[Mb-civic] DeLay Accuses Earle of Misconduct - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

DeLay Accuses Earle of Misconduct
Lawmaker's Attorneys Seek Dismissal of Oct. 3 Indictment

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 8, 2005; Page A09

Lawyers for former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) asked a 
Texas court yesterday to quash his indictment on Oct. 3 for money 
laundering in the 2002 election on the grounds that the charge resulted 
from misconduct by the Texas prosecutor overseeing the case.

The Texas prosecutor promptly disputed the claim.

The motion, introduced in Austin, followed the themes struck by DeLay in 
public appearances since the grand jury's action, but it also added new 
details to his allegations of wrongdoing by Travis County District 
Attorney Ronnie Earle in the past two weeks. That was the period in 
which Earle presented the facts of his case to three separate grand 
juries and obtained two indictments that named three specific charges.

One was an allegation of conspiracy by DeLay and two political aides to 
violate Texas election laws by injecting illegal corporate contributions 
into state election campaigns. The other two were allegations that DeLay 
and his aides laundered the illegal corporate contributions through the 
Republican National Committee in Washington, and that they conspired 
together in organizing the scheme.

The DeLay legal team's motion yesterday alleged that Earle and his 
staff, after realizing that the initial indictment of DeLay on Sept. 28 
for conspiracy lacked a credible legal basis, "engaged in an 
extraordinarily irregular, and desperate attempt to contrive a viable 
charge and get a substitute indictment" -- namely, the allegation of 
money laundering.

The motion said that in so doing, Earle and his staff first improperly 
"attempted to browbeat and coerce" a second grand jury into bringing the 
new charge. It said that after failing to do so, they tried "to cover up 
and delay public disclosure" of the decision by the second grand jury.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/07/AR2005100701897.html?nav=hcmodule
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