The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling may have not only opened a spigot of corporate money in our elections, it may also be used to bailout former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from prison.

According to Reuters, DeLay is using the controversial Supreme Court ruling as a part of his appeal to overturn his three-year prison sentence for laundering corporate money through a series of accounts, including the Republican National Committee, to fund races for the Texas state legislature. It is illegal to raise money directly from corporations in Texas, even after Citizens United.

In a legal Texas two-step DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerrin both denies that DeLay committed a crime and claims the Court ruling would absolve him anyway, "The underlying crime was that corporate money was spent on political races in Texas and that’s not true ... However, the Supreme Court says that corporations have a right to participate in the political process and that’ll be part of our appeal.”

Texas' law banning corporate contributions, however, has not changed post-Citizens United. It is still intact because the Supreme Court did not invalidate the Tillman Act, a law passed in 1907 banning corporate contributions to candidates for election, on which the Texas law is based.

DeLay may be banking on the chance that the Supreme Court would want to further their push to loosen campaign finance laws and overturn the 100 year ban on direct corporate contributions. Based on the text of the Citizens United ruling, which upheld regulation of direct contributions to candidates because they were a vaild anti-corruption interest, this seems unlikely.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was just sentenced to three years in prison. DeLay was found guilty of laundering money and conspiracy in a scheme to influence the apportionment of congressional seats in his home state of Texas.

According to the Austin Statesman:

The three-year sentence was on the charge of conspiring to launder corporate money into political donations during the 2002 elections.

On the charge of money laundering, DeLay was sentenced to five years but that was probated for 10 years.

More to come soon.

Here's a post I wrote last month when DeLay was found guilty.

I've been trying to come up with something to say about the upcoming conclusion to the very long trial of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay is facing trial in Texas on charges of money laundering to aid in efforts to alter a Texas redistricting plan in the middle of the last decade. The indictment on felony charges came in early 2006, which was also around the time that the FBI was investigating DeLay for his connections to super-corrupt-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. While the investigation into DeLay's Abramoff ties was dropped, the Texas money laundering charges lingered until now.

DeLay and the whole Abramoff scandal hold a certain significance for me as I started working on congressional corruption and transparency issues back in late-2005. This was when the Abramoff, DeLay and Randy "Duke" Cunningham corruption scandals were all coming to a head. It was a special time to come into this field as there was a lot of action and a lot to learn. It isn't everyday that multiple members of Congress resign due to ethics concerns or imminent incarceration. I'd say that learning ethics rules and lobbying laws and the history around those issues is a lot easier when the its in the news every day.

It was also interesting to watch the end of a particularly corrupt era in congressional history. As we watch Charlie Rangel get censured next week it's worth looking back at the early- to mid-2000s. In one week, DeLay was admonished three times by the ethics committee. These penalties likely would have been far more severe if DeLay had chosen to not accept them and force a trial as Rangel did. DeLay subsequently tried to neuter the ethics committee by purging the Republican committee members who supported the admonishments and replacing them with Texas congressman who were dependent on support from the Majority Leader. Both Cunningham and Rep. Bob Ney would have been expelled had they not resigned prior to serving jail terms. DeLay was the most powerful member of Congress at the time, Cunningham ran the powerful Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and Ney was known as the Mayor of Capitol Hill. These weren't some back-bench losers.

If you have any doubts about how bad this period was there are any number of books that you could read. Peter Stone's Heist, Matt Continetti's K Street Gang and Lou Dubose and Jan Reid's The Hammer are just a few.

Now, it's not as if we're out of the stew altogether, but Congress has made some advancements to clean up their act. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 increased transparency in a whole host of areas including lobbying, legislating and earmarking and banned a lot of questionable practices including certain gifts to congressmen, types of private travel and certain fundraising practices. The bill also created the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which, despite battling with the ethics committee, trying to bring new accountability to Congress.

Sunlight has made a series of recommendations to the incoming House majority that can be viewed at our policy page. The implementation of all of these would go a long way to alleviating the problems in Congress that became so acute in the DeLay era, some of which continue today.

