I think the WSJ nailed it with their headline:
DeLay Charge Dismissed,
But Top Count Remains
That’s accurate, leads with the real news, and doesn’t use the word “upheld,” which bugged me.
It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter much what Earle has done in the past, except for public consumption.
What matters is whether or not he actually has a case and suitable evidence. If it is just some hack job, that should come out pretty quickly.
If it isn’t just some hack job, then the evidence will stand on its own.
You’ve made up your mind what it will turn out to be… that’s cool, you are welcome to your opinion. As people like to tell me, that doesn’t make it fact.
Boston,
Relax on the spin dude… you are starting to transform into a skirt wearing cheerleader.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Boston,
Relax on the spin dude… you are starting to transform into a skirt wearing cheerleader.[/quote]
vroom,
Sorry to bother you so much with my insistence on accuracy. I’m sure it does interfere with your prefered world view.
The WSJ managed to do it well – the question is why couldn’t the NYT or the others?
[quote]vroom wrote:
It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter much what Earle has done in the past, except for public consumption.[/quote]
Oh - I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I think his credibility as far as attempting to prosecute an ex post facto offense will be heard. His credibility will be more than called into question. Read up on the Kay Bailey Hutchison case. He is an inept prosecutor wioth a long history of vindictive politically motivated prosecutions.
Quicker than you think - ask Kay Bailey.
yawn Have any more bits of wisdom that everyone including my 10 year-old daughter doesn’t already know?
I’ll be right. You seem to think that Earle has a case - and knows how to prosecute it. Trust me - the guy is a buffoon.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think the WSJ nailed it with their headline:
DeLay Charge Dismissed,
But Top Count Remains
That’s accurate, leads with the real news, and doesn’t use the word “upheld,” which bugged me.[/quote]
Our local paper said, “Some Delay Charges Dismissed”.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
vroom wrote:
Boston,
Relax on the spin dude… you are starting to transform into a skirt wearing cheerleader.
vroom,
Sorry to bother you so much with my insistence on accuracy. I’m sure it does interfere with your prefered world view.
The WSJ managed to do it well – the question is why couldn’t the NYT or the others?[/quote]
I fail to see the difference and think you are simply looking for the most minor details to complain about because you are hoping to God that he is innocent, or at least, not found guilty. I just don’t understand where the loyalty comes from. Apparently, being a “Republican” is all it takes to earn immediate trust of some in this country. I find that to be pretty damn sad. None of the titles you listed are false or misleading. Apparently, you just want them to claim charges were dismissed as the priority of the statement. I personally think the fact that this has not been laughed out of court and is being taken very seriously shows that this isn’t going to be as simple as claimed on this board in the past.
Why do you have any loyalty to this man at all?
I think he secured an indictment and that it wasn’t tossed out. Howabout when you see me being pretty fair and impartial (that last post) you cut me some slack in return?
The fact that you fail to see the difference and you think that the fact that the judge didn’t rule in favor of a pre-trial motion to dismiss means there is a high likeliehood of an underlying meritorious case are part and parcel of the same problem.
To reiterate what I said above, the stories themselves – those that do not explain the nature of a pre-trial motion to dismiss – are misleading by omission.
This is because pre-trial motions to dismiss are rarely granted, due to how hard it is to get one. Our system is structured so that it is difficult to get rid of things before a trial, but at trial both parties will have a chance to make their respective cases. Thus, for a judge to rule for a pre-trial motion to dismiss, he must ASSUME for the sake of the motion that EACH AND EVERY ALLEGATION made in the charge to be dismissed is TRUE. So, the fact that the judge didn’t dismiss the other counts while assuming that each allegation within them to be true simply means that in the prosecutor actually managed to allege a possible crime (apparently quite a feat for Mr. Earle, given that in the one that got tossed he did not). That’s not even news. That doesn’t even rank above rescuing a cat from a tree.
