DeLay was selling influence and rigging gerrymanders for hundreds of thousands in exchange for millions of government money. Being good at corruption is not good, by the way.
If DeLay had not been doing anything wrong, he would not have left in disgrace. The evidence is as clear as it can get.
Apparently not.
No Charges Against DeLay in Abramoff Inquiry
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON - Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican and former House majority leader who resigned from Congress in June 2006 in a spectacular fall from political power, will not face federal corruption charges over his dealings with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
After a six-year investigation, the Justice Department's public integrity section has informed Mr. DeLay that it was closing its file on his involvement in the Abramoff affair without an indictment, Mr. DeLay and his lawyer, Richard Cullen, announced Monday.
"This is a great day for me and my family," Mr. DeLay told reporters in a conference call.
Mr. DeLay's legal troubles are not yet over. He still faces a trial in Texas on unrelated state charges of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with campaign donations during the 2002 election. A trial on those charges, for which he was indicted in 2005, was delayed for years because of an appeal by co-defendants, but a hearing on pretrial motions is scheduled for next week.
Mr. DeLay predicted Monday that he would be exonerated on those charges as well, while saying that he was always confident that he would be found not guilty of any wrongdoing in his dealings with Mr. Abramoff. Mr. DeLay noted that while he could have thrown up roadblocks to the federal investigation, he had instead turned over his e-mail and computer files and instructed aides to cooperate fully.
The scandal, which helped Democrats win majorities in Congress in the 2006 election, led to convictions or guilty pleas by two of Mr. DeLay's former aides; former Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio; two former White House officials; Mr. Abramoff himself; and several other former Congressional aides and lobbyists. Mr. Abramoff was released from prison in June.
It involved a sprawling series of accusations that officials accepted gifts, trips and campaign donations while doing favors for Mr. Abramoff's clients, which included gambling interests like Indian tribal and online casinos and the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States commonwealth that was seeking to preserve its exemption from a minimum wage.
Mr. DeLay took several trips arranged by Mr. Abramoff, who also helped raise money for his political campaigns and a charity Mr. DeLay runs for foster children. A firm with financial ties to Mr. Abramoff established a retirement account for Mr. DeLay's wife, and she and their daughter also received payments for consulting work on Mr. Delay's campaigns.
Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, sharply criticized the Justice Department's decision to close the investigation into Mr. DeLay's role without charges.
"It's a sad day for America when one of the most corrupt members to ever walk the halls of Congress gets a free pass," Ms. Sloan said. "The Justice Department's decision not to prosecute Mr. DeLay for his actions sends exactly the wrong message to current and future members."
But Mr. DeLay said that he had done nothing wrong and that his political enemies had spent more than a decade coming up with "frivolous" ethics charges against him. He denounced the "criminalization of politics and the politics of personal destruction" that he contended his case exemplified.
"The new politics - it's no longer good enough to beat you on policy," he said. "They have to completely drown you and put you in prison and destroy your family and your reputation and finances, then dance on your grave."
The Justice Department has a policy of not discussing or confirming investigations that end without charges, and a spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr. Cullen said prosecutors had periodically contacted him to ask questions over the years, but had never requested an interview with Mr. DeLay himself.
Mr. DeLay said he had no regrets over his dealings with Mr. Abramoff, saying he had never done anything "untoward or unprofessional" for him. Mr. DeLay defended the trips, saying it was good to find ways to avoid having taxpayers pay for his travel, and also defended the merits of the policy positions he took that dovetailed with the interests of Mr. Abramoff's clients.
"The thing that bothers me the most, I think, is not that people think I'm corrupt," Mr. DeLay said. "It's that they think I'm stupid. I knew the Democrats were going to come after me - they announced they were going to come after me. So I wouldn't even go to the restroom without a lawyer saying I could. Everything was absolutely above-board, transparent, within the House rules, and I have been found guilty of nothing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/us/politics/17delay.html
