Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay temporarily resigned his leadership post Wednesday and demanded a quick trial on charges that he conspired to violate election laws barring the use of corporate money in Texas campaigns.

The moves came in response to a Travis County grand jury indicting DeLay and reindicting two associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington, on state felony charges of criminal conspiracy. Wednesday's indictment said the three agreed to violate state law in 2002 by giving $190,000 of corporate donations to the Republican National Committee, which, in turn, donated the same amount in noncorporate money to seven Texas candidates.

If convicted, DeLay could get two years in jail.

The Sugar Land Republican, already locked in a re-election battle and facing ethics questions in Washington, said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, was paying him back for helping elect a Republican majority to the Texas Legislature in 2002 and for urging the creation of new congressional districts that favored Republicans and split Austin three ways.

DeLay on Wednesday also unveiled a new member of his defense team, Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin, who scuttled Earle's 1994 prosecution of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. She had been charged with using her state office and employees for political purposes and covering up the evidence but was not convicted.

DeGuerin appeared to relish a rematch, comparing legal problems of the two high-profile Republicans by quoting Yogi Berra.

"It's déjà vu all over again," DeGuerin said. "That was a political prosecution, and this is a political prosecution."

Earle dismissed allegations that the investigation is politically motivated: "I don't know what else they would say."

The grand jury, whose term ended Wednesday, took no action against other notables mentioned during the three years Earle investigated the alleged misuse of corporate money by Republicans in the 2002 elections: Texas Speaker Tom Craddick, Texas Association of Business President Bill Hammond and state legislators who served with DeLay on the board of his political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority.

Although Earle insisted that the investigation is continuing, most lawyers involved in the case thought Wednesday's action would be the last unless new evidence surfaced in the next couple of weeks.

In Washington, DeLay insisted he was innocent.

"This act is the product of a coordinated, premeditated campaign of political retribution, the all-too-predictable result of a vengeful investigation led by a partisan fanatic," DeLay said of Earle.

"I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House," DeLay said. He called the indictment "a sham," adding, "And Earle knows it."

DeGuerin said DeLay would seek a trial before the end of the year in hopes of being renamed the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. House GOP rules forced DeLay to resign his leadership position while he fights the charges.

DeGuerin accused Earle of trying to destroy DeLay's political career.

"Tom DeLay changed the face of Texas politics. Nobody can deny that," DeGuerin said. "But Ronnie Earle wants to destroy him because of it."

How it all began

The saga that led to Wednesday's indictment began in the fall of 2001, when DeLay, Ellis and Colyandro created Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee designed to help elect Republicans to the Texas Legislature. When they had trouble raising donations, they hired another DeLay associate, corporate fundraiser Warren Robold, who solicited $600,000 in corporate donations, mostly from Washington lobbyists.

That money was spent on consultants, pollsters, phone banks and professional fundraisers trying to raise donations for Texas candidates.

In March, state District Judge Joe Hart ruled in a civil lawsuit that Texans for a Republican Majority violated the state ban against spending corporate money in connection with a campaign. Hart's decision is the only judicial ruling so far on the 100-year-old ban on corporate money in this case.

Over the past year, Travis County grand jurors have indicted Ellis and Colyandro on charges ranging from a first-degree felony of money-laundering to Wednesday's lesser felony charge of conspiracy. Also indicted were Robold, eight corporate donors and two organizations: Texans for a Republican Majority and the Texas Association of Business. Several civil lawsuits also have been filed.

Lawyers representing the Republicans have argued that the corporate ban is vague and unconstitutional. They also defend the corporate expenditures as legal — either because they were for issue-related ads or committee overhead and thus not related directly to a campaign or to endorsing specific candidates.

Millions of dollars of fines and damages — as well as possible jail time for the individuals — are at stake in Texas' biggest political investigation since the Sharpstown banking scandal of the 1970s, which resulted in the conviction of a House speaker and one of the largest turnovers in the membership of the Texas Legislature.

Burden of proof lighter

DeLay had appeared to escape criminal scrutiny as early as last year, when Travis County prosecutors concluded that they did not have the jurisdiction to pursue election-code violations against him. Under the law, only DeLay's local district attorney in the Houston area, a Republican, had jurisdiction, and he expressed no interest in investigating the case.

But a conspiracy charge falls under the criminal code, not the election statute that bans corporate money from being spent on a campaign. And Earle has the jurisdiction to prosecute DeLay on a charge of conspiring with others to circumvent state law.

Filing conspiracy charges is generally to the prosecutor's advantage, said George Dix, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in criminal law.

The burden of proof can be easier to meet — showing that a defendant agreed to criminal activity instead of proving "the elements of a crime, set out 1-2-3," Dix said.

"There is less likely to be problems of technical proofs, of showing the technical requirements of a crime."

The rules of evidence are looser as well. Normally, a statement is admissible in trial only if uttered by the defendant, in this case DeLay. But in a conspiracy trial, statements by anybody declared a co-conspirator may be introduced, Dix said.

"It's possible something Ellis said out of court might be used not only against him but Mr. DeLay," Dix said. "There is one exception to the hearsay rule: for statements made by co-conspirators."

DeGuerin said the indictment is vague because there is no crime.

"There is no conspiracy. Just because people agree doesn't make it a crime," DeGuerin said. "There has to be an agreement to violate the law. There was no agreement to violate the law."

He also said that the $190,000 transaction with the Republican National Committee was legal, that such things are done all the time and that DeLay didn't know about it until after it happened.

The indictment included few details about what role prosecutors think DeLay played in any conspiracy, and Earle declined to answer questions about the evidence the grand jury considered because those considerations are, by law, secret.

DeGuerin said he was unsure how soon DeLay would be arraigned on the felony charge.

"What I'm trying to avoid is having Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs and fingerprinted and photographed," he said. "That's uncalled for, and I don't think that's going to happen."

The grand jury's foreman, William Gibson, told The Associated Press that Earle didn't pressure jurors to indict DeLay: "Ronnie Earle didn't indict him. The grand jury indicted him."

Gibson, 76, a retired sheriff's deputy, said of DeLay: "He's probably doing a good job. I don't have anything against him. Just something happened."