Abuse of power, but not by Perry
The indictment of Texas Gov. Rick Perry on felony criminal charges for threatening to veto a specific appropriation and then making good on his threat takes politics of the absurd to a new and harmful level.
The gist of the indictment brought forward in liberal Travis County is that Perry was abusing his power, but the deep irony here is that the true abuse of power was carried out by Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and a strange political weapon that she controls called the state Public Integrity Unit.
But thanks to Lehmberg’s success in getting a special prosecutor to convince a grand jury to indict Perry, she and the Public Integrity Unit have become a target of national ridicule and scorn from commentators on the left and right as well as legal experts.
And that’s mainly because of the history and circumstances leading up to the indictment. Lehmberg, you see, was arrested in 2013 for drunk driving with a blood-alcohol content nearly three times the legal limit, an offense that earned her a stiff 45-day jail sentence.
Not only that, but Lehmberg put on a belligerent “do-you-know-who-I-am” show once she was taken to the police station, complete with threats, insults and physical resistance that required her to be restrained. Thanks to Perry’s indictment, that whole scene has now been widely viewed on the Internet.
Perry soon after concluded she was unfit to be a district attorney, and because her office oversees the Public Integrity Unit in the Capitol of Austin, he threatened to veto appropriations for that state entity. Lehmberg refused to resign and Perry followed through on his threat.
A special prosecutor from Lehmberg’s district attorney’s office concocted the two-page indictment that alleges Perry “misused government property” and attempted “coercion” of a public servant.
The way we see it, he cut off funding for a state program through a legal veto, within his rights as governor, and that program has proven to be ruthlessly abused for political purposes by Travis County Democrats, a minority in red state Texas, where no Democrat has held statewide office since the mid-1990s.
The Public Integrity Unit is supposed to enforce ethics laws for all state officials, but it has a sketchy track record stretching back 20 years. Lehmberg’s predecessor as Travis County district attorney, Ronnie Earle, got a grand jury to indict former Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, alleging that she unlawfully used state employees and offices to conduct personal and political business.
The subsequent trial lasted only 30 minutes and the judge ordered a jury to return a verdict of not guilty on all charges.
Former Republican Congressman Tom DeLay also was targeted by the Public Integrity Unit and a subsequent conviction was tossed out by an appellate court.
Perry’s indictment appears to be far more frivolous than those cases.
There can be no integrity with an enforcement agency that is controlled by partisans and weaponized against their political opponents. Perry had the right idea: Such an agency does not deserve public funding, particularly when it is led by the likes of Lehmberg.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.