Tom DeLay’s Lawyer Says Rick Perry Should be Investigated

Dick DeGuerin, a Houston lawyer/celebrity who has steadfastly defended disgraced former congressman Tom DeLay in the remarkably diverse ethics problems he has faced since 2005, dropped a small nuclear bomb in the Texas gubernatorial contest today.

Dick DeGuerin, whose definition of “unethical behavior” must, of necessity (or he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night), have a much more laid-back definition of what qualifies as financial political chicanery, has called for an investigation of Governor Rick Perry’s Texas-Emerging-Technologies-Fund-grants-for campaign-contributions scam.

It was all outlined last weekend in the Dallas Morning News but executive summaries of the two articles can be found here.

The list of people who benefited from Rick Perry’s approval of grants from the Texas Emerging Technologies Fund, a fund that he has just about exclusive say over who gets what, is pretty exhaustive but the executive summary lists, for example, David Nance, who has received a $6.5 million grant from Perry’s fund, and he subsequently ponied up an $80,000 campaign contribution to Perry. In total, Perry has taken in more than $1.266 million in campaign contribution from fund grantees who received a total of $16 million in TETF grants.

That’s a nice return of an investment of, well, nothing. Nothing but influence over the fund, which Perry has plenty of.

Of this scam, Dick DeGuerin said this:

If anyone knows anything about the Public Integtrity Unit it's DeGuerin. From the Dallas Morning News:

"DeGuerin knows his way around the Travis County DA's Public Integrity Unit. He defended Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison against charges of using state equipment to run for office and he's defending former Majority Leader Tom DeLay right now on charges of violating campaign finance laws."

Yes, DeGuerin is right. That’s criminal behavior, and yes, that’s our governor.


Underlining a central but implied thesis that I carry from one blog post on Rick Perry to another: if Bill White fails to oust Rick Perry from the governor’s office on November 2nd, Texans will certainly get exactly what they deserve.

“This is the kind of thing a Public Integrity Unit ought to investigate. If the fundraisers promised or suggested that grants would go to political donors and then that happened, that's criminal, plain and simple.”