hadn't yet contributed to Smith's son's campaign although he did so several weeks later. Smith cast his vote early and could have left the House chamber, but he remembers thinking, "I should stay there and take my licks."

Smith said Friday the report failed to make one crucial point."What seems to be lost in the debate ... is the fact that many members refused to vote for the Medicare bill despite enormous pressure," he said.

Chicago Tribune

Majority Leader Offered Favor To Get Peer's Vote
Ethics Panel Rebukes DeLay

By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A01

The House ethics committee admonished Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) last night for offering a political favor to a Michigan lawmaker in exchange for the member's vote on last year's hard-fought Medicare prescription drug bill.

After a six-month investigation, the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith's son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22. "This conduct could support a finding that . . . DeLay violated House rules," the committee said in its 62-page report. ". . . It is improper for a member to offer or link support for the personal interests of another member as part of a quid pro quo to achieve a legislative goal."

The committee said the report "will serve as a public admonishment" of DeLay, Smith and one other GOP lawmaker involved in the negotiations that occurred on the House floor as Republican leaders scrambled for support on a much-debated bill to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare.

They eventually extended the roll call for nearly three hours to avoid an embarrassing loss. The ethics panel, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, said it would take no further action in the case. It's rare for a high-ranking congressional leader to draw the admonition of the ethics committee.

In January 1997, the ethics committee voted 7 to 1 to recommend that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) be reprimanded and pay a $300,000 penalty for disregarding House rules in misusing tax-exempt funds to promote his conservative political agenda.

DeLay has been the subject of several ethics complaints over the years. In May 1999, the House ethics committee privately chastised DeLay for threatening a Washington trade association with retaliation for hiring a prominent Democrat as its president.

Last month, a Texas grand jury indicted three of DeLay's political associates in a case involving a political committee affiliated with the majority leader. The House ethics committee is weighing a complaint against DeLay, unrelated to the Smith matter, which involves the Texas group and two other matters.

DeLay on the Hot Seat

by Jack Newfield

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Two investigative bombs with long fuses are sizzling under Tom DeLay, America's Machiavelli of gerrymandering and shakedown fundraising. They both involve active grand juries investigating alleged money-laundering and campaign finance abuses. DeLay, House majority leader, is still laughing off these probes in public, but he has hired criminal attorneys and begun a defense fund.

The first bomb involves the Senate's Indian Affairs Committee, led by John McCain. It is scheduled to hold a hearing on September 29 into the alleged fleecing of Indian tribes by two of DeLay's closest allies, lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon. They have been paid more than $45 million over three years by casino-owning tribes for services that remain unclear. Dissidents in these tribes, who have asked to testify, claim they were duped and that most tribal members were kept in the dark about these exorbitant fees. Roy Fletcher, spokesman for the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana's pro-casino faction, which retained Abramoff, says the tribe is investigating whether it got what it paid for.

But while the hearing may expose some wrongdoing, the more threatening aspect of the Washington probe involves the FBI and a federal grand jury that has been meeting for months. Federal prosecutors have assembled a war room full of banking and billing records as well as e-mails from Abramoff and Scanlon. They are focusing on the laundering of money for personal extravagances and political campaigns.

DeLay's name may not even come up much during the Senate testimony, but in Washington he is widely regarded as the enabler of these two avatars of avarice. DeLay has adroitly disavowed his two friends--a sign of how much The Hammer has to hide.

Last year, in introducing DeLay, Abramoff declared that Tom Delay is "who all of us want to be when we grow up." Now he is on his own going into the hearing--distanced by DeLay and kicked out of his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, for taking more than $10 million in payments from Scanlon and not telling the firm. As an example of how close the relationship once appeared to be, the law firm of Abramoff, a hard-line right-winger, was paid $7.9 million over six years by the US Protectorate of the Mariana Islands to keep the garment sweatshop haven exempt from US minimum-wage laws. When the Senate repealed the exemption, DeLay killed the repeal in the House. Abramoff, his former law firm and his Indian clients have donated more than $100,000 to DeLay's PACs since 2000. Scanlon was DeLay's press secretary during the Clinton impeachment and became Abramoff's protégé.

