AUSTIN, Texas — Former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay was convicted Wednesday of money-laundering charges in a state trial, five years after his indictment in Texas forced him to resign as majority leader in the House of Representatives.
After 19 hours of deliberation, a jury of six men and six women decided that DeLay - once one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress - was guilty of one charge of money laundering and one charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
As the verdict was read, DeLay, 63, sat stone-faced at the defense table. Then he rose, turned, smiled and hugged his wife and then his weeping daughter in the first row of spectators. He faces between five and 99 years in prison, although the judge may choose probation.
A few minutes later, De-Lay said outside the courtroom that he would appeal the decision. He called the prosecution a political vendetta by Democrats in the local district attorney’s office and revenge for his role in orchestrating the 2003redrawing of congressional districts to elect more Republicans.
“This is an abuse of power,” he said. “It’s a miscarriage of justice. I still maintain my innocence. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system.”
The verdict ends the latest chapter in a long legal battle that forced DeLay to step down. The trial also opened a window on the world of campaign financing, as jurors heard testimony about large contributions flowing to DeLay from corporations seeking to influence him and about junkets to luxury resorts where the congressman would rub shoulders with lobbyists in return for donations.
Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat and the Travis County district attorney, said the decision to pursue charges had nothing to do with partisan politics.
“This was about holding public officials accountable, that no one is above the law,” she said.
During the three-week trial, the prosecution presented more than 30 witnesses toprove that De-Lay conspired with two associates in 2002 to circumvent a state law against corporate contributions to political campaigns.
DeLay was initially charged with breaking campaign finance law. But prosecutors later switched strategies because it was impossible under the law at the time to accuse someone of conspiring to break campaign finance rules, prosecutors said.
Instead, prosecutors used a legal theory never before tried in Texas: They argued that DeLay and two of his political operatives, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, had violated the criminal money-laundering law.
They were charged with conspiring to funnel $190,000 in corporate donations to state candidates through the Republican National Committee.
The main facts of the case were never in dispute.
In mid-September 2002, as the election heated up, DeLay’s state political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, gave a check for $190,000 to the Republican National Committee. The money had been donated earlier in the year by corporate lobbyists seeking to influence DeLay, several witnesses said.
On Sept. 13, the check was delivered to the RNC by Ellis, who was DeLay’s top political operative in Washington and headed his federal political action committee.
At the same meeting, Ellis also gave the Republican director of political operations, Terry Nelson, a list of state candidates and an amount to be sent to each. Nelson testified that Ellis had told him that the request for the swap had come from DeLay.
In early October, donations were sent from a separate account filled with individual donations to seven Republican candidates in Texas. Six of them won. Republicans seized control of the Legislature for the first time in modern history and in 2003 pushed through a contentious redistricting plan - orchestrated by De-Lay - that sent more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004 and helped him consolidate his power.
The jury consisted of a Republican, six Democrats, two independent conservatives and three independent liberals.
Ellis and Colyandro, who face lesser charges, will be tried later.
During the last day of deliberations, the jurors asked for transcripts of DeLay’s interview with prosecutors in 2005, in which he said he knew about the swap in advance.
“Jim Ellis told me he was going to do it before he did it,” DeLay said in the interview.
But the lead defense lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, maintained that the money swap was legal because the RNC kept a firewall between accounts holding corporate and individual contributions.
“It’s not the same money” was his mantra during the trial.
Information for this article was contributed by Juan A. Lozano of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/25/2010