The fact that one did get tossed, however, is news, and speaks at the very least to an overzealous and under-competent prosecution team.
So, the decision to lead with a headline trumpeting something that happens 999 times out of 1000 seems a bit disingenous to me. The only way the fact the charges didn’t get laughed out of court rises to newsworthy status is in reminding people that DeLay cannot resume his leadership position while he remains under indictment – and that, of course, didn’t make the headline.
Assuming, as most newspapers do, that a lot of people don’t read anything more than the headline, what sort of message would you expect them to take from the headlines published by the NYT, LAT, etc? Given what a I explained above, would they have a more correct, or less correct, picture of the news than those who saw the WSJ headline, or the Fox headline?
Oh yeah, on your other point – I already told you I have no special loyalty to DeLay. What I am is annoyed by Ronnie Earle, and exasperated with the abuse of the legal system to fight political battles.
Good op-ed by a local TX journalist:
Tom DeLay’s Woes Won’t End in Texas
By JONATHAN GURWITZ
December 7, 2005; Page A18
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has done Rep. Tom DeLay a great favor. By keeping the ethical focus on Mr. DeLay in Austin, he has kept it away from a growing scandal in Washington with far more serious implications for the former House majority leader.
Mr. DeLay and his legal team had been banking on a strategy to have Senior District Judge Pat Priest fully quash Mr. Earle’s indictment against the congressman and two associates, allowing him to resume his GOP leadership post when Congress returns in January. On Monday, Judge Priest did throw out the conspiracy charge on the grounds that the statute for conspiracy with respect to the election code wasn’t on the books until Sept. 1, 2003, well after Mr. DeLay’s alleged offense.
But the judge upheld charges related to money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering, while declining to rule, for the moment, on Mr. DeLay’s charge of prosecutorial misconduct by Mr. Earle. The trial will go forward – but a speedy return to the House leadership isn’t in the cards for Mr. DeLay. And anxious Republicans, spooked by an increasingly ominous ethics inquest in Washington, will not mark time indefinitely.
The money-laundering charges concern funds Mr. DeLay raised from corporate donors for Texas for a Republican Majority (Trmpac) the political action committee he established in 2001 to deliver the Texas House to Republicans in 2003 and, ultimately, to produce a redistricting map that gave the GOP five more congressional seats in 2004. Texas law allows corporate donations to political action committees and political parties to be used only for administrative costs. Corporate soft-money donations may not legally be commingled with individual hard-money donations for candidates. (In practice, however, every dollar of soft money a PAC or party receives frees up a dollar of hard money.)
Mr. Earle’s indictment asserts that Trmpac received $155,000 in contributions from six corporations, which it rolled into a $190,000 contribution to the Republican National State Elections Committee’s soft-money account. Four weeks later, the Rnsec gave $190,000 to seven Republican candidates in Texas from its hard-money account. Each of these transactions individually is perfectly legal. And as a 2003 study by the Institute for Money in State Politics shows, this money shuffle, while unseemly, is common not only in Texas but also across the country.
According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Texas Democrats shuffled soft and hard money with far greater alacrity than their Republican colleagues during the same election cycle. For example, former Rep. Martin Frost of Dallas, one of the Democrats unseated by Republican redistricting in 2004, applied similarly creative bookkeeping to his Lone Star Fund, which was not subject to state PAC laws, and the Lone Star Fund-Texas, which was, during the 2000 and 2002 election cycles. Prompted by a complaint from a Republican state senator, Mr. Earle conducted a three-month investigation that cleared Mr. Frost of any wrongdoing.
Mr. Earle has evidently never found sufficient cause to initiate an investigation into the Texas Democratic Party’s money swaps; but the Trmpac-Rnsec exchange has warranted not only a three-year investigation, but also indictments for conspiracy and money laundering.