Abramoff and Scanlon enriched themselves with tribal funds meant for education, housing and healthcare, according to the Senate staffers and an independent audit of the Coushatta tribe. They also directed about $1.5 million into Republican campaigns from the eleven tribes they represented. Tribes that gave to Democrats in the 1990s started giving to the GOP once they hired Abramoff and Scanlon. The Agua Caliente tribe of California gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee right after they hired Abramoff in 2002, while the Saginaw Chippewas of Michigan gave $18,000 to DeLay's PAC and the Tigua tribe of Texas gave $92,000 to GOP PACs after they hired Abramoff. Scanlon's consulting company donated $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, funds that originated with the eleven tribes, who constituted 90 percent of Scanlon's business. Abramoff himself donated to twenty-three Republican campaigns, including those of six senators and twelve Congressmen, all right-wing favorites of DeLay, like Richard Pombo, Johnny Isakson and Ernest Istook.

A big question about the hearing is whether the committee will subpoena Ralph Reed, who is now running the Bush ground campaign in five Southern states. The anti-gambling Reed has been a stealth partner of Abramoff and Scanlon, getting paid at least $4 million through Scanlon's companies to block competing casinos from cutting into the profits of the existing Coushatta casino in Louisiana. I first reported these covert payments in the July 12 issue of The Nation. Reed denied them for two months but finally admitted getting this money, to Alabama's Montgomery Advertiser, after a federal grand jury subpoenaed all his financial records involving Abramoff, Scanlon and Indian gambling.

The second bomb is sizzling in Texas, where a grand jury has just indicted three close associates of DeLay on charges of violating a state law banning corporate funding of political activity. Democratic county prosecutor Ronnie Earle has been investigating DeLay's fundraising chicanery involving the PAC of Texans for a Republican Majority. The essence of the probe is that TRMPAC illegally contributed corporate money to elect fourteen GOP state legislators in 2002 to gain state legislative control for the first time in 130 years, and then used this majority to crudely gerrymander Texas Congressional districts so that four Democrats might lose their seats this November. DeLay, who was chairman of an advisory board for the Republican Majority group, claims the probe is driven by partisan politics.

Under Texas law, the $600,000 in corporate donations could be used only for the PAC's administrative costs, like rent. But instead it was used for polling, fundraising and phone banks, according to the PAC's own public filings. TRMPAC also wired the Republican National Committee $190,000 in corporate "soft money"; two weeks later the RNC mailed legal "hard money" checks to seven state GOP candidates totaling exactly $190,000. The RNC called this "a coincidence." Among the donors to TRMPAC was Abramoff's law firm at the time, Preston, Gates & Ellis, and two tribes associated with him, for a total of $31,000 in 2000.

Tom DeLay, driven by an alloy of ideology and money, will likely be the next Speaker of the House if the GOP remains in control. That is, if these bombs don't blow up in his face first.

Networks blacked out on DeLay aides' indictments

On September 21, three top aides to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) were indicted on charges of illegally raising political funds from corporations in 2002. Major newspapers carried the story, some of them on the front page -- but the evening newscasts on the three major TV networks did not.

As The Washington Post noted on September 22, the grand jury has not questioned DeLay or sought records from him, but the fund-raising activities in question "were at the heart of one of DeLay's most cherished, high-profile endeavors of the past several years: giving Republicans control of the Texas legislature so the state's 32 U.S. House districts could be redrawn in a way likely to send more Republicans to Congress." Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times pointed out on September 22 that the charges against DeLay's aides come at a time when DeLay himself is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. The Los Angeles Times stated that the investigation pertains to "improperly involving a federal agency in a Texas partisan matter, soliciting campaign contributions in return for legislative favors, and violating campaign finance laws."

The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Houston Chronicle carried front-page stories on the indictments on September 22, and a LexisNexis database search for September 21 and September 22 news reports on the indictments returned 84 results.*
Yet ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News failed to report the indictments on September 21 and on September 22.

