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Rick Perry indicted for 2 felonies (1 Viewer)

fatness

Footballguy
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A grand jury indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday for allegedly abusing the powers of his office by carrying out a threat to veto funding for state prosecutors investigating public corruption — making the possible 2016 presidential hopeful his state's first indicted governor in nearly a century.

A special prosecutor spent months calling witnesses and presenting evidence that Perry broke the law when he promised publicly to nix $7.5 million over two years for the public integrity unit run by the office of Travis County Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg. Lehmberg was convicted of drunken driving, but refused Perry's calls to resign.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/texas-perry-indicted-coercion-veto-threat

Perry was indicted on charges of abuse of official capacity, a first-degree felony with potential punishments of five to 99 years in prison, and coercion of a public servant, a third-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 10 years.

No one disputes that Perry is allowed to veto measures approved by the Legislature, including part or all of the state budget. But the left-leaning Texans for Public Justice government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint accusing the governor of coercion because he threatened to use his veto before actually doing so in an attempt to pressure Lehmberg to quit.
 
The next governor will just pardon him.

Thats how these guys role. Its an unwritten rule that you pardon eachother just in case you wind up getting indicted in office yourself.

 
Ok, so we have a governor wanting a prosecutor in charge of the public integrity unit to step down because of her DUI arrest. That's reasonable - you don't deserve to be the head of the Public Integrity Unit unit if you act that way (but she is Democrat and the standards here are evidently different for her). He says he will veto her budget if she doesn't. She doesn't, so he uses his constitutionally granted authority to veto. Then the DA in this Democratic district indicts him using a law that hasn't been used since 1917.

Yeah - this sounds legit.

 
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He was going to be indicted for three felonies, but nobody could remember the third one. (Oops.)

 
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Having lived in Texas for 3+ years I can say it is run a HELL OF A LOT better than my current state (Maryland) or Michigan. That has to do with those who came before Perry, but he's not a horrible governor by any stretch. He's a Texas politician's politician.

He would be an awful president though, he's erratic and flighty. In Texas they "cover down" on that.

 
Ok, so we have a governor wanting a prosecutor in charge of the public integrity unit to step down because of her DUI arrest. That's reasonable - you don't deserve to be the head of the Public Integrity Unit unit if you act that way (but she is Democrat and the standards here are evidently different for her). He says he will veto her budget if she doesn't. She doesn't, so he uses his constitutionally granted authority to veto. Then the DA in this Democratic district indicts him using a law that hasn't been used since 1917.

Yeah - this sounds legit.
Have to agree. Perry is a Tea Party doofus, but this sounds like BS to me.

 
Rep. Joaquin Castro calls for Gov. Rick Perry’s resignation or the sake of Texas

I dont know how this will play out, but he looks like he may be joining chris christie in the not going to represent the GOP next election pile.

 
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Rep. Joaquin Castro calls for Gov. Rick Perry’s resignation or the sake of Texas

I dont know how this will play out, but he looks like he may be joining chris christie in the not going to represent the GOP next election pile.
Careful, Joaquin. Someone might indict you for abusing your official capacity to coerce a public official to leave his office.

 
At the time of Mr. Perry’s veto last year, prosecutors in the unit had been investigating a state agency called the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The agency — one of Mr. Perry’s signature initiatives — came under scrutiny by state lawmakers after accusations of mismanagement and corruption; a former official there was indicted last year for his handling of an $11 million grant.

Mr. Perry’s critics accused him of using Ms. Lehmberg’s arrest to try to dismantle the public corruption squad, to thwart the investigation into the cancer-research agency and to seize an opportunity to take down a prominent Democrat. The public corruption unit has been scaled down, but it continues its work largely using county financing.\

“The governor has a legitimate statutory role in the legislative process,” said Craig McDonald, the director and founder of Texans for Public Justice, the group that filed the original complaint. “The governor had no authority over the district attorney’s job.”

But Mr. Perry’s supporters said the accusations amounted to an attempt to criminalize politics. Republican lawmakers had attempted for years to strip the public corruption unit of state financing, accusing it of politically motivated prosecutions.

The last Texas governor to face criminal charges was James E. “Pa” Ferguson, who was indicted in 1917 by a Travis County grand jury on embezzlement and eight other charges. His case also involved a veto that stirred anger: Mr. Ferguson vetoed the entire appropriation to the University of Texas because it had refused to fire certain faculty members. The state Senate voted to impeach him, but he resigned first.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/us/gov-rick-perry-of-texas-is-indicted-over-veto-of-funds-for-das-office.html?_r=0

 
Ok, so we have a governor wanting a prosecutor in charge of the public integrity unit to step down because of her DUI arrest. That's reasonable - you don't deserve to be the head of the Public Integrity Unit unit if you act that way (but she is Democrat and the standards here are evidently different for her). He says he will veto her budget if she doesn't. She doesn't, so he uses his constitutionally granted authority to veto. Then the DA in this Democratic district indicts him using a law that hasn't been used since 1917.

