Show us the Money
By Karl-Thomas Musselman
From a reader... -kt
Today we are treated to yet another inane Washington Post story claiming that Tom DeLay's legal defense fund is "bulging" with money.
What is the basis for this claim? Tom DeLay's spokesman, apparently.
Fortunately, every single quarterly report filed by the Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust is posted on the Internet at Political Money Line.
If you look up each report and do simple addition, you will find that yes, indeed, the Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust has taken in $1.4 million ($1,438,000 to round it to the nearest thousand) since it was established in 2000. But It has also paid $1.6 million ($1,612,000 to round it to the nearest thousand) in expenses. In other words, according to its publicly available records, the Tom DeLay Legal Defense Trust is broke!
How is this possible? The Trust doesn't have to report contributions of less than $200, so its likely that the Trust has raised a significant amount of money in small contributions. There is no reason to believe, however, that the trust is bulging in extra cash. Indeed, the Houston Chronicle recently reported that the trust owes DeLay's principal law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, between $100,000 and $250,000.
And keep in mind that DeLay now has four law firms on the payroll and, according to the most recent report, is racking up over $100,000 a month in legal fees. So please, let's stop this nonsense about reporting DeLay's "bulging" legal defense fund.
And why doesn't someone ask Brent Perry (1) what is the current cash balance in the fund? and (2) how much does the fund have in outstanding debt?
Posted by Karl-Thomas Musselman at November 6, 2005 08:32 PM
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