Friday, August 15, 2014

Texas governor Rick Perry indicted - faces sentence of five to 99 years




AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was indicted on two felony counts on Friday by a state grand jury examining his handling of a local district attorney’s drunken driving arrest and the state financing for a public corruption unit under the lawyer’s control.

The indictment was returned late Friday in Austin.

The investigation centered on Mr. Perry’s veto power as governor. His critics asserted that he used that power as leverage to try to get an elected official and influential Democrat — Rosemary Lehmberg, the district attorney in Travis County — to step down after her arrest for drunken driving last year. Ms. Lehmberg is Austin’s top prosecutor and oversees a powerful public corruption unit that investigates state, local and federal officials; its work led to the 2005 indictment of a former Republican congressman, Tom DeLay on charges of violating campaign finance laws.

Following Ms. Lehmberg’s arrest, Mr. Perry and his aides threatened to veto $7.5 million in state dollars for the public corruption unit in her office unless she resigned. The governor followed through on his threat, vetoing the money by stating that he could not support “continued state funding for an office with statewide jurisdiction at a time when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”
 

2 comments:

  1. Has Rick Perry done anything amounting to abuse of power?
    By asking a person who'd been arrested for drunk driving to step down? And by resorting to other means to force her to step down?
    That may well be, but what are we to say of practically ALL cops in the country?
    What are we to say of most judges?
    What are we to say of that queer-looking jerk golfing and shitting in the White House?

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  2. If Perry went after her for political reasons, he deserves to get prosecuted.

    But pressuring an official who is heading up a unit on public integrity to resign because of a DUI conviction is pretty logical. If she refused to step down than spending more money on her unit would be a waste of funds. He was not trying to cover anything up. Let the grand jury do its work, the case shows the system is working as it should.

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