Tom DeLay Wants a Mulligan

Oh yes, Tom DeLay, my convicted felon former congressman wants a Mulligan. That’s golf-speak for a “Do Over.” DeLay, you know, plays golf, so I thought that was an appropriate application of the term.

According to UPI, Tom DeLay’s overpriced lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, has filed a motion for a new trial, a motion to set aside the jury’s guilty verdict, and to do it all over again.

In short, Tom DeLay is making it his business to make the cash-strapped state spend even more taxpayer money to put this guy away.

DeGuerin, Tom DeLay’s way overpriced lawyer, said that among other things, there were irregularities in the jury and that the DA had misapplied state law in applying its money laundering law to what Tom DeLay did, which, he said, isn’t even illegal because it’s done all the time.

That last one we have heard before.

A prosecutor for the DA, Steve Brand, who worked the case, said that these were groundless charges.

From UPI: 

“We oppose the motion and we don't think any real legal grounds are alleged to disturb the verdict and accept the motion for a new trial.”

Really, outside of the jury irregularity allegation, there is nothing new under the sun. This was exactly Tom DeLay’s entire defense, not guilty because no crime was committed. The judge and jury, however, disagreed.

DeGuerin argued that when Tom DeLay took $190,000 in corporate donations and gave it to the RNC, who in turn gave exactly $190,000 in campaign donations to 7 GOP candidates for Texas’s state house (whose names were provided by Tom DeLay), well that’s peachy keen. Even though DeLay himself couldn’t directly donate the cash to the 7 candidates because that would be illegal.

But the DA successfully argued that this was a callous disregard for the law, since you can’t take money from your left pocket, place it in your right one, and then say it didn’t come from the left pocket when you make a donation. The phrase, as I recall was “money is absolutely fungible. It’s like beans.” A phrase uttered by Judge Priest.

But the other allegation, the new one, is intriguing. There was “juror misconduct.”

That’s rich, too rich.

As I recall from the trial, there was one juror who kept coming up with off the wall questions for the judge to answer, and Judge Priest deigned not to answer them, telling the jury that they were getting off track. DeGuerin, at the time, saw the confusion as a good sign for the defense.

The juror, it has been speculated, was the schill for DeLay. He was the one trying to get the jury to believe that money laundering only took place by purveyors of illegal drugs, something that never came up in the trial.

If that’s the case, if that is the juror misconduct DeGuerin and DeLay are concerned with, then that’s a real knee-slapper, isn’t it? Tom DeLay’s amazingly overpriced lawyer is using DeLay’s own ideological supporter’s antics as the reason to throw out the verdict.

But somehow, this doesn’t surprise me at all. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t surprise me if this was Tom DeLay’s own idea.

It sounds so much like the stuff he used to come up with when he was in DC.

But you know what? I do have to wonder about this strategy. Getting his verdict overturned on appeal, in a 100% Republican Appellate Court seemed more like a sure thing for DeLay. Obviously, it isn’t. Republicans may just want ol’ Tom to just go away, so this was the next best idea.

Gee, do you think?