DeLay Lawyers Charge Trial Is Politically Motivated

And I thought that when you made an assertion in a court of law, you had to back it up with evidence.

Today, Dick DeGuerin, Tom DeLay’s lead attorney in his money laundering case, made a statement that the charges leveled against Tom DeLay were “politically motivated” on the part of retired District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

Gee, do you think?

After all, Tom DeLay’s crimes and misdemeanors were politically motivated to gain an unfair advantage and get a majority of state reps in the Texas House, and then use that to unfairly redraw congressional district boundaries a second time to increase the number of Republican congressmen from Texas.

But prosecutors deny that Ronnie Earle was politically motivated.

But the truth is, political motivation or no, a law was violated. Were Ronnie Earle not to prosecute Tom DeLay for money laundering, that could also be construed as politically motivated. When you don’t prosecute when a crime is committed, that is even more politically motivated than prosecuting when a crime has occurred.

Do you think?

But I can see where this is going. Here is what DeGuerin said about what Earle thought about DeLay’s crimes:

“Mr. Earle's philosophy is corporate money in elections is dangerous to democracy.”

Gee, do you think?

 

As we have seen in the past election, corporate money in elections in effect murders democracy. “Dangerous” is an understatement.

DeGuerin is obviously setting up for the “Citizens United Defense.” That is, what was very obviously thought to be dangerous to democracy in 2002 has evolved to being fair and balanced policy in giving a corporate entity the same rights as an individual and allow them to give campaign contributions to anyone. That is, ironically, if the Citizens United case is the law of the land now, should Tom DeLay’s case be appealed to the US Supreme Court as it now stands, any conviction would be overturned.

But I really don’t think it will come to that. DeGuerin is, I think, ready to make that case right now. Whether he is successful or not really depends on whether his jury agrees that ExxonMobil has as much right to give unlimited billions to Republican campaigns as they do.

If they had unlimited billions, that is.