Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) yesterday
dismissed reports that he has discussed stepping aside if indicted.
He said the idea that he would relinquish his position as majority
leader is “ridiculous,” and he brushed off a question
about discussions he had with his supporters earlier this month
about starting a new legal defense fund to pay future legal bills.
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Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) |
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“The reports are wrong,
and the reports in Washington are particularly wrong,” DeLay
told reporters.
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is investigating whether
Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee
that DeLay fathered but never ran, illegally raised corporate money
for political campaigns.
In Texas, corporations and labor unions can donate money only to
pay for administrative costs in campaigns. Also, money raised outside
Texas cannot be used to elect the Speaker of the House.
DeLay and fellow Republicans worked to elect a bigger Republican
majority in the Texas House and to elect Tom Craddick, a DeLay ally,
as speaker.
Earle is investigating whether Craddick distributed $152,000 in
TRMPAC money to 14 House candidates.
The bigger Republican majority allowed DeLay and his allies to redraw
Texas’s congressional districts so as to improve GOP candidates’
chances this November.
DeLay said Earle’s investigation is “retribution for
redistricting against the Democrats in Texas.”
Earle is a controversial figure in Texas politics. In 1993, he indicted
Texas’s Republican state treasurer and now Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison. He did not prosecute the case, and Hutchison was acquitted.
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