On Sean Hannity’s radio show Thursday, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay reacted after a Texas Court of Appeals threw out his 2010 conviction of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
DeLay noted the “off-base” charges and the change of venue intended to make the path to a conviction more likely.
“First of all, they wrote in the ruling that I should have never been charged in the first place — that the law doesn’t even apply in this case,” DeLay said. “And even if it did apply, the prosecution in no way did they look at the preponderance of the evidence [and] prove their case at all. They also went after the judge, who was awful. His charge to the jury was totally off-base, and frankly, they didn’t say it, but totally political. I wasn’t even tried in my home county.”
“I was tried in the ‘people’s republic of Austin, Texas,’” DeLay continued. “There is no jury pool that they could ever put together that would like Tom DeLay at all and then they didn’t have to put on a case. This is so unusual that I wasn’t just remanded to another trial, but I was acquitted by an appeals court overturning a jury, which is hardly ever done by an appeals court. And if you read it, none of it was done on technicalities.”
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Also in the appearance, DeLay stopped short of offering members of the House advice on how to proceed with their current continuing resolution fight and whether or not to take it as far as defunding Obamacare. But he did say that based on his observations, House Speaker John Boehner’s announcement that he would take on that fight had energized the Republicans and the conservative movement.