After throwing out the conspiracy charges, Judge Priest laid out the challenges for Mr. Earle’s money-laundering case. He must prove that Mr. DeLay obtained funds from corporate contributors with the express intent of converting them to donations to individual candidates. Alternatively, he must show that Mr. DeLay illegally converted lawfully obtained Trmpac funds by sending them to the Rnsec “with an agreement that funds of the same amount would then be made available by that committee to individual candidates for Texas political office, and [he must] prove that funds in the same amount were in fact contributed to individual candidates.” Read through Mr. Earle’s wafer-thin, four-page indictment and you won’t find a shred of evidence to support either scenario. Unless Mr. Earle has some evidentiary rabbit he can pull out of his hat, there’s little reason to believe he’ll get a conviction.
Monday’s legal victory, the unresolved issue of prosecutorial misconduct, and the likelihood of acquittal on the remaining charges should be sources of holiday cheer for the DeLay camp. In his shameless zeal to bag a final political trophy and have himself immortalized in the documentary film “The Big Buy,” Mr. Earle has dutifully played nail to Mr. DeLay’s hammer. But what’s been taking place in Austin is only a carnival sideshow led by a charlatan masquerading as a defender of public integrity. The far graver threat to Mr. DeLay’s political future is inside the Beltway, with the escalating scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Mr. DeLay’s ties to Mr. Abramoff are numerous. Some expenses associated with a political junket and golfing trip to the United Kingdom in 2000 showed up on Mr. Abramoff’s credit card. Mr. DeLay made frequent use of Mr. Abramoff’s skybox at the MCI Center. Christine DeLay, the congressman’s wife, worked for a lobbying firm that received referrals from Mr. Abramoff. These only scratch the surface of a relationship between Mr. Abramoff, Mr. DeLay, and Mr. DeLay’s office that stretches back a decade and involves some of the lobbyist’s most noxious efforts.
It is the Michael Scanlon connection, however, that may prove to be the most damaging to Mr. DeLay and others on Capitol Hill. Mr. Scanlon was Mr. DeLay’s press secretary who went on to become a partner of Mr. Abramoff. Last month he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials and is now cooperating in the broadening bribery and corruption probe.
The gravity of events in Washington is a world away from the ethics antics in Austin. A former aide has turned star government witness. Congressional Republicans (those not implicated in the Abramoff scandal) are becoming increasingly inhospitable to Mr. DeLay’s leadership. For all his grandiose faults, Ronnie Earle may be the best political friend Tom DeLay has right now.
Mr. Gurwitz is a columnist and member of the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Oh yeah, on your other point – I already told you I have no special loyalty to DeLay. What I am is annoyed by Ronnie Earle, and exasperated with the abuse of the legal system to fight political battles.[/quote]
I may have a little more loyalty to DeLay than BB, but I think that is understandable being that DeLay is from Texas.
But - BB is exactly correct in his assessment of Earle and his unfettered abuse of the legal system.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I’ll be right. You seem to think that Earle has a case - and knows how to prosecute it.
I think he secured an indictment and that it wasn’t tossed out. Howabout when you see me being pretty fair and impartial (that last post) you cut me some slack in return?[/quote]
I wasn’t trying to attack you, or not give you any slack.
I just wanted to make it clear that the prosecutor in this case is inept. It is an elected position. Were it an appointed position - I doubt he would have a job.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
The fact that one did get tossed, however, is news, and speaks at the very least to an overzealous and under-competent prosecution team.
[/quote]
How often does this happen? I am not a lawyer, but I wasn’t aware that it was that big of a deal to have a motion tossed while moving ahead with others. Don’t they do this on drug convictions often if they can prosecute a more severe charge or not enough evidence was obtained?
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
The fact that one did get tossed, however, is news, and speaks at the very least to an overzealous and under-competent prosecution team.
