DeLays’s TRMPAC Spent Money It Didn’t Have

Well the prosecution in the Tom DeLay money laundering trial is about to rest its case, I hear. Today another nail was driven in the coffin that represents Tom DeLay’s future freedom of movement with the testimony of a “forensic accountant.”

That’s an interesting term, forensic accountant. Interesting because usually you see the term forensics used in a scientific investigation of evidence in a crime. This is the equivalent in the world of dollars and sense (or should I say nonsense?).

The forensic accountant, Marshall Vogt, pored over the accounting records of TRMPAC and asked some very important and pointed questions?

From the Austin American-Statesman:

“Why would a political committee that intended to function beyond the 2002 elections donate money it didn’t have to a larger, better-financed organization?”

Why indeed?

TRMPAC had two separate accounts, one containing contributions from individuals and one containing contributions from corporations. The check that Jim Ellis gave to the RNC was drawn on the corporate account. It was corporate money. But it gets even better than that.

According to the accountant, there weren’t enough funds in the account to cover the $190,000 check. It would have bounced had not John Colyandro made a personal loan of $40,000 to the PAC.

Why give a check for more money than the account contained to the RNC, an arguably better funded money raising organization than TRMPAC? Did it have to do with party building? Was TRMPAC just a flash in the pan temporary PAC meant to go out of business when it’s funds were all spent for the 2002 elections?

Did it have to do with the fact that 7 state rep seats needed to be picked up so Tom DeLay could have a second congressional redistricting party when his party won the majority in the mid-term elections?

Is this a trial about a crime committed or politics being committed? Frankly, yes, it’s about both. The irony is that in 2002 this was a felony punishable by up to a life sentence, now we live in a world where this is not only commonplace, but applauded as an exercise in freedom – that corporations have as much right to buy elections as anyone else.

I have the answer. It has been there all along. It’s still the law of the land that only US citizens may donate to campaigns, foreigners aren’t supposed to, at least not legally. It’s right there in the 14th Amendment that a citizen of the United States is born in this country or is naturalized.

Corporations are neither.

So, OK, let’s let corporations be people. They can be people. They just can’t be Americans.

No “Constitutional Republican” could hardly disagree.