I ham-handedly tried to explain why Tom DeLay got off-the-hook yesterday when I stated that his ideology overlapped perfectly with the corrupt actions of former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. What I meant is that it was impossible to distinguish whether DeLay's positions, for example, on labor laws for the Marianas Islands, were influenced by the trips and dining he was provided by Abramoff--via money laundered through a nonprofit--or whether that position stemmed from his conservative belief in free markets with little to no regulation. Prosecutors couldn't figure it out and there was no evidence to go by except for DeLay's statement that he was simply following his ideological beliefs. The money spent on him held no sway over his ultimate decisions, he argued.

A similar argument can be made for lawmakers who receive campaign contributions from lobbyists and employees of firms who receive earmarks from said lawmakers. Take deceased Rep. John Murtha as an example. Murtha could repeatedly state that all that concerned him was getting jobs and infrastructure into his economically depressed district. Same goes for Rep. Don Young, former Sen. Ted Stevens and former Sen. Robert Byrd. All the campaign contributions they were getting didn't matter when they signed off on earmarks for their contributors because they were just looking for viable job-creating projects. You can't necessarily prove that anything illegal happened.

All of that brings us to the Op-Ed by author and lawyer Scott Turow in today's New York Times. Turow does the best job possible explaining the dysfunctional ways in which our legal system views and deals with campaign contributions. One person can be convicted of bribery for offering a $1,000 contribution in exchange for a vote while Rod Blagojevich walks free on a hung jury over charges that he held up funding for a children's hospital over campaign contributions and so on and so on.

Our legal system accepts that the transmission of campaign contributions in exchange for official acts is illegal bribery, yet it fails to properly police this practice. This is mainly due to the circumstances described above. How do you prove that a contribution was intended as a bribe when the action may have taken place despite the contribution? It's impossible. So you get a system where we scold people for the appearance of corruption or improper influence, but don't do anything about it. Take this example that Turow lays out:

For example, in June 2009, the court decided a case involving Massey Coal and its chief executive, Joe Blankenship. (Coincidentally, Massey was the operator of a coal mine in West Virginia that exploded in April, killing 29 miners.) In 2004, after Massey had lost a $50-million fraud verdict to a rival coal company, Mr. Blankenship spent $3 million supporting the successful candidacy of Brent Benjamin to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, where Massey’s challenge of the fraud verdict was going to be heard.

Although Mr. Blankenship’s spending eclipsed the contributions of all of Judge Benjamin’s other donors put together, the judge subsequently refused to remove himself from Massey’s appeal. Unsurprisingly, the court voted to overturn the verdict against Massey, with Judge Benjamin providing the deciding vote.

The case eventually came to the United States Supreme Court, which by a 5-to-4 vote decided Justice Benjamin should have recused himself because of the “disproportionate” influence Mr. Blankenship’s money had in the election. Nonetheless, the court pointedly refused to require the same from other judges who received less grandiose campaign assistance from lawyers and litigants with cases before them.

Moreover, the court appeared persuaded that nothing criminal had occurred, even though its ruling concluded that it was “reasonably foreseeable” at the time that Mr. Benjamin would decide the Massey case and that Mr. Blankenship had a “vested interest” when he spent the money. Given that logic, who can blame Mr. Blagojevich — or Wanda Brandstetter — for asking, “Why me?”

The court ruled that the judge was corrupted, but that no law had been broken. This is the sort of dysfunctional world of campaign funding that we live in.

Really, what is there to say? After a six-years the Department of Justice dropped their investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's connection to the Jack Abramoff scandal. There are a few things left to say:

1) It's really hard to convict someone whose ideological proclivities happen to overlap with the nefarious actions of Washington's former super-lobbyist Abramoff, who was also the target's close friend.

2) The laws written to punish official corrupt activity are very difficult to enforce. Gathering evidence is also incredibly difficult. Absent complete idiocy by the target--Jim Traficant, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, Michael Myers, William Jefferson--it is difficult to prove that corrupt activity took place.

3) The Public Integrity Unit at the Justice Department made some serious progress by obtaining convictions on corruption related charges of numerous targets, but they also completely screwed up along the way. The Ted Stevens charges were thrown out and the unit could never pin down either DeLay or John Doolittle. They also over played their hand by entering and seizing documents from William Jefferson's congressional office.

