Amidst all the public theater of DeLay’s pending resignation yesterday, it was easy to lose track of the maneuvering by prosecutors and DeLay that’s been informing it all.
Look at the predicament that DeLay is in. On Friday, one of his former aides, Tony Rudy, pled guilty to accepting bribes while working in his office. Rudy also pointed the finger at Ed Buckham, DeLay’s former chief of staff and man on K Street, increasing the likelihood that Buckham will go down too (DeLay certainly seems to think so). As we’ve said before, Buckham is key. If the Justice Department were eventually bring DeLay up on charges, Buckham would be their star witness.
If Delay were backed into a corner, what could he do?
Both of DeLay’s former aides who’ve pled guilty – Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon – have received lighter sentences for helping the Justice Department build cases against bigger fish. Michael Scanlon gave prosecutors Jack Abramoff and Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). Tony Rudy offered more on Ney and fingered Buckham. Ed Buckham, were he to plead guilty, would be their star witness against DeLay. But DeLay…
We asked Jeffrey Toobin about this, who in addition to covering high-profile cases for the New Yorker, is a former prosecutor. âThe risk for Delay is that heâs at the top of the pyramid,” he said. If he is, he has no leverage, and prosecutors have no reason to temper their case against him.
All signs are that prosecutors are heading full speed at DeLay. This is evident from the facts in Rudy’s guilty plea.
Officially, the “Information” or the “Factual Proffer” that prosecutors include with a guilty plea is just there to show the judge the basis for the charges the defendant has pled guilty to. It’s the bare facts. It’s really a formality and by no means an exhaustive rundown of everything the defendant has told prosecutors. But that’s not all prosecutors use it for.
“Unofficially,” Toobin said, prosecutors use the facts included “to persuade people that they’re making progress, to show which direction your investigation is going.” Seen in such a way, Rudy’s plea was a shot across the bow aimed at Buckham and by extension, DeLay, who made an appearance in the plea as “Representative #2.”
For all of his posturing and lying (“I am not a target of this investigation. Abramoff has nothing to do with me.”), DeLay has clearly gotten the message. He’s been contemplating dropping out for months, yet bided his time in order to convert his campaign money into a legal defense war chest. His lawyers turned over 1,000 emails to prosecutors late last year in an apparent effort to appease them. And now he seems set to hunker down into the CEO (a.k.a. “ignorance”) defense – where he was the supervisor of “hundreds of people” who shouldn’t be held accountable for the private, secret actions of a few bad apples.
We’ll see. If he survives Texas Prosecutor Ronnie Earle’s money laundering case – the trial is likely to take place sometime in the late summer – it seems like he’ll be in for a long fight with federal prosecutors.