Burnt Orange: "Why did the Tom DeLay investigation stop"....

[madfloridian]

and I add my question from last week: Why did Tom Delay tell Meredith Viera on the Today Show that all charges had been dropped? Lots of whys.

From a great Texas blog:

Why did the Tom DeLay investigation stop? Or, there is more than one way to skin a US attorney

In the fall of 2005 dominos were falling fast in the Jack Abramoff investigation. And they were falling in one very clear direction, closer and closer to Tom DeLay.

First DeLay's former communications director fell

On November 21st, 2005, Michael Scanlon, Jack Abramoff's partner in the Indian fraud and bribery schemes, pled guilty to Conspiracy to Defraud the United States.

Then DeLay's deputy chief of staff fell.

Then it looked like his Chief of staff would be next.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/grandolddocket.php#buckham

Ed Buckham, one-time chief of staff to Tom DeLay and later Chairman of the lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group, appeared in Tony Rudy's guilty plea as "Lobbyist B."

According to the plea, Buckham helped in routing $50,000 in payments to Rudy's wife's consulting firm - the money was to bribe Rudy for his help defeating a bill on behalf of Jack Abramoff's client. The plea also states that Rudy worked to bring other congressional aides on a trip to the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) in part to benefit Buckham. The CNMI was a client of Abramoff's, but he seems to have shared the CNMI with Buckham.

But after Buckham shut down his business in 06, something else happened.

A registered lobbyist opened a retirement account in the late 1990s for the wife of then-House Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and contributed thousands of dollars to it while also paying her a salary to work for him from her home in Texas, according to sources, documents and DeLay's attorney, Richard Cullen. The account represents a small portion of the income that DeLay's family received from entities at least partly controlled by lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham. But the disclosure of its origin adds to what was previously known about the benefits DeLay's family received from its association with Buckham, and it brings the total over the past seven years to about half a million dollars.

There is much more at that Burnt Orange page. But this part just leaves it all wide open.

...something very fishy did indeed take place. The lead investigator was given a Federal Judgeship, a new division chief with connections to the GOP machine was appointed (AND REPORTEDLY, TO THE DELAY DEFENSE TEAM ITSELF) and presto...no more momentum in the investigation.

And Tom DeLay went on the Today Show to pump his book sales. He told Meridith Viera that all the charges had been dropped against him. She did not question that statement. Here is a link to what I wrote and a video from the interview. I think Tom DeLay just got away with a whole lot of stuff.

DeLay says all charges dropped, no one questioned it.