Professor X wrote:
How often does this happen? I am not a lawyer, but I wasn’t aware that it was that big of a deal to have a motion tossed while moving ahead with others. Don’t they do this on drug convictions often if they can prosecute a more severe charge or not enough evidence was obtained?[/quote]
It’s very rare to have charges thrown out on a pre-trial motion to dismiss. This is a motion ruled on by the judge, and contested by the prosecution, to toss out a charge the prosecution wants to make prior to any evidence or arguments.
Charges can and are dropped more frequently in other circumstances. For instance, the prosecutor can decide not to file a charge in order to pursue other charges he deems more likely to succeed. Or charges can be tossed out at other stages of the trial, by the judge after evidence has shown they are weak and the defense makes a motion to do so, or with the mutual agreement between the prosecutor and defense when new evidence comes up.
However, in this case, the prosecutor filed and wanted to prosecute the charge. The judge assumed everything in the prosecutor’s indictment was true. And the judge ruled that, even if everything in the indictment was true, there could not have been a crime committed on that charge. That’s pretty rare.
Some more good stuff re: media reportage (and on the underlying worth of the remaining charges):
Terrible News For Tom DeLay
Part of the MSM has gotten behind the same story - although a judge tossed some of the charges against Tom DeLay, it is still bad news for his defense team.
CBS/AP ( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/05/politics/main1098969.shtml ):
A judge dismissed a conspiracy charge Monday against Rep. Tom DeLay but refused to throw out the far more serious allegations of money-laundering, dashing the congressman’s hopes for now of reclaiming his post as House majority leader.
NY TIMES ( Judge Upholds Most Serious Charges Against DeLay - The New York Times ):
[i] Judge Upholds Most Serious Charges Against DeLay
A judge in Texas today dismissed part of a state indictment against Representative Tom DeLay, who was forced out of his post as leader of the Republican majority in the House two months ago after he was charged with conspiracy and political fund-raising abuses.
Judge Pat Priest dropped conspiracy from Mr. DeLay's indictment, but let stand for trial the more serious accusation of money-laundering.[/i]
The WaPo runs a Reuters story that does a bit better ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120501470.html ):
Judge allows DeLay trial on money laundering
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas judge dismissed part of a criminal indictment against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on Monday but upheld other charges that will put the powerful Republican lawmaker on trial for money laundering.
State Judge Pat Priest dismissed conspiracy charges against DeLay and two co-defendants, saying the actions were not a crime at the time DeLay was charged with violating them.
But Priest upheld the money laundering charges against DeLay, who was forced to step down as House of Representatives Majority Leader in September when he was first indicted for his role in the Texas campaign financing controversy.[/i]
Now, it may well be that the money laundering charge is “more serious” in the sense that the penalties are stiffer.
However, Texas Prosecutor Ronnie Earle was not more serious about bringing that charge - it was added by a grand jury that had spent at most a few hours reviewing the case, after problems with the money-laundering indictment had become obvious.
Possible interpretations - (a) Ronnie Earle knew the money-laundering charge was so solid that he forgot to include it in his original indictment; (b) the money laundering charge is Texas comic-opera.
Let’s see how the Times covered the “more serious” charge when it was brought in October 2005 ( DeLay Is Indicted Again in Texas; Money Laundering Is Charge - The New York Times ):
[i]Second Indictment Issued Against DeLay
Published: October 4, 2005
A grand jury in Texas issued a second indictment on Monday against Representative Tom DeLay, accusing the Texas Republican and two aides of money laundering in a $190,000 transaction that prosecutors have described as a violation of the state's ban on the use of corporate money in local election campaigns.
The indictment was announced without warning on Monday in Austin, the state capital, after lawyers for Mr. DeLay went to court earlier in the day to ask that the original conspiracy indictment be dismissed on technical grounds. Mr. DeLay was forced to step down temporarily as House majority leader as a result of that indictment last week.
In their court papers Monday, defense lawyers argued that the conspiracy laws did not apply to the 2002 election violations cited in the original indictment and that the charges should be dismissed before they did any more political damage to Mr. DeLay.
