They Smelled a Rat

The state began its case with testimony from two witness who, in 2003, filed independent complaints with the Travis County DA (at that time, Ronale Dale Earle) regarding suspicious activity on the part of TRMPAC.

Ronald Earle, more commonly known as "Ronnie", resigned from office in Jan '09 after 33 years of service. In the past, DeLay has described Earle as a "runaway district attorney with a long history of being vindictive and partisan." This writer finds it interesting that the two men share the same middle name.

The first witness, Craig McDonald, is Director of Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based non-profit that researches and advocates issues relating to political corruption and corporate abuses in Texas. He testified that his office had detected discrepancies in reports detailing TRMPAC contributions and expenses that the organization had filed with the IRS and the Texas Ethics Commission in 2001-02. Their analysis concluded that some corporate contributions had been hidden, and those funds had likely been used by TRMPAC for expenses above and beyond the PAC's administrative costs.

At recess, after the prosecution's direct examination of McDonald, an unidentified associate of the defense team was overheard telling another that DeGuerin would be tearing McDonald apart during his cross-examination.

DeGuerin began by chipping away at McDonald's claim that Texans for Public Justice is truly a non-partisan organization. He spent some time dissecting an itemized list of topic labels found on their website (www.tpj.org), noting that the politicians with the highest number of associated stories seemed to be Republicans. He added that Tom Delay/TRMPAC had twice as many links as the second nearest entity.

De Guerin also pointed out that the IRS and the Texas Ethics Commission have different standards for reporting contributions and expenses, which could explain the discrepancies in TRMPAC's filings — but then neglected to backup his theory with any evidence.

During its redirect examination of McDonald, the prosecution pointed out that Texas currently has a Republican Governor, two Republican U.S. Senators, and 20 Republican U.S. Representatives (of a total of 32), and also noted that Congressman DeLay's political career had spanned nearly 30 years. McDonald confirmed it would only make sense this his organization had conducted more research on Republicans than it had on Democrats.

Contrary to what had been overheard earlier during recess, the witness left the courtroom intact. DeGuerin took the opportunity to ask for a mistrial because the witness had imposed his personal opinions on the jury during testimony. Priest denied his request.

The second witness, attorney and independent political watchdog Fred Lewis, also based in Austin, testified that in 2002 he noticed several similarities in the content and issues contained in direct mail materials he'd received from two different sources. One came from the Texas Association of Business, and the other from TRMPAC endorsed candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, Todd Baxter. His research also indicated that TRMPAC had spent corporate donations on polling, voting lists, and political consultants — items considered by many to be above and beyond typical administrative costs.

DeGuerin again requested a mistrial after Lewis's testimony, using the same rationale as before. Priest denied his request.