Tom DeLay: Differing Accounts
This is why lawyers don't want their clients to give TV interviews.
The Houston Chronicle reports Tom Delay said in media interviews that he hadn't been asked to speak to the grand jury. His lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, tells it a bit differently:
In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify. "Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."
On Thursday, DeLay said in another broadcast interview that he was under the impression that he wasn't going to be indicted because he hadn't been called to testify before the grand jury. "I have not testified before the grand jury to present my side of the case, and they indicted me," said DeLay, according to the Associated Press.
Dick DeGuerin says:
DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath. The Houston attorney was not yet on the legal team when DeLay was asked to appear, but he said other attorneys advised him not to testify — a decision DeGuerin supports.
DeGuerin said that DeLay may have been referring in the interviews to the fact that the grand jury did not subpoena him to testify. [Grand Jury Foreman]Gibson said there was an open invitation, but the grand jury decided not to force him to appear.
One other important note: Apparently, DeLay's co-defendants haven't flipped on him - yet.
DeLay is accused of conspiring with John Colyandro, executive director of TRMPAC, and Jim Ellis, director of DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, to illegally swap money with the Republican National State Elections Committee, an arm of the Republican National Committee. A separate indictment last year accused another DeLay associate, Warren RoBold of Maryland, with taking illegal corporate money for TRMPAC.
DeGuerin said lawyers for Colyandro, Ellis and RoBold have told him they have not made any deals with Earle's office to testify against DeLay.
| < Judith Miller Grand Jury Day | Friday Open Thread > |
