On the day he announced his departure from the House, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) invited a few conservative journalists to his office in the Cannon Building.

He was in shirtsleeves and appeared relaxed, despite all the hubbub around him — a crowd in the office and guards and TV crews outside.

He seemed in high spirits, although it was quite understandable that, given the circumstances, the high spirits seemed a bit strained.

In any event, he answered all questions, on the record, and what emerged was a picture of a man who is absolutely convinced he will not be charged with any wrongdoing in the Jack Abramoff investigation.

He hasn’t had any personal contact with federal prosecutors, DeLay said, and “they have told my lawyers I’m not a target of the investigation.”

In addition, DeLay explained, he has hired a high-priced legal team to serve as his own private prosecutors, to go through all his dealings in an effort to find wrongdoing.

“I spent a lot of money and four months of lawyers investigating me as if they were prosecuting me,” DeLay said. “They have looked at everything that I’ve got for 20 years, the whole time I’m here, and there ain’t nothing.

“There is absolutely nothing illegal in my operation. There’s nothing untoward. There’s nothing unethical.”

Still, there are those two former aides, Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon, who have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Abramoff probe, and another, Ed Buckham, who remains under investigation.

“I’m not surprised about Scanlon, but I am shocked and surprised about Tony Rudy,” DeLay said. “But it had nothing to do with me.” (As for Buckham, DeLay said he doesn’t know of anything he did that was against the law.)

More than a touch of frustration crept into DeLay’s voice when he said he will ultimately be vindicated on everything — on Abramoff, on Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle’s campaign-finance charges, on allegations of breaking House ethics rules.

“You’ll find out,” he said. “I know in politics I’ll never get the headline that says, Guess what: DeLay didn’t do anything in relationship to Abramoff. Guess what: DeLay gave Ronnie Earle a Texas whuppin’ in that trial. Guess what: There’s nothing illegal in taking a trip to work against Christian persecution in China or Moscow, or to help build a conservative movement in England, working closely with Margaret Thatcher. There is nothing wrong with going to England. And there is nothing wrong, after having worked your butt off for six days, to take one afternoon off and go play golf. There’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing illegal about it.”

In nearly an hour of talking, DeLay never complained about the federal prosecutors who have been investigating his staff. But Ronnie Earle was a different matter.

“He used this case to drag my name through the mud,” DeLay said, “and he has abused the grand-jury process to drag my name through the mud.”

As angry as DeLay can get about Earle, what seemed to bother him most was not the charges against him but the GOP House rule — the “stupid rule,” he called it — that requires members of the leadership to step down if they are indicted. Because of that rule — which DeLay tried, famously and unsuccessfully, to change — DeLay had to leave the majority leader’s office when he was indicted by Earle.

In that way, DeLay explained, a prosecutor in Travis County, Texas, was able to upend the House leadership.

“I wouldn’t have been indicted it if we didn’t have that rule, and the leadership was undermined the minute I got indicted and had to temporarily step aside,” DeLay said.

“We had a new leadership structure, and we had to figure out how to deal with that, and that created problems. And then a whole new leadership slate, with a leadership race, and that created problems.”

Those problems continue today, as