http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/politics/09delay.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1110344961-0DBq9EFsE9yOg9oBVH5YqAMarch 9, 2005
Actions by Delay Cited in Lawsuit
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, March 8 - Documents subpoenaed from an indicted fund-raiser for Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, suggest that Mr. DeLay was more actively involved than previously known in gathering corporate donations for a political committee that is the focus of a grand-jury investigation in Texas, his home state. The documents, which were entered into evidence last week in a related civil trial in Austin, the state capital, suggest that Mr. DeLay personally forwarded at least one large corporate check to the committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and that he was in direct contact with lobbyists for some of the nation's largest companies on the committee's behalf.
In an August 2002 document subpoenaed from the files of the indicted fund-raiser, Warren M. RoBold, Mr. RoBold asked for a list of 10 major donors to the committee, saying, "I would then decide from response who Tom DeLay" and others should call to help the committee in seeking a "large contribution." Another document is a printout of a July 2002 e-mail message to Mr. RoBold from a political ally of Mr. Delay, requesting a list of corporate lobbyists who would attend a fund-raising event for the committee, adding that "DeLay will want to see a list of attendees" and that the list should be available "on the ground in Austin for T.D. upon his arrival."
Under Texas law, corporations are barred from donating money to state political candidates. The Texas committee acknowledged receiving large corporate donations during the 2002 campaign but always insisted that the money was used for administrative costs, which is legal. A spokesman for Mr. DeLay, Dan Allen, said that there was nothing in the documents to suggest any impropriety by the majority leader and that Mr. DeLay's role as an adviser and fund-raiser for Texans for a Republican Majority was well known. "His being on the advisory board is a well-established fact," Mr. Allen said. "There are partisans out there who are trying to stretch the role of what he did with Trmpac," he added, using an acronym for the political action committee.
Mr. DeLay, who as majority leader is the second-most-powerful Republican in the House and who is considered his party's most aggressive fund-raiser in Congress, has said that he is not concerned about the grand jury investigation in Travis County, Tex., which includes most of Austin, and has told friends that he had no involvement in the day-to-day fund-raising operations of Texans for a Republican Majority. Last September, the grand jury indicted two men close to Mr. DeLay: Mr. RoBold, a major fund-raiser for the Texas committee and for Mr. DeLay's national political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority; and James W. Ellis, the national committee's director and one of Mr. DeLay's closest political operatives. The Texas committee's executive director, John Colyandro, was also indicted.
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