Is there really anyone in the country who still thinks Tom DeLay isn't dirty?
DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay, who is now House majority leader, has said that his expenses on this trip were paid by a nonprofit organization and that the financial arrangements for it were proper. He has also said he had no way of knowing that any lobbyist might have financially supported the trip, either directly or through reimbursements to the nonprofit organization.
The documents obtained by The Washington Post, including receipts for his hotel stays in Scotland and London and billings for his golfing during the trip at the famed St. Andrews course in Scotland, substantiate for the first time that some of DeLay's expenses on the trip were billed to charge cards used by the two lobbyists. The invoice for DeLay's plane fare lists the name of what was then Abramoff's lobbying firm, Preston Gates & Ellis.
DeLay Airfare Was Charged To Lobbyist's Credit Card (washingtonpost.com)
What DeLay and his handlers are trying to do with this is not to deny that the expenses were paid by lobbyists, but just play dumb. Tom DeLay himself, they say, "has always believed and continues to believe" that the expenses were paid by a non-profit group.
The evidence continues to mount that DeLay did in fact personally know who was paying his expenses, but the best part is that he "continues to believe" it. Even though there are credit card receipts showing that expenses were paid by Abramoff and his associates, DeLay still is under the impression that the National Center for Public Policy Research paid for the trip.
So I guess the question now is whether DeLay is just lying, or completely delusional.
