Friday, September 30, 2005
How Ronnie Earle Works
National Review Online has several interesting accounts of this Texas Democratic Party operative's modus operandi. Read them all or you're not doing your homework.
Byron York
DELAY'S PROSECUTORS OFFERED DOLLARS FOR DISMISSALS
How Ronnie Earle works.
Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor who has indicted associates of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in an ongoing campaign-finance investigation, dropped felony charges against several corporations indicted in the probe in return for the corporations' agreement to make five- and six-figure contributions to one of Earle's pet causes.
A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, last September indicted eight corporations in connection with the DeLay investigation. All were charged with making illegal contributions (Texas law forbids corporate giving to political campaigns). Since then, however, Earle has agreed to dismiss charges against four of the companies — retail giant Sears, the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel, the Internet company Questerra, and the collection company Diversified Collection Services — after the companies pledged to contribute to a program designed to publicize Earle's belief that corporate involvement in politics is harmful to American democracy.
Some legal observers called the arrangement an unusual resolution to a criminal case, at least in Texas, where the matter is being prosecuted. "I don't think you're going to find anybody who will say it's a common practice," says Jack Strickland, a Fort Worth lawyer who serves as vice-chairman of the criminal-justice section of the Texas State Bar.
Byron York
COMING SOON: THE RONNIE EARLE MOVIE
The DeLay prosecutor has let a film crew follow him through the whole case.
[Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie] Earle "allowed us behind the scenes when the indictments came down last year, the first wave of indictments," Schermbeck says. "We got to follow him back to his home a couple of times, which I understand he doesn't allow anybody to do." Schermbeck says the film includes interviews with some critics of Earle, as well as lawyers who are representing some of the targets of the investigation.
So far, The Big Buy has received almost no attention in the press. With DeLay's indictment, and increased attention to Earle as well, that situation seems likely to change. (The filmmakers say they will be back at work next week, filming a new ending to the picture.) "We're pretty low on everybody's radar," Schermbeck says. "We kind of took a gamble three years ago. We didn't know what was going to happen. We feel like, as documentary filmmakers, we gambled and it paid off."
Stephen Spruiell
THE INDICTMENT WAS EARLE'S FINISH LINE
[CNN uberhound Wolf] BLITZER: Under Texas law, a prosecutor does not have to release the evidence that he or she has in the indictment, and there is no evidence in this indictment that specifically backs up the claim that this prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, is making. Have your attorneys, though, in conversations with him, or have you directly in conversations with Ronnie Earle — you met with him in August — been told what evidence they may or may not have?
[Texas Congressman and House Majority Leader Tom] DELAY: Absolutely not. They don’t have any evidence. All they wanted to do is indict me so that I would have to step aside as Majority Leader — temporarily. That’s the only reason I got indicted. If the Republican Conference did not have that rule, I would not have been indicted. All they cared about was getting this indictment. They don’t care about the case later.
Andrew C. McCarthy
RE: BYRON’S STUNNING NEW PIECE … [Andy McCarthy]
Remember all those allegations – the ones the media relentlessly reported during the Clinton scandals – about how Judge Starr’s investigation was purportedly leaking secret grand jury information to the media? Remember all those spinmeisters who made the cable TV rounds and claimed this showed Starr was destroying the presumption of innocence and shredding the Constitution – and was thus far more dangerous to the country than a president who might be obstructing justice and committing perjury?
I wonder what they would have said if it turned out Starr had had a camera crew filming the secret grand jury investigation.
I wonder if the MSM and the talking heads will remember what they used to think.
David Frum
BONUS: David Frum on several matters, including Canada's new Governor-general who, in her swearing-in speech, said:
"I know that our planet is fragile, and that natural disasters like the one that recently assailed our American neighbours are a brutal reminder of that fragility. And we have seen so many lose their possessions. And as is universally the case in such circumstances, we have seen emerge entire segments of a population, among the most destitute, men and women who had nowhere to go. Dispossessed, with no points of reference, facing sheer devastation, even utter dismay. Such images we have seen before – from Darfur, from Haiti, from Niger. And this time they came from New Orleans, from the margins of an affluent society."
Answers Frum, "Except of course that the New Orleans evacuees will benefit from some $200,000 in federal spending per person and are not being hacked to death by enraged jihadists."
