Ex-U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has been sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering and conspiracy to launder money in connection with the illegal funneling of corporate donations to candidates for the Texas state legislature in 2002. (DeLay’s own daughter served as a paid consultant to two of the fund-raising organizations that helped feed the money into those contests.)
Needless to say, the former House majority whip is appealing.
DeLay has not only protested his innocence from the beginning; he’s seemed not even to comprehend that the laws he violated apply to him. “I can’t be remorseful for something I don’t think I did,” he said, adding, “This criminalization of politics is very dangerous.”
DeLay set a new record for apparatchik arrogance in 2003, when he got the FAA to join in the search for a private plane that had carried several Texas state legislators to Oklahoma. The lawmakers had fled Texas to keep the legislature from having the quorum needed for a vote on redistricting that DeLay had orchestrated to boost the power of Republicans in that state. Such misuse of Congressional privilege should have been enough in itself to get DeLay booted from Congress, but it didn’t.
And in 2004, the House Ethics Committee found that DeLay had told another Republican Congressman, Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan, that he would endorse Smith’s son’s candidacy for Congress if Smith would vote for Medicare legislation supported by President Bush. For that, for using the FAA to chase the Texas legislators and for inviting energy lobbyists to a fundraiser just before a House vote on an energy bill, DeLay was admonished by the House Ethics Committee; afterward, its chairman and two other members who supported the admonishment were removed from the Committee by House Speaker and DeLay ally Dennis Hastert.
Years earlier, beginning in 1994, DeLay had organized the so-called K-Street Project, using the MO that got him the nickname The Hammer. DeLay called in a crowd of lobbyists (many of whom hold forth in offices on Washington’s K Street) and told them that Republicans were “in charge,” and their political donations had better reflect that. He also threatened to cut off access to Congressmen for lobbyists who hired Democrats, a practice that was outlawed years later under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007—which prompts the observation that DeLay might have been in jail for several lifetimes if laws could have been made fast enough to keep up with his shenanigans.