Chris Van Hollen, the House Democrat's campaign chief, recently stated that the upcoming ethics trials of Reps. Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters prove that the ethics process has been strengthened under the watch of the majority Democrats. I'm not so sure that that's the case.

If we take a walk back through time we'll see that the ethics committee was plenty busy in the nineties and even during the dark days of the early to mid aughts.

Over the course of ten years during the Republican majority, the committee issued five admonishments (three to Rep. Tom DeLay), two letters of reproval, one sanction and one expulsion. Of course, there were also numerous issues that the committee failed to cover including the Jack Abramoff scandal and the Duke Cunningham scandal.

What appears to make the recent spat of ethics flare-ups notable is that the members involved are refusing to accept a lesser punishment by publicly accepting guilt and responsibility. Both Rangel and Waters have clearly been offered deals to accept lesser penalties in lieu of a trial. In 2004, Tom DeLay accepted committee admonishments and never went to trial. It's clear that the what is operating differently at this stage of the ethics process is the obstinance of the lawmakers involved.

Despite that, there is one way that the ethics process has improved since 2006: the introduction of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The creation of OCE, a body created out of compromise in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, has enabled a less corruptible body to review ethics complaints with more freedom and less clubbiness than the traditional ethics committee. The Waters charges began as an OCE investigation and were referred to the ethics committee.

Certainly, this counts as an improvement that has happened under the watch of the Democrats. The fact that two lawmakers refused to accept deals for lesser punishments and are pushing for public trials, not so much.

If Van Hollen wants to take credit for something else he can also point out that the current majority has followed a simple dictat: do no harm. The majority Democrats have not yet struck out to dismantle or neuter the ethics process, particularly OCE, despite pressure coming from both sides of the aisle.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Republican Minority Leader John Boehner have both been critical of the indepedent ethics office. If lawmakers want to truly maintain and expand upon a more just and credible ethics process they need to retain OCE as it is or increase it's authority.

In 2005, after Majority Leader DeLay received three admonishments from the committee he moved to purge the committee of its members and change the way in which the committee ran investigations. The move was widely panned and the majority Republicans would have to walk back the changes in the coming months.

Neither the Democrats, if they retain the majority, nor the Republicans, if they win back control, should move to dismantle the ethics process by reducing the role of the independent OCE. The rhetoric coming from the CBC and Minority Leader Boehner are not encouraging. Hopefully they won't follow DeLay's lead and neuter the ethics process again.

I've included a quick summary of actions taken by the ethics committeesince 1996 below:

• 1996: The ethics committee dismissed charges that Rep. Tom DeLay linked campaign contributions to his official actions and made improper favors to his brother, a lobbyist. The ethics committee also sanctioned Rep. Bud Shuster for serious official misconduct in dealings with his former chief-of-staff turned lobbyist.
• 1997: The committee gave Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich a letter of reproval for violating tax laws and providing false information to the committee. The committee also fined Gingrich $300,000, the largest fined issued by the committee in it's history. Later in the year the committee brought a six-count Statement of Alleged Violations against Rep. Jay Kim after he plead guilty to three misdemeanor charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions. The charges were dropped as Kim had lost his primary and the committee no longer held jurisdiction.
• 1999: The committee dismissed charges against Rep. Corrine Brown, but stated that the congresswoman had used "poor judgment." Rep. Earl Hilliard received a letter of reproval after a three-count Statement of Alleged Violations was brought against him for making improper loans to his campaign committee, failing to properly file financial disclose forms and making payments from his campaign to nonprofits and companies connected to him.
• 2001: The committee voted to expel Rep. Jim Traficant after he was found guily of bribery, racketeering, tax evasion and many other laws. The full House of Representatives voted to expel Traficant in 2002. The committee also dismissed claims against Rep. Steve Buyer.
• 2004: The committee admonished three members, Reps. Tom DeLay, Candice Miller and Nick Smith, for their actions during the vote on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act. DeLay also received two separate admonishments for other violations of laws and House ethics rules.
• 2006: The committee dismissed complaints against Jeffrey Shockey, the deputy chief of staff to Rep. Jerry Lewis. Rep. John Conyers was scolded by the committee for letting his congressional staff do campaign work. The committee also settled a long-running dispute by ruling that Rep. Jim McDermott had violated the spirit of the House by leaking information related to the ethics investigation of then-Speaker Gingrich to the press.
• 2007: Former Reps. Tom Feeney and Curt Weldon were ordered to pay for travel that they accepted in violation of House rules. Feeney agreed to pay, but it is unclear whether the committee has jurisdiction to force Weldon to pay.
• 2010: The committee brought a thirteen-count Statement of Alleged Violations against Rep. Charlie Rangel for a variety of violations of House rules. That case will be adjudicated. The committee brought a State of Alleged Violations against Rep. Maxine Waters, who will also take the case to the adjudication phase. Rangel was also admonished separately for accepting corporate paid travel. The committee also cleared the following members on a variety of charges: Reps. Pete Stark, Pete Visclosky, Bill Young, Norm Dicks, John Murtha, Marcy Kaptur, Todd Tiahrt, James Moran, Bennie Thompson, Yvette Clarke, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick and Del. Donna Christensen.