Hammer Time
Hammer Time
09/22/2004 @ 10:30am permalink
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The Daily Outrage will periodically expose some of the many odious characters populating American politics today. We're calling it the "Nefarious Character Watch." So it's fitting that we begin with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - aka "The Hammer" - easily one of the most ruthless and corrupt power-brokers in Congress. He's like Gingrich - except with more pull and less profile.

This June Representative Chris Bell filed a lengthy three-part report alleging that Delay: 1) illegally channeled corporate donations to Texas state legislative races in violation of state election laws; 2) took money from Westar Energy in exchange for an amendment to save the company billions of dollars; and 3) improperly directed the Department of Homeland Security to hunt down the Texas legislators who fled to Oklahoma in protest of Delay's iron-fisted 2003 Texas redistricting scheme. The House Ethics Committee's ninety-day inquiry into Bell's charges expired Monday.

Now, deadlocked on how to proceed despite overwhelming evidence condemning DeLay, the ten- member panel will likely vote to dismiss the investigation on 5-5 partisan lines, invoking the never-before-used "option of last resort." At least one Republican would have to break party ranks for the probe to proceed. That's unlikely given that four of the five Republicans on the panel have accepted campaign contributions from DeLay's political action committee. He's both their benefactor and boss.

Just yesterday a Texas grand jury indicted three consultants with DeLay's political action committee and eight corporate donors for ilegally influencing the 2002 Texas State Legislature elections, in which Republicans gained a majority for the first time since Reconstruction. Everyone's guilty except the main man himself.

Eight nonpartisan watchdog groups and DeLay's home-state newspaper, The Dallas Morning News - hardly a bastion of lovey-dovey liberalism - have called on Congress to appoint an outside counsel, based on prior investigations of House Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich. "If ever there was a good time to bring in an impartial investigator, this is it," the paper wrote.
To drive the point home, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ran newspaper ads in the home districts of the ranking Republican and Democrat of the committee calling for immediate action and showing an ostrich with its head in the sand.

A sloth may be more apt. Under one of the most right-wing Congresses in American history, investigations into Abu Ghraib, missing WMDs and bribery on the House floor fall by the wayside. In DeLay's Washington, ethics rarely talks, and money always walks.

The House's Fear of Tom DeLay

Published: September 20, 2004

The House ethics committee, ever the Capitol's hibernating watchdog, has been dithering for months about allegations that the majority leader, Tom DeLay, abused his office when he engineered the gerrymander of Texas House seats to cushion his Republican edge in Congress.

The committee should have at least approved a formal inquiry by now, but the latest reports indicate that the issue will soon be deep-sixed as the Republican Congress shows no appetite for investigating Mr. DeLay, one of Washington's most feared and bare-knuckled partisans.

Committee leaders claim to be still fact-gathering, but it has becoming clear that their mission is to dismiss this hot potato yet not seem cowardly about it. One gambit is called the "option of last resort" under ethics rules: punting the issue to the evenly divided panel. Unless there's a profile in courage in the wings, this would mean a 5-to-5 deadlock on party lines and no inquiry. The "option of last resort" is really a political magic wand to make the duties of office vaporize.

The far better option is to appoint an outside counsel to look into the charges, as was done in earlier ethics investigations of Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich. Mr. DeLay's role in the redistricting power play, right down to his personal visit to lobby the Austin statehouse, is a matter of record.

What is in dispute are the charges from one of the Democratic losers in the gerrymander, Representative Chris Bell, that Mr. DeLay improperly offered favors for campaign donations, laundered funds to bolster his party clout in Texas and sicced federal agencies on runaway Democratic lawmakers who boycotted the state redistricting vote.

Mr. DeLay insists that there is no substance to the charges and that Mr. Bell, a primary-fight loser under the skewed Texas remap, has filed 187 pages of sour grapes. Mr. DeLay has called on the committee to clear his name by dismissing the charges. A "last resort" deadlock would not be a clean bill of health, but a typically cynical evasion by politicians feeling the heat. The ethics committee might try the true last resort and begin taking itself seriously.