Within hours, Mr. DeLay and his aides had been indicted on the new money-laundering charges, which can carry a prison sentence of up to life in prison. Mr. DeLay and his lawyers described the new indictment as a last-minute effort by prosecutors to avoid the humiliation of seeing their case against the former majority leader collapse only days after it was brought.
''Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse,'' Mr. DeLay said in a statement after learning of the new indictment, referring to the district attorney of Travis County, Tex., where both indictments were brought. ''He is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a 'do-over' since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate. This is an abomination of justice.''
Mr. Earle, a Democrat who has a long history in Travis County of prosecuting both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, did not return phone calls for comment on Monday about his reasons for bringing the new money-laundering indictment, or whether it reflected a fear that the original indictment was flawed. The new indictment was issued as Bush administration officials confirmed news reports in London that the Justice Department had asked the British police to question former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the circumstances of her meeting in 2000 with Mr. DeLay during a trip to Britain organized by the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The interview request was the first publicly disclosed evidence from the Justice Department that Mr. DeLay was under scrutiny in the department's wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff.
The new indictment was brought on the first day of deliberations by a newly empaneled grand jury in Austin. The grand jury that brought the original conspiracy charges against Mr. DeLay, and which had been investigating the lawmaker for months, was disbanded last week.
Without an explanation from the prosecutors, local criminal law specialists seemed perplexed by Mr. Earle's actions, saying they may reflect an effort by the prosecutor to ensure that some charge sticks to Mr. DeLay even if the conspiracy indictment is dimissed.
George E. Dix, a law professor at the University of Texas and a specialist in criminal procedures, speculated that prosecutors ''saw a potential problem'' with the conspiracy counts ''and didn't want to hassle over it, so they went with a legal theory on money laundering that wouldn't present the same problems.'' He said if that was the case, it could be embarrassing to Mr. Earle because ''it is a little awkward to have to change a theory before your horse is out of the gate.''
...Within hours, Mr. Earle responded with the new money-laundering indictment, brought before a grand jury that was in its first hours of operation. Mr. DeGuerin said in a telephone interview that the new grand jury could not have understood what it was approving: ''These are 12 people who are newly sworn in, and just getting them oriented takes them all day.''[/i]
Sounded pretty serious.
MORE: Let’s be fair - these charges are more serious because they have not been thrown out. The prospect of starting the New Year with the charges against Tom DeLay dismissed and no indictment of Karl Rove must be sending an early-winter chill down 43rd Street.
'Twould seem, unless there is some mitigating evidence, that Mr. Earle is not hesitant about abusing the power of his office.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10925&o=ENPR003
Ronnie Earle Now Subpoenas Critics
by Robert Novak
Posted Dec 16, 2005
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has subpoenaed two officials at the Free Enterprise Fund in connection with ads the conservative group has run criticizing him for his indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.).
The ads attacked Earle, who has a history of indicting his political enemies in both parties, comparing him to an attack dog.
The draft subpoena served to the organization demands that Free Enterprise Fund (FEF) Communications Director Todd Schorle and executive director O’Brien Murray testify in Texas at DeLay’s change of venue hearing on Dec. 27 – the Tuesday after Christmas. ( http://www.humaneventsonline.com/downloads-pdfs/fefsubpoena.pdf )
In the subpoena, Earle also demands “any and all documentation regarding the advertisements that have been produced or paid for by the Free Enterprise Fund, including any and all information regarding media buys by the Free Enterprise Fund for those advertisements that have run in Austin, Texas, and that may affect whether Thomas Dale DeLay may receive a fair trial in Travis County, Texas.”
FEF fears that Earle is trying to get its donor list with this document request, a spokesman said. Former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, now an attorney in private practice, will represent FEF in the matter.
FEF will be running its ads against Earle in Houston this weekend on the Sunday talk shows, including “Meet the Press.”