Home / Hall of Shame / Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

• Forced to resign his position as majority leader of the U.S.House of Representatives on January 7, 2006 and to resign from Congress on June 9, 2006. DeLay has now taken residence in Alexandria, Virginia, where he is expected to take up work as a Capitol Hill lobbyist.
  
• Indicted for money laundering in Texas. DeLay and three of his closest political aides have been indicted by Texas grand juries for criminal felonies related to the laundering and use of corporate money in Texas state elections. The aides are Jim Ellis, director of DeLay’s leadership PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC); John Colyandro, director of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC); and Warren Robold, a political fundraiser. [Travis County District Attorney press release 9/28/2005 and The Hill, 9/24/2005]
  
• Under investigation by the Justice Department for possible corruption through ties to admitted felon and former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Lawyers involved in the Department’s case say that DeLay is one of several lawmakers and officials under investigation. [Washington Post, 11/26/05]
  
• Former deputy chief of staff for DeLay pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt public officials. Tony C. Rudyserved as Deputy Chief of Staff (and former counsel) to House Majority Leader DeLay until 2001, when he took a job with Jack Abramoff. Rudy pleaded guilty on March 31, 2006, to conspiracy to corrupt public officials stemming from the Abramoff probe, bringing the scandal closer to the door of his one-time boss, Tom DeLay. In fact, three days later, DeLay decided to resign from Congress. Rudy also violated the revolving door rules of Congress, lobbying his former colleagues within one year after leaving public service. Rudy joined Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay press secretary, among the ranks of former staffers pleading guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials. [USA Today, 4/1/2006; Washington Post, 4/4/2006]
  
• Took lavish trips closely tied to Abramoff. DeLay famously toasted Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends" on a 1997 trip that DeLay took with his wife and three staffers to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, which has "political union" status with the United States. The trip was paid for by the Islands’ government, which was paying Abramoff millions of dollars to lobby against bringing the islands’ sweatshops under U.S. labor laws. Two years later DeLay, his wife, two staffers and Abramoff flew to England and took a four-day side trip to the famous St. Andrews golf course in Scotland. The junket was paid for by a non-profit group on whose board Abramoff sat. [Houston Chronicle, 1/8/2005]
  
• Connected to Abramoff through a shady non-profit group. Former Abramoff associates say that the U.S. Family Network (USFN) housed DeLay’s leadership PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), and the Alexander Strategy Group (ASG), a lobbying firm headed by DeLay’s former chief of staff, Ed Buckham. USFN also paid Buckham and ASG $10,000 a month in consulting fees at the time DeLay’s wife was on ASG’s payroll. USFN in turn got its funds largely from clients of Jack Abramoff, including an Indian tribe that DeLay later praised from the floor of the House of Representatives. During its five-year tenure, USFN raised $2.5 million from secret donors -- $1 million in a single check form a now defunct law firm whose former partners would not identify the money’s origins. [Washington Post, 12/31/2005]
  
• His wife received a salary from a lobbying firm connected to Abramoff and several former DeLay aides. DeLay’s wife, Christine, received a monthly salary of $3,200 from the Alexander Strategy Group (for a total of about $115,000 over three years) while it was receiving $10,000 a month from the U.S. Family Network. However, she did not work at its Capitol Hill offices and her job consisted of making lists of the favorite charities of members of Congress, former Buckham associates say. Payments by Abramoff and his associates to the wives of members of Congress is one of the matters being investigated by the Department of Justice. [Time, 1/16/2006; Washington Post, 11/26/2005 and 12/31/2005]
  
• Helped shut down the House ethics committee in 2005. After being admonished twice in 2004 by the ethics committee (see below), DeLay and other Republican leaders changed House rules so that DeLay would not have to give up his leadership post if he were indicted in Texas. A public outcry later forced the Republican caucus to retreat to the old rules. GOP officials also ousted three Republican members of the ethics committee who voted to admonish DeLay, including Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), and two of the committee’s top staff members who worked on the complaints. As a result, the committee’s doors remained closed throughout 2005. [Washington Post, 1/4/2005; Roll Call, 2/17/2005; Congress Daily, 10/6/2004]
  
• Admonished by the House ethics committee twice in one week in 2004. On September 30, 2004, the House ethics committee found that DeLay had violated House rules in his efforts to pass the controversial Medicare prescription drug bill. DeLay made an offer to Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), who was retiring, that he would endorse Smith’s son as his replacement if Smith would vote for the bill. A week after the admonishment in the Medicare matter, the committee again admonished DeLay for the appearance of corruption for hosting a golf fundraising event with energy industry lobbyists immediately before an energy bill vote, and for diverting Federal Aviation Administration resources to track down Texas Democratic legislators fleeing a vote to redraw congressional district boundaries. The redistricting effort, which was engineered by DeLay, was aimed at substantially increasing the number of Republican congressional districts. [Ethics committee historical record; Washington Post, 10/7/2004 and 10/1/2004]
  
• Reprimanded by the House ethics committee for interfering in a private hiring decision. In 1999, DeLay received a private letter of reprimand from the ethics committee for holding up a vote on legislation because the Electronics Industries Alliance, which supported the bill, had hired a Democrat as its president. This is only one example of the pressure DeLay has put on the lobbying community, under the guise of the “K Street Project.” The project’s purpose is to get corporations, trade associations and lobbying firms to hire Republicans rather than Democrats as their lobbyists in order to cement closer ties with Congress, raise huge sums of campaign cash and provide lucrative employment to allies. [Los Angeles Times, 9/30/2005]

To keep up to date on these stories and other corruption news, go to our Watchdog Blog.