What about Rick Harrison (R) and Terry McEachern (R)? They were convicted for DUI, and Rick Perry didn’t try to oust them.
Which agency’s funding did Rick Perry control in order to put pressure on those two?
well, there’s this one:
http://www.mccrumlegal.com/
Yes, so let me elaborate . . . Clearly the law was meant to stop CORRUPTION. Using your public position to enrich yourself or friends and family. I don’t think forcing a public official to resign for misconduct applies.
Well Perry didn’t have the same tool to coerce them as he did Lehmberg. He didn’t defund Lehmberg’s entire office. Only that special unit she ran.
Even if it’s an elected official whom he has no authority to fire?
Let’s take, for example, Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho. He was arrested for DUI and pled guilty last year. Does President Obama have a legal right to threaten to veto a law that provided funding to Idaho, unless Senator Crapo resigned?
Was Mike Crapo arrested in Texas?
I’ll need to move the goalposts again.
Although maybe not. So far as i can determine, the prosecution hasn’t addressed Hanson.
Yes.
No, but most posts defending Perry in this thread don’t seem to refer to technicalities in specific Texas laws, just vague ethics claims about what should be right.
Yes, he does. It would create a political shitstorm that would damage Obama severely, though, so he wouldn’t.
Even if by forcing the public official to resign means the quenching of an investigation into $85 million in funding that may have been improperly awarded by Perry, Abbot, and Perry-appointed members of the CPRIT OC?
In post #61, I cite a specific Texas appellate decision and it, in turn, cites specific federal precedent on the overbreadth doctrine. The Texas case I cited, State v. Hanson, 793 S.W.2d 270 (1990), has almost the exact fact pattern as this case.
The opinion goes on to say:
Wouldn’t you say those are “technicalities in specific Texas laws?”
Oh, and someone posted earlier that the prosecution knows that they can’t get a conviction, and that the purpose of this indictment is just to provide political ammunition. This may be true, but I don’t think that the political ammunition they’re aiming for is just to be able to say “Rick Perry was indicted” in campaign ads. I think that the real purpose, beyond aiming for a conviction if possible (I don’t know the actual likelihood of that), is to bring the public’s attention to the acts that led to the indictment.
The fact of the matter here is that an anti-corruption unit was investigating a project of Perry’s, and that Perry used a pretext to try to get the head of that unit to resign so he could appoint her replacement, and threatened to cut the unit’s funding if she didn’t. Now, that may or may not be found to be criminal in a court of law… but it certainly doesn’t do him any favors in the court of public opinion. And it won’t easily fit in a soundbite ad, but it will fit in a news story about the indictment.
See Post #305.
Absolutely not.
Is there a discussion of the indictment somewhere? Or are you just making the point that the prosecutor supports his own indictment?
Agree with Bricker and Terr. This is an easy question. The answer is yes.
Well, your Honor, we have plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence. Oops, sorry, channeling my inner Lionel Hutz there.
More to the point: The line-item veto is in the Texas Constitution, without encumbrance. In a system of divided government, it is not vague to say that the legislature cannot take away a power that the constitution has granted.
Well something like that WOULD put an inconvenient nuance on the matter. Lol. Especially since, my understanding is that If Lehmberg’s did resign, it would’ve been Perry who appointed her replacement.
Which adds to the appearance of misconduct. Perry created a win-win situation for himself through his coercive act: either get Lehmberg to resign so he could appoint a sympathetic crony to run PIU or make PIU toothless by defunding it. I think he was in favor of the former because it would have been more politically convenient (her DUI was a perfect excuse). But the latter served much the same purpose.
That said, you also have to wonder why Perry thought the threat of defunding the unit would’ve motivated Lehmberg to resign. If he truly thought this would work, he would have needed to believe she was selfless and noble enough to put her employees and the mission of her agency above her own interests. Few politicians are as altruistic as this, so this strikes me as kind of a ridiculous deal on its face. I really hope the prosecution asks Perry to explain his rationale, if he takes the stand.
If Perry was stupid enough to publicize the reason for his veto, he is probably stupid enough to leave a paper trail showing what he really sought to gain by ousting Lehmberg. The line between politics and corruptions may be blurry here, but without knowing what the evidence is, we can’t really know which way a jury will go. I do find it interesting that for all this talk about this indictment being flimsy, Perry’s lawyers don’t appear to be fighting them.
I think this indictment CREATES all of these political and legal wrangles and why I think the people of Texas would’ve been better off without it altogether.