Another chapter in the book of Tom DeLay has come to a close.
The political action committee for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was quietly closed last week after a decade-long run as one of the most influential – and infamous – PACs run by members of Congress.
With a final $1,400 payment to the Federal Election Commission last month settling an audit dispute, Americans for a Republican Majority then filed its termination papers with the commission April 24.
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ARMPAC also helped precipitate DeLay’s fall. In the late 1990s, the PAC was run out of a Capitol Hill townhouse that housed a lobbying firm and a questionable non-profit, both of which were run by lobbyist Edwin Buckham, a former chief of staff to DeLay. For several years Buckham’s firm employed DeLay’s wife, paying her more than $100,000 for what has been widely considered undefined work.
Several years later, the FBI and Justice Department began investigating DeLay’s connections to now imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. To date, the investigation has yielded guilty pleas by Abramoff, two former aides to DeLay, ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), two former Ney aides and a former Interior Department official, among others. Abramoff’s and Buckham’s clients became major donors to ARMPAC in the late 1990s as well as to non-profits run by the two lobbyists, sometimes with fund-raising help from DeLay. The investigation, which won multiple awards for The Post’s investigative team, is considered ongoing.
And of course we know about ARMPAC’s bastard stepchild TRMPAC and all of the fun things it did here in Texas. Good riddance, I say. Link via TPM.