Yeah - this sounds legit.
Have to agree. Perry is a Tea Party doofus, but this sounds like BS to me.
Anyone think this sounds familiar? A Democratic DA abusing his authority to try and indict a GOP Governor?

We here in WI have gone thru this for something like 3 years now until a Federal court stopped it in it's tracks for an abuse of power by the DA.

 
This has been a very long time coming. Perry has walked around like the swinging **** for years and has made many enemies by doing crap like this. I think he is in trouble.

 
Perry made it clear in public statements and through emissaries that he didn’t believe the state should fund an office headed by someone who had lost the public’s trust. He pointed to Lehmberg’s arrest just two months prior for drunk driving, which included her video-taped, belligerent conduct while being booked into the jail.

At the time, the Public Integrity Unit, which investigates and prosecutes public corruption and malfeasance, was examining one of Perry’s signature projects – the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

If she had resigned, Perry would have appointed her replacement.

By the time of the veto, Lehmberg had pled guilty to DWI, fulfilled her 45-day sentence and completed a treatment program. She refused to resign but said she would retire after she completed her term.

Perry vetoed the money.

Perry’s office continued to negotiate with her after the veto, pledging to restore funding to the unit if she stepped down.

The allegations of criminal wrongdoing were first filed by Craig McDonald, director of the nonprofit campaign reform group Texans for Public Justice.

McDonald has maintained that using veto threats to try to make another elected official resign was gross abuse of office.“The grand jury decided that Perry’s bullying crossed the line into law breaking,” he said.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/08/rick-perry-indicted-on-two-felonies.html/

 
Ok, so we have a governor wanting a prosecutor in charge of the public integrity unit to step down because of her DUI arrest. That's reasonable - you don't deserve to be the head of the Public Integrity Unit unit if you act that way (but she is Democrat and the standards here are evidently different for her). He says he will veto her budget if she doesn't. She doesn't, so he uses his constitutionally granted authority to veto. Then the DA in this Democratic district indicts him using a law that hasn't been used since 1917.

Yeah - this sounds legit.
Have to agree. Perry is a Tea Party doofus, but this sounds like BS to me.
Anyone think this sounds familiar? A Democratic DA abusing his authority to try and indict a GOP Governor?

We here in WI have gone thru this for something like 3 years now until a Federal court stopped it in it's tracks for an abuse of power by the DA.
Yeah the judge who has been sucking off the Kochs teat for years is really the hero here. Sure it has nothing to do with all the junkets they have paid for him to attend and their ties to the donors in question. Nah no conflict of interest there.

 
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A grand jury indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday for allegedly abusing the powers of his office by carrying out a threat to veto funding for state prosecutors investigating public corruption — making the possible 2016 presidential hopeful his state's first indicted governor in nearly a century.

A special prosecutor spent months calling witnesses and presenting evidence that Perry broke the law when he promised publicly to nix $7.5 million over two years for the public integrity unit run by the office of Travis County Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg. Lehmberg was convicted of drunken driving, but refused Perry's calls to resign.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/texas-perry-indicted-coercion-veto-threat

Perry was indicted on charges of abuse of official capacity, a first-degree felony with potential punishments of five to 99 years in prison, and coercion of a public servant, a third-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 10 years.

No one disputes that Perry is allowed to veto measures approved by the Legislature, including part or all of the state budget. But the left-leaning Texans for Public Justice government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint accusing the governor of coercion because he threatened to use his veto before actually doing so in an attempt to pressure Lehmberg to quit.
Ive got 99 reasons to despise Republicans, and I've got 91 92 reasons to despise Democrats.

 
Ok, so we have a governor wanting a prosecutor in charge of the public integrity unit to step down because of her DUI arrest. That's reasonable - you don't deserve to be the head of the Public Integrity Unit unit if you act that way (but she is Democrat and the standards here are evidently different for her). He says he will veto her budget if she doesn't. She doesn't, so he uses his constitutionally granted authority to veto. Then the DA in this Democratic district indicts him using a law that hasn't been used since 1917.

Yeah - this sounds legit.
Have to agree. Perry is a Tea Party doofus, but this sounds like BS to me.
Anyone think this sounds familiar? A Democratic DA abusing his authority to try and indict a GOP Governor?

We here in WI have gone thru this for something like 3 years now until a Federal court stopped it in it's tracks for an abuse of power by the DA.
Yeah the judge who has been sucking off the Kochs teat for years is really the hero here. Sure it has nothing to do with all the junkets they have paid for him to attend and their ties to the donors in question. Nah no conflict of interest there.
Oh, boy. Here we go with the "Koch" brothers nonsense. You got anything besides far-left talking points?

Why don't you look at this objectively?

 
The way I understand it, there was nothing wrong with the veto. Using the threat of a veto to try to coerce an elected official into resigning is what got him indicted.

 
Maybe this is a trap by the democrats. He will get cleared in the charges and will rise in popularity among the right thus winning the nomination. The Democrats would love to have Hilary or Warren face Perry.

 

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