Politics

What to say about DeLay?

By Paul Blumenthal

Really, what is there to say? After a six-years the Department of Justice dropped their investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s connection to the Jack Abramoff scandal. There are a few things left to say:

1) It’s really hard to convict someone whose ideological proclivities happen to overlap with the nefarious actions of the Washington’s former super-lobbyist and the target’s close friend.

2) The laws written to punish official corrupt activity are very difficult to enforce and gather evidence to bring charges. Absent complete idiocy by the target–Jim Traficant, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Bob Ney, Michael Myers, William Jefferson–it is difficult to prove that corrupt activity took place.

3) The Public Integrity Unit at the Justice Department made some serious progress in convictions on corruption related charges, but they also completely screwed up along the way. The Ted Stevens charges were thrown out and the unit could never pin down either DeLay or John Doolittle. They also completely messed up by entering and seizing documents from William Jefferson’s congressional office. Attorney General Eric Holder is clearly trying to clean up the mess left by this office. It would be nice if he made it properly operational after cleaning out all of their screwups.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on August 17, 2010 (boomark / email).