Ronnie's shady dealings
From Neal Boortz:
You've heard this one, haven't you? Well, maybe not. I'm not sure --- just guessing --- but this won't make it to the Washington Post or the New York Times, unless you find it buried in the lower inside corner of page 25. It's about the foreman of the Texas grand jury that returned that first indictment on Tom Delay. The foreman's name is William Gibson. He is in his mid-70s. Yesterday morning he told our Austin affiliate KLBJ that he had made up his mind to indict Tom Delay long before he heard one piece of evidence presented by prosecutor Ronnie Earle. And why was he determined to indict Tom Delay? Because, it seems, he didn't like some campaign advertisements that Delay ran in the newspapers during his last reelection campaign. Here's what Gibson told KLBJ:All this came out way before I was on the grand jury, these (ads)were in your paper, in Austin paper, everyone else's paper, they was flooding the market around here. But those were way before I ever went on the grand jury and my decision was based upon those, not what might have happened in the grand jury room.So .. here you have the foreman of the first grand jury to indict Delay making a rather astonishing admission that his decision was made on the bases of campaign ads he just didn't like.
Luckily the law that DeLay was indicted under wasn't passed until a year after the "offense" took place. Which would make this charge an ex post facto, against the law in the United States (with the exception of the Domestic Abuse Act, but I digress). So he had to impanel a second Grand Jury. That's where Neal picks it back up:
Wait! There's more!We learned yesterday that last Friday Ronnie Earle made what some people call a frantic attempt to get yet another grand jury to indict Delay on new charges; this after he learned that his first indictment was fatally flawed. The second grand jury returned what is called a "no-bill." That is, they refused to return an indictment. The procedure is for a no-bill to be made public the day it is returned. This didn't happen. It was returned last Friday, and only made public on Wednesday of this week. Some excuse is being floated about not finding a judge to sign it. So ... while this no-bill was sitting around waiting for a judge's signature, Earle rushes to yet another grand jury on Monday ,,, a brand-spanking new grand jury. He presents the same evidence to this grand jury that he gave to the grand jury on Friday. The new grand jury didn't know, however, that the Friday grand jury had refused to return an indictment. The no-bill, which should have been public by then, was mysteriously sitting around waiting for someone to find a judge with a pen. The new grand jury then returns an indictment for money laundering.
If you think that Ronnie Earle isn't acting like a shady character, just gunning for a prosecutorial misconduct charge, then you've got another think coming. You just can't do what he did, and get away with it. But even a glancing blow could be enough, having that "formerly indicted Senator" title following DeLay around for the rest of his life.