Washington – Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men’s causes.
When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay’s private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay’s wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt’s son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture.
The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state candidates.
Blunt last week temporarily replaced DeLay as House majority leader, and Blunt’s son, Matt, has risen to Missouri’s governor.
The government’s former chief election-enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money concealed.
“These people clearly like using middlemen for their transactions,” said Lawrence Noble. “It seems to be a pattern with DeLay, funneling money to different groups, at least to obscure, if not cover, the original source,” said Noble, who was the Federal Election Commission’s chief lawyer for 13 years, including in 2000 when the transactions occurred.
None of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations DeLay collected for the 2000 convention was ever disclosed to federal regulators because the type of group DeLay used wasn’t governed by federal law at the time.
DeLay has temporarily stepped aside as majority leader after being indicted by a Texas grand jury.
Spokesmen for the two Republican leaders say they disclosed what was required by law at the time and believe all their transactions were legal, although donors might not always have known where their money was headed.
“It illustrates what others have said, that money gets transferred all the time. This was disclosed to the extent required to be disclosed by applicable law,” said Don McGahn, a lawyer for DeLay. “It just shows that donors don’t control funds once they’re given.”
Longtime Blunt aide Gregg Hartley said he saw no similarity to the Texas case. The fact that DeLay’s charity, Christine DeLay’s consulting firm and Blunt’s son were beneficiaries was a coincidence, Hartley said.
Much of the money – including one donation to Blunt from an Abramoff client accused of running a “sweatshop” garment factory in the Northern Mariana Islands – changed hands in the spring of 2000, a period of keen interest to federal prosecutors.
During that same time, Abram off arranged for DeLay to use a concert skybox for donors and to take a golfing trip to Scotland and England that was partly underwritten by some of the lobbyist’s clients.
