On Monday the inexpert dancer and congressman was sentenced to a three-year prison term; he could have faced life in prison. DeLay has vowed to appeal his sentence.
After nearly half a decade of legal proceedings the former Republican congressman was convicted in November of money laundering and conspiracy. Many here say it’s ironic that DeLay was found guilty on conspiracy charges, as he himself was an enthusiastic identifier of other conspiracies.
According to The New York Times, “The evidence at the trial showed that DeLay and two associates channeled $190,000 in corporate donations in 2002 to several Republican candidates for the (Texas state) Legislature, using the Republican National Committee as a conduit. Texas bans corporations from giving directly to political campaigns.”
That new majority then redrew Texas congressional districts in a way that favored the Republicans. That year, they gained control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.
For years, DeLay's 2002 bid to help Republicans gain control of the Texas Legislature was widely viewed as his crowning triumph.
In the next election, the new Texas redistricting map helped Republicans topple five Democratic incumbents in the US House elections of 2004, accounting for the entire Republican net gain that year.
DeLay was so entwined in the Texas legislative power struggle that he asked the Federal Aviation Administration to track a plane believed to be carrying Texas Democrats escaping the state to avoid a quorum call for a vote on the GOP redistricting plan – a move that also drew a warning for DeLay from the House ethics panel.
DeLay was forced to step down as majority leader in 2005 after he was indicted on the state charges; he has long denied any wrongdoing.
DeLay won his nickname, “the Hammer,” for his rigid enforcement of party discipline. His ties with Washington lobbyists drew criticism from public interest groups as well as four warnings from the House ethics panel over issues ranging from threatening a trade association that failed to hire a Republican as its president to accepting expensive gifts and trips in violation of House rules.
Regarding his conspiracy theories, in his 2007 memoir, No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight – copies of his book are now available from $0.01 on Amazon -- DeLay presented “as fact a story about the Clinton White House that’s acquired wide currency within the military but has been shown again and again to be false,” according to Slate Magazine.
The story, that former president Clinton sought to ban military uniforms from the White House, is “entirely false,” Slate noted, emphasis theirs.
In this same memoir, DeLay dismissed two rounds of ethical charges against him, in 1996 and 1998, as “all part of a carefully executed strategy by the Democrats.” He also suggested that the foundational environmentalist text Silent Spring cost “thousands if not millions of human lives.”
Unfortunately for DeLay, there is one conspiracy he still can’t wrap his head around. As The New York Times reported: “Before his sentencing, Mr. DeLay said he was perplexed about how the criminal code could be applied to what he had done.”
DeLay’s sentencing is a yet another remarkable development in the downfall of a powerful politician who once was feared in the House.
“I always intended to follow the law,” DeLay said before the sentence was handed down. “I’m not stupid. Everything I did I had accountants and lawyers telling me what to do and how to do it.”
DeLay will be released on a $10,000 bond while he seeks to overturn the conviction.