Oh, David.
Byron York
DELAY'S PROSECUTORS OFFERED DOLLARS FOR DISMISSALS
How Ronnie Earle works.
Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor who has indicted associates of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in an ongoing campaign-finance investigation, dropped felony charges against several corporations indicted in the probe in return for the corporations' agreement to make five- and six-figure contributions to one of Earle's pet causes.
A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, last September indicted eight corporations in connection with the DeLay investigation. All were charged with making illegal contributions (Texas law forbids corporate giving to political campaigns). Since then, however, Earle has agreed to dismiss charges against four of the companies — retail giant Sears, the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel, the Internet company Questerra, and the collection company Diversified Collection Services — after the companies pledged to contribute to a program designed to publicize Earle's belief that corporate involvement in politics is harmful to American democracy.
Some legal observers called the arrangement an unusual resolution to a criminal case, at least in Texas, where the matter is being prosecuted. "I don't think you're going to find anybody who will say it's a common practice," says Jack Strickland, a Fort Worth lawyer who serves as vice-chairman of the criminal-justice section of the Texas State Bar.
Byron York
COMING SOON: THE RONNIE EARLE MOVIE
The DeLay prosecutor has let a film crew follow him through the whole case.
[Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie] Earle "allowed us behind the scenes when the indictments came down last year, the first wave of indictments," Schermbeck says. "We got to follow him back to his home a couple of times, which I understand he doesn't allow anybody to do." Schermbeck says the film includes interviews with some critics of Earle, as well as lawyers who are representing some of the targets of the investigation.
So far, The Big Buy has received almost no attention in the press. With DeLay's indictment, and increased attention to Earle as well, that situation seems likely to change. (The filmmakers say they will be back at work next week, filming a new ending to the picture.) "We're pretty low on everybody's radar," Schermbeck says. "We kind of took a gamble three years ago. We didn't know what was going to happen. We feel like, as documentary filmmakers, we gambled and it paid off."
Stephen Spruiell
THE INDICTMENT WAS EARLE'S FINISH LINE
[CNN uberhound Wolf] BLITZER: Under Texas law, a prosecutor does not have to release the evidence that he or she has in the indictment, and there is no evidence in this indictment that specifically backs up the claim that this prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, is making. Have your attorneys, though, in conversations with him, or have you directly in conversations with Ronnie Earle — you met with him in August — been told what evidence they may or may not have?
[Texas Congressman and House Majority Leader Tom] DELAY: Absolutely not. They don’t have any evidence. All they wanted to do is indict me so that I would have to step aside as Majority Leader — temporarily. That’s the only reason I got indicted. If the Republican Conference did not have that rule, I would not have been indicted. All they cared about was getting this indictment. They don’t care about the case later.
Andrew C. McCarthy
RE: BYRON’S STUNNING NEW PIECE … [Andy McCarthy]
Remember all those allegations – the ones the media relentlessly reported during the Clinton scandals – about how Judge Starr’s investigation was purportedly leaking secret grand jury information to the media? Remember all those spinmeisters who made the cable TV rounds and claimed this showed Starr was destroying the presumption of innocence and shredding the Constitution – and was thus far more dangerous to the country than a president who might be obstructing justice and committing perjury?
I wonder what they would have said if it turned out Starr had had a camera crew filming the secret grand jury investigation.
I wonder if the MSM and the talking heads will remember what they used to think.
David Frum
BONUS: David Frum on several matters, including Canada's new Governor-general who, in her swearing-in speech, said:
"I know that our planet is fragile, and that natural disasters like the one that recently assailed our American neighbours are a brutal reminder of that fragility. And we have seen so many lose their possessions. And as is universally the case in such circumstances, we have seen emerge entire segments of a population, among the most destitute, men and women who had nowhere to go. Dispossessed, with no points of reference, facing sheer devastation, even utter dismay. Such images we have seen before – from Darfur, from Haiti, from Niger. And this time they came from New Orleans, from the margins of an affluent society."
Answers Frum, "Except of course that the New Orleans evacuees will benefit from some $200,000 in federal spending per person and are not being hacked to death by enraged jihadists."
Oh, David.
