The day after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay’s grand jury indictment, his lawyer and the jury foreman on Thursday appeared to contradict the Texas politician’s assertions that he was not given a chance to speak before the jury.
The foreman, William M. Gibson Jr., a retired state insurance investigator, said the Travis County grand jury waited until Wednesday, the final day of its term, to indict him because it was hoping he would accept jurors’ invitation to testify.
DeLay said in interviews that the grand jury never asked him to testify
Oops. Here’s an example of DeLay obfuscating:
In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, he (DeLay) said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify.
“Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years,” DeLay said in the interview.
And DeLay’s lawyer hardly has his back:
Dick DeGuerin, the attorney representing DeLay, said Thursday that DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath. The Houston attorney was not yet on the legal team when DeLay was asked to appear, but he said other attorneys advised him not to testify, a decision DeGuerin supports.
Are we splitting hairs here, dude?
DeGuerin said that DeLay may have been referring in the interviews to the fact that the grand jury did not subpoena him to testify.
Gibson said there was an open invitation, but the grand jury decided not to force him to appear.
Invite, subpoena, what’s the difference?
But where he really lied is here:
Never doing anything? They indicted your corrupt sorry ass, didn’t they?
Maybe he’s thinking only of Earle, not of the grand jury. It is certainly possible that Ronnie Earle himself never directly asked Delay to testify.
The grand jury certainly could have asked him through a different avenue.
That’s the way Delay thinks: legalistically. Ethics? “Truth”? Thes are not things that concern him.
the article states that the GJ invited/asked him to testify while Delay said the GJ never asked him to testify.
Can’t be much clearer.
The gist of Delay’s statement is that he WANTED to appear and clear things up, but he was never asked.
Turns out he was asked, but not subpeonaed…
Maybe Delay meant, he really wanted to be subpeonaed but never was. Now he’s hurt.
Actually, I bet he’s already struck a deal and will plea no contest in December to avoid some real nasty stuff…and all this is just business as usual with him…all bluster and bile.
that angle behind the scenes here. jPol should have a real doozy of a DeLay article up later this evening.
Coolness!! Ya’ll are the best!
😉
good…
I’ll be out for the evening, booman, so write some great comments for me and sign my name, will ya? Think of them as great the insights that I usually come up with…that I’m outsourcing to a qualified consultant.
</snark>
Actually, it’s something I’ve been thinking for some time…that he’s already struck a deal…makes sense considering all the timing that I’m sure your article will explore.
And didn’t we hear from his lawyer BEFORE the indictment that they wouldn’t be surprised that he waould be indicted? That’s a great way to “bring it up first” before your opponent does before the court of public oppinion.
And as I seem to recall he did have meetings with Earle as well, yes?
Tom “I am the federal government” Delay wouldn’t understand the truth if it bite him in the ass… which is exactly what it appears to be doing right now.
Interesting thing about his spokesman Kevin Madden. He was spokesman for Rep. John “Congressman Kick-Ass” Sweeney (NY-20) who earned that knickname from bushie boy for his actions running the Brooks Brothers riot to stop the recount in Miami in 2000. Madden went on from his role with Sweeney to be spokesman for the cheney/bush campaign in the northeast. From there he played the same role for Abu Gonzales earlier this year and now is doing damage control for Delay.
I’ve dug up a little bit of a timeline on this guy Madden from Yonkers but if anyone else has any material on him please let me know as that is a very interesting career path he has there and I suspect we haven’t heard the last of him.
His sorry ass would be in jail already — that’s the difference. Then he could play the martyr from a jail cell. Better to let him come and testify along with all of the other folks in open court eheheheheheheh.
I find it EXTREMELY intersting that the jury foreman is a retired Texas insurance investigator…..the story of theTexas insurance industry is a topic for an entire series of diaries (which I surely will never get around to writing! heh).
I am going out this weekend and celebrating!
A “Tom DeLay indictment party!”
Gotta make sure the conservatives in town know Americans are celebrating the news!
Send out a little propoganda message… The fun way.
lol
Damn, it’s thrilling to hear Delay’s lawyer do bullshit like this. It means Ronnie’s got him and they are reduced to meaningless hairsplitting. This is “The Hammer!” Schlepping over semantics! WooWoo!
within the hour, send an e-mail to caffertyfile@cnn.com
“Are the Republicans making a mistake by continuing to support Tom Delay?”
(And Jack gave Wolf props for his fierce interview of Delay yesterday, and said that many viewers thought Wolf did great too.)
(Jack says he loves witty, funny e-mails because otherwise he’d run out in front of a cross-city bus.)
and now, a moment of seriousness…i’m trying to find the definitive statement of how delay broke the law. i have my head around the fact that trmpac wrote a check to RNSEC (which doesn’t seem to have its own website, btw) from the same account into which it deposited corporate donations.
but the freeper spin is “so what? they sent money to the national R’s, who sent money from a different, non-corporate account to support R candidates.”
i know it can’t be that simple, so if anybody can point me in the right direction, i’d be very appreciative.
they may say “so what” but it is the only damn campaign finance law we have in Texas and we kinda take that one seriously!
You can use corporate $$ for ADMINSTRATIVE costs though and that’s where I am worried that he will wiggle away…
i understand that. the questions arise with the donation to RNSEC and the attached note of candidates who need funding. these candidates then received checks from the RNSEC in a dollar amount equivalent to trmpac’s donation.
if trmpac is allowed to donate to RNSEC and RNSEC is allowed to donate candidates does that amount to a loophole that can exonerate delay?
That is the million dollar question, I suppose.
But I am thinking not, because if this was so, then I do not believe that Ronnie Earl would have put this in front of a grand jury to begin with…but I don’t know shit about the legalities of it al beyond that — that attached note pretty much burns them, as far as I understand it. Because the RNSEC may very well BE allowed to donate to candidates in OTHER states, not so here.
and that 190,000 check in the exact amount of the donations gathered and then summarily distributed looks pretty damn incriminating to me….
I’m thinking that maybe after all of this time, with the investigations going on, that it may just be possible that they have something even WORSE on DeLay and that if he does go plea bargain, they will put resignation and other (like never run for anything ever again) conditions into it — oh, wait, maybe that just what I would do!!
;)_