AP: Republican Party Leaders Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt Laundered Each Other’s Funny Money

We’ve just covered who the new Republican Majority Leader, Roy Blunt, is in a legislative sense. But a man can also be judged by the company he keeps.

On that score, oh, well, dearie me. According to the Associated Press, it looks as though former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and current Republican House Majority Leader Roy Blunt helped each other with the wash, so to speak:

DeLay, Successor Blunt Swapped Donations Between Secretive Groups Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men’s causes. When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay’s private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay’s wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt’s son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture. The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state candidates. The government’s former chief election enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money was concealed. “These people clearly like using middlemen for their transactions,” said Lawrence Noble. “It seems to be a pattern with DeLay funneling money to different groups, at least to obscure, if not cover, the original source,” said Noble, who was the Federal Election Commission’s chief lawyer for 13 years, including in 2000 when the transactions occurred. Blunt and DeLay planned all along to raise more money than was needed for the convention parties and then route some of that to other causes, such as supporting state candidates, said longtime Blunt aide Gregg Hartley. The fact that DeLay’s charity, Christine DeLay’s consulting firm and Blunt’s son were beneficiaries was a coincidence, Hartley said. Noble said investigators should examine whether the pattern of disguising the original source of money might have been an effort to hide the leaders’ simultaneous financial and legislative dealings with Abramoff and his clients. “You see Abramoff involved and see the meetings that were held and one gets the sense Abramoff is helping this along in order to get access and push his clients’ interest,” he said. “And at the same time, you see Delay and Blunt trying to hide the root of their funding. “All of these transactions may have strings attached to them. … I think you would want to look, if you aren’t already looking, at the question of a quid pro quo,” Noble said. Both groups, DeLay’s and Blunt’s, were simultaneously paying Ellis, the longtime DeLay fundraiser who was indicted along with his boss in Texas in the alleged money laundering scheme.

In a rarish move, the Associated Press has made easily available the primary source documents they used to prepare their report, at http://wid.ap.org/documents/delay/index.html. They’re worth a read.

So, what comes next?