SourceBBC wrote:Former top Republican Tom DeLay has said he will not be seeking re-election to the House of Representatives in November, according to US news reports.
Mr DeLay, who is expected to announce his plans on Tuesday, is said to be likely to resign his seat and leave Congress by the end of May or mid-June.
Delay was intimately involved in the corruption scandal where Abramoff finally plead guilty to numerous felonies.
Wall Street Journal wrote:The engagement of Emily Miller and Michael Scanlon was supposed to mark the coming out of a new Washington power couple.
The two had met on Capitol Hill, where they worked as press secretaries to Rep. Tom DeLay, the feared Texas Republican. They got engaged in September 2001 on the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., and planned an August 2002 wedding. As the date approached, Mr. Scanlon bought a $4.7 million oceanside mansion and guest house, formerly part of the DuPont estate, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. He furnished it down to the monogrammed towels and presented it to his bride-to-be.
Then, with the wedding a few months away, he called off the engagement and started dating a 24-year-old waitress.
Mr. Scanlon and Ms. Miller, now both 35 years old, were among a tight-knit group of aides who helped Mr. DeLay rise to the pinnacle of Capitol Hill in the 1990s and cement his power as House majority leader. Some of those aides provided a link between their boss and Jack Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist.
The corruption scandal investigation started in Delay's office, branched out to take out Abramoff, and has come back full circle again.Wall Street Journal wrote:But pressure was mounting on him. Justice Department prosecutors secretly approached Ms. Miller to help build a case against her ex-fiancé, says a person familiar with the case. Last November, Mr. Scanlon pleaded guilty to bribery charges. He agreed to go to jail for as long as five years and pay back nearly $20 million to the tribes. Mr. Scanlon also implicated Mr. Abramoff.
Six weeks later, Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to corruption and bribery charges and agreed to pay the tribes $26 million. Depending on his sentence in Washington, he may spend a decade behind bars. In his plea agreement, Mr. Abramoff said he sought to bribe Mr. Rudy "to perform a series of official acts" by offering him golf trips, meals and a $50,000 payment to his wife.
Not included in these stories are the lobbyist-paid golfing trips to Scotland, in violation of House rules.WaPo #1 wrote:The documents also implicate a "Lobbyist B," which lawyers familiar with the case say is Edwin A. Buckham, DeLay's former chief of staff, who has been perhaps the congressman's closest aide and spiritual adviser. That lobbyist helped Abramoff channel $50,000 in illicit payments to Lisa Rudy's Liberty Consulting from June 2000 to February 2001 and won Rudy's support for his lobbying clients. Miller, who is also Buckham's attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.
Buckham had created 2 phoney political action committees, Alexander Studies Group and US Family Network to launder money going to Delay, while skimming off 1/3 of the so-called donations.WaPo #2 wrote:If an individual called DeLay's appointments secretary saying they wanted to talk to DeLay about overregulation, the appointment secretary would say go speak to Buckham," one former aide said.
WaPo wrote:But some routine procedures were not followed: USFN officials did not register as lobbyists until 2000, when the group became the target of a complaint at the FEC, and they sent in retroactive registrations for the three previous years.
The Buckhams closely controlled the group's finances. Wendy Buckham formally served as the group's treasurer and secretary for only five months in 1996 and 1997, but kept the books and signed its checks until it folded in 2001, according to its tax forms and former officers. Edwin Buckham said in the 2003 deposition it was he who suggested she take this role.
Seattle times storyWaPo wrote:The following year, the National Republican Congressional Committee gave the USFN a $500,000 check to finance additional radio ads in the districts of vulnerable Democrats. Buckham told the FEC he solicited the check, and others told FEC investigators it was paid over the objections of the NRCC's director and chief counsel.
Of the $500,000, USFN gave just $300,000 to another nonprofit group for the ads. In his deposition, Buckham explained that he retained a portion of the Republican Party's check as a commission. "If I raise money, I get a portion," Buckham said. "It is in my contract."
The NRCC in 2004 paid the eighth-highest fine in FEC history to settle allegations that some of its officials colluded with USFN on the ads in violation of campaign finance laws.
Wall Street Journal Story
Washington Post story #1
Washington Post Story #2
