A Texas judge ruled yesterday that a Political Action Committee (PAC) controlled by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) illegally used corporate donations to affect the outcome of Texas elections. The ruling is another blow to the embattled Republican in a drawn-out saga of corruption and influence peddling.
State District Judge Joe Hart ruled Thursday that Texas law is clear and that hundreds of thousands of dollars of unreported corporate and individual donations to Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) were used to affect the outcome of Texas House elections in 2002.
More than $520,000 in donations and corresponding expenditures should have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission, but were not. Further, corporate donations that need to be reported are the same sort of donations banned by law.
Republican state legislators, according to DeLay’s hometown newspaper the Houston Chronicle, tried to protect the Republican leader, their financial benefactor, by arguing that the state’s law banning corporate campaign contributions was unenforceable and vague. They also opposed a bill that would have made the state’s law on corporate donation’s indisputable.
The judge’s ruling came in a civil lawsuit filed against Bill Ceverha, treasurer of the political action committee attached to Texans for a Republican Majority, an organization that has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars not only to Texas Republican candidates but also to national Republican candidates.
As a result of the ruling, Ceverha will have to pay the plaintiffs in the lawsuit almost $200,000.
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Evidence for the plaintiffs included letters from officials of the political action committee to corporate donors vowing that the money they gave would be used to help Republican candidates.
DeLay’s ability to raise funds and to funnel those funds to the campaigns of Republican candidates is widely regarded as the main source of his strong influence on the Republican Party and his ability to enforce Party discipline in Washington.
The civil suit is separate from the Travis County grand jury indictments of three TRMPAC officials and eight corporations in connection with an investigation of alleged campaign violations.
The ruling in this lawsuit, however, strengthens the criminal case against officials who operated DeLay’s PAC by definitively stating that the use of corporate cash by TRMPAC to win Texas House elections was improper and illegal.
The grand jury, which has not indicted DeLay, may now have a broader case against the Republican Party’s number two person in the House.
According to a New York Times story in March, TRMPAC documents revealed that DeLay’s role in the day to day operations of TRMPAC, despite the congressman’s denials, was more active and direct than previously believed.
E-mails and memos released during the investigation show that DeLay personally forwarded at least one large corporate check to TRMPAC, and that he was in direct contact with lobbyists for some of the nation’s largest companies on the committee’s behalf.
One indicted TRMPAC fundraiser Warren M. RoBold told investigators that he was in direct contact with DeLay in 2002 about who to solicit funds from. According to the New York Times, documents provided to investigators showed that RoBold had asked that lists be made of major donors to TRMPAC, saying that “I would then decide from response who Tom DeLay” and others should call to help the committee in seeking a “large contribution.”
In another e-mail to RoBold, a political ally of Delay requested a list of corporate lobbyists who would attend a fund-raising event for the committee, adding that “DeLay will want to see a list of attendees” and that the list should be available “on the ground in Austin for T.D. upon his arrival.”
This activity is an apparent violation of House ethics rules, as it seems DeLay used his position and influence in Congress to solicit campaign donations for his PAC. It also appears to implicate DeLay in activity that Judge Hart ruled to be a violation of Texas law. The judge’s ruling in this case strengthens the criminal case against DeLay himself.
So far Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle has refused to say if he will bring an indictment against DeLay.