Ethics committee to meet soon on complaint against DeLay

2:09 p.m. September 15, 2004

WASHINGTON – Allegations that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay misused his office will be on the House ethics committee's agenda as early as next week.

After several months of gathering evidence, the committee must decide whether to launch a formal investigation of the Texas Republican or dismiss the case. There is no deadline limiting the time for the committee of five Republicans and five Democrats to act.

A three-part complaint is now before the committee.

Two allegations directly involve use of DeLay's congressional office. One accuses him of soliciting corporate contributions in return for assistance on legislation.

A second contends he improperly used his staff to contact U.S. aviation authorities, asking them to track down Texas Democratic legislators who had fled the state while trying to thwart a DeLay-backed redistricting plan.

The third allegation accuses DeLay of using his political action committees to distribute money from corporations to Texas legislative candidates, in violation of state law.

DeLay has replied to the committee, but has not released his response publicly.

Any investigation of DeLay would have political overtones, since he has great influence over which bills move through the House and also supports the campaigns of GOP members.

Some House Democratic leaders have strongly criticized his conduct, but they let Rep. Chris Bell – a freshman Texas Democrat defeated in the primary – to file the complaint.

Committee members said they expect the panel, formally the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, to meet next week.

Chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo., said he and ranking Democrat Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., will make recommendations to the committee based on the fact-finding inquiry by the panel's staff.
If the Democrats all vote for a formal investigation, at least one Republican would have to join them to initiate the inquiry.

"I would be amazed if there was a 5-5 deadlock," Hefley said.

DeLay said this week, "The ethics committee will do the right thing."

Associated Press Writer Suzanne Gamboa contributed to this story.

The law and Tom DeLay

The Bush administration's chief far-right Ninja on Capitol Hill, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, will be swinging his legal and political nunchucks more fiercely than ever in coming months, for some of his bloodied victims are starting to fight back. Late last month, the House Committee on Standards decided not to dismiss a House member's complaint that Mr. DeLay organized the illegal funding of a campaign to rob the congressman of his Texas seat in an off-year redistricting maneuver. As a merciless wielder of both power and perks in the House, Mr. DeLay may see to it that the ethics group scurries off in another direction. Back in Texas, however, a criminal probe of the same rancid operation may gain more traction, inasmuch as it is being run by a Democratic district attorney.

So hellbent was Mr. DeLay on shrinking Texas' Democratic congressional delegation that he apparently -- though he denies it -- broke Texas law in 2002 by raising corporate money, via a political action committee, for state legislative races. Politically, the ploy succeeded. Republicans took control of the Texas House of Representatives for the first time in 130 years and set about ruthlessly gerrymandering congressional districts to favor GOP candidates. The results will be apparent in the November election, when five Democrats will almost certainly lose their seats and be replaced by Republicans who will help secure the GOP majority in Congress.

One of the Democrats on his way out the door is Texas Representative Chris Bell, who wants the House Committee on Standards (formerly the Ethics Committee) to toss out an outrageous seven-year-old agreement between Republicans and Democrats in which each party avoids bothering the other, ethics-complaint-wise. Mr. Bell's list of charges against the majority leader, nicknamed "The Exterminator" for his former profession and his current political style, includes illegal corporate money-laundering and state campaign funding, as well as Mr. DeLay's misuse of his office by asking the Federal Aviation Administration to track aircraft carrying Democratic legislators out of Texas during the redistricting battles.

The Standards Committee should go after the lawless Mr. DeLay -- or, even better, appoint an independent counsel to investigate charges -- but the chances are it will do neither. So fairness and decency's best hope may be Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle, who has been investigating campaign fund-raising in Texas for 20 months. Over 100 subpoenas have been issued and a grand jury convened. Mr. DeLay is not yet an official target of the investigation. But the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, which Mr. DeLay created and guided, is at the center of the probe, so his decision to retain a criminal lawyer sounds smart. Previously, Mr. Earle prosecuted four elected Republicans and 12 members of his own party for election-law violations.

One of the biggest donors to TRM-PAC was Enron, which soon afterwards received a big corporate boost when Mr. DeLay rammed through deregulation legislation the Houston energy giant desired. This rotten-to-the-core company later collapsed. It's too bad the anti-democratic Mr. DeLay didn't go down with it, but there's time.

Tom DeLay's tainted ethics panelWill the hammer be lowered on 'The Hammer'?

He's the religious right's most dependable culture warrior in the House of Representatives. According to the Religious Freedom Coalition of the Southeast, he "was the first national politician to call for Bill Clinton's resignation after the President admitted to fooling around with Monica Lewinsky." You probably couldn't pick him out of a line-up, you wouldn't recognize him if you passed him on the street, he's not a household name and it's likely that he won't be speaking in prime-time at next month's Republican Party convention in New York City. Yet Tom DeLay, the Republican House Majority Leader representing Sugar Land, Texas (a suburb outside Houston) -- who literally got his start snuffing out roaches and other vermin and is now known as "The Hammer" -- is the most powerful man in Congress.

"DeLay is a pro-gun, anti-abortion, antigovernment, born-again Christian zealot who sees his mission in life as the protection of small business and, of course, pork barrel projects for his home state," Robert Bryce writes in his recently published book Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate (Public Affairs, 2004).

And he's no stranger to controversy and hardball politics. According to Bryce, after the GOP took control of Congress in 1995, DeLay "put together a list of the 400 largest political action committees and the amounts of their contributions to each party... [and] invited the heads of those PACs to his office, where he showed them how their outfit -- and their lobbyists -- were classified by the new rulers of the House... There were two groups: 'friendly' and 'unfriendly."
Out of these meetings came the "K Street Strategy" -- named after the street in Washington where many lobbying companies have their offices -- which included "purging all known Democrats from trade associations, political action committees, and lobby firms that work on Capitol Hill," Bryce writes.

It's not easy going head-to-head with Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the most powerful member in the House, but that's exactly what Houston Democratic Congressman Chris Bell is doing. According to the Associated Press, in mid-June, Rep. Bell "claimed DeLay illegally solicited campaign contributions in return for legislative favors and laundered illegal corporate contributions for use in Texas elections. Bell also alleged that DeLay improperly used his office to solicit help from federal agencies in searching for Democratic legislators who slipped out of Texas during last year's redistricting fight."

After Republicans, with support from DeLay, took control of the Texas legislature for the first time in well over 100 years, the Texas GOP redrew the state's congressional map -- a plan aimed at taking at least five House seats from Democrats in November. Democrats in the state legislature left the state to avoid voting on DeLay's redistricting plan, but eventually returned and were unable to kill the remapping effort. While they were out of state, Rep. Bell charges that Delay illegally used the Federal Aviation Administration to track down the legislators.

Rep. Bell's charges are slated to be taken up by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, also known as the House ethics committee. Will Rep. Bell get a fair hearing? It might be difficult, seeing as how four of the five Republicans on the committee "have received campaign contributions from DeLay's political action committee," according to Sheila Krumholz, the research director for the nonpartisan government watchdog group, the Center for Responsive Politics. She told Alternet that the four ethics committee members received $27,004 in contributions from DeLay entities.

From 1997 through May 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records, DeLay's political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC) and the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee contributed $14,777 to Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Missouri; $8,053 to Rep. Steven LaTourette of Ohio; $2,764 to Rep. Judy Biggert of Illinois; and $1,410 to Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington. Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado, the ethics committee chairman, received no money from DeLay's political action committee.

Phone calls by Alternet to the Congressional offices of all four Representatives who received contributions from DeLay were not returned. Sarah Sheldon, Rep. Hefley's Press Secretary, told me that "the Congressman had no comment on Rep. DeLay's contributions to the other Republican members on the ethics committee." Thus far, during this election cycle, ARMPAC has raised nearly $3 million and has generously given over $600,000 to 75 House candidates, many of them incumbents. Unfortunately, there's no sunshine law that covers the gatherings of the 10-member ethics committee -- the only House committee divided equally among Republicans and Democrats: "Panel meetings are closed to the public and investigations are rarely acknowledged," the AP reported. In addition, all participants, including clerks and secretaries "must swear to reveal nothing confidential."

Rep. Bell was assisted in drafting his complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington, a coalition of government watchdog groups that includes Judicial Watch, the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Common Cause, The Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign. CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan stated: "No other member of the House has consistently shown this much disrespect for the rule of law and the honor of Congress and the country should thank Congressman Bell for his courage."

DeLay recently acknowledged that he had "attorneys all over the place," the Houston Chronicle recently reported. "I consult attorneys before I leave my office and make sure I am doing everything legally and ethically," he said. Over the past three years DeLay "has maintained a legal defense fund and paid legal expenses to Bracewell & Patterson, a Houston-based firm." The firm's Washington office is "representing him" in the ethics complaint filed by Rep. Bell.

According to Roll Call, Ed Bethune of the Bracewell & Patterson law firm "has served as a registered lobbyist for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp... one of the companies under scrutiny by the Travis County District Attorney in Austin, TX, in a criminal investigation of DeLay's Texans for a Republic Majority Political Action Committee. Roll Call cites IRS records that show Burlington Northern contributed $26,000 to that PAC." In Austin, DeLay has criminal defense attorneys Bill White and Steve Brittain "watching what's going on my behalf," the Majority Leader said. (For more on this and other DeLay affairs check out the web site takingontomdelay.com.)

The House Majority Leader's fundraising activities are getting mega press attention these days. A Washington Post article over the past weekend revealed that DeLay had solicited "$100,000 in donations to his political action committee from Enron's top lobbyists in May 2001 so he could help bankroll the redistricting" effort. Amy Goodman, the host of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" show reported that the $100,000 was in addition "to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year."

In a July 13, interview with Goodman, Lou Dubose, the author of the forthcoming political biography, The Hammer: Tom Delay, God, Money and the United States Congress, commented on the latest allegations against DeLay: Dubose described a relationship between DeLay and Enron that went back to 1994, when Enron donated $250,000 to DeLay just as his ARMPAC was getting off the ground.

Commenting on Rep. Bell's chances with the House ethics committee, Dubose told Goodman that for all practical purposes the ethics committee has been moribund: "For the past seven years, it's done nothing."

According to the AP, "The committee's next public step will be to dismiss the charges or to create an investigative subcommittee -- with two Republicans and two Democrats -- a decision that must be made by the first week of August, though more time can be requested."

DeLay paid his jury
 
Dallas Morning News
July 18, 2004

Let's say you get called for jury duty. It happens that the person on trial once gave you money. Would you expect to get picked for that jury?
Heck, no.
You'd expect to be sent home, pronto, and for good reason.
Even if you, as an upright and fair-minded citizen, could put the financial tie completely out of your mind, how could those of us looking on, who can't get inside your head, be confident in your impartiality?
That's essentially the situation in Washington, where Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas stands accused of unethical fund-raising practices. Four of the five Republicans on the committee investigating him have received money from his political action committee.
The sums aren't huge -- no more than $15,000 to any one person. But the payments illustrate how difficult it is for members of Congress -- a body that exists on back-scratching and favor-swapping, sometimes in the form of hard, cold cash -- to police themselves.
That difficulty is compounded manyfold when the subject of the probe is the House member with the greatest ability to reward friends and punish enemies. That's why former House ethics panels appointed outside counsels to handle investigations of former speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich.
(It was Gingrich, you may recall, who held up the Democrats as the example of the effects of a single party wielding too much power. Something about "a cancer threatening the very essence of representative freedom.")
Turning the probe over to an outsider was sensible then, and it's sensible now. In fact, some scholars of congressional ethics would make such an appointment mandatory in all ethics investigations.
Without going that far, it's clear that, if ever there was a good time to bring in an impartial investigator, this is it.