The Justice Department unsealed a ten-count indictment today against Kevin Ring, a lobbyist and former staffer to Rep. John Doolittle, in the on-going Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. According to a Department of Justice statement, Ring is charged "with conspiring with Abramoff and others to corrupt congressional and executive-branch officials by providing things of value to several public officials to induce or reward those who took official actions benefiting Ring and his clients."

The statement also includes two unnamed congressmen, Representative 4 and Representative 5. Ring is alleged to have engaged in illegal conduct with the chief of staff to Representative 4, who is not identified as being either a current or former member of Congress. Previous indictments identify Representative 4 as former Rep. Ernie Istook. His chief of staff pleaded guilty earlier this year.

Representative 5, while not appearing in previous indictments, is readily identifiable. Ring is alleged to have lied about his knowledge of employment opportunities provided to the wife of Representative 5 by Abramoff. Only one sitting member of Congress fits this bill, and that is Ring's former boss, Rep. John Doolittle.

One line in the statement possibly explains where this investigation is going next:

Ring and his coconspirators allegedly understood that the public officials to whom they provided things of value were failing to report those gifts as required and were filling out false financial disclosure forms, because to fill out the forms truthfully would reveal that they had accepted gifts in violation of ethical rules and federal law.

Looks as though investigators are going the Ted Stevens route in pursuing Tom DeLay (Representative 2), Tom Feeney (Representative 3), Ernie Istook (Representative 4), and John Doolittle (Representative 5).

Sen. Kent Conrad's mea culpa; 2008 Beijing Olympics received a helping hand from the Hammer; and Rep. James Clyburn's family friendly earmarks.

Kent Conrad sought to assuage critics as more information was revealed about preferential loans he and Sen. Chris Dodd received from Countrywide Financial. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Conrad, after receiving Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo's phone number from ex-Veep vetter Jim Johnson, called Mozilo to directly ask for a loan. How could you not expect preferential treatment when your loan officer is the CEO? In response to the continued criticism and coverage, Conrad declared that he would refinance his loan and donate the estimated amount he saved - $10,500 - to Habitat for Humanity. Conrad has also called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate both his and Sen. Dodd's mortgages.

In 2001, Tom DeLay was at the height of power in Republican politics, cutting deals with energy interests, Jack Abramoff, and countless others. DeLay also happened to work with a major Republican contributor in his dealings with the popular conservative bugaboo of 2001: China. During court proceedings into Republican contributor Sheldon Adelson's bid to build casinos in Macau, the billionaire casino mogul revealed that he personally called up then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay to ask him to kill a House measure opposing the awarding of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing as it would help him secure Chinese support for his business venture. DeLay, a cosponsor of the anti-Beijing resolution, consulted with other Republican leaders before telling Adelson he needn't worry about the measure. Days before the International Olympic Committee was to vote on the host city for the 2008 Olympics, the measure disappeared from the House agenda. Adelson subsequently won support from the Chinese government, which intervened to help his bid in Macau at least twice, and Beijing won the 2008 Olympics.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina is found to be earmarking money to projects that employ at least four of his family members and to other projects run by or employing former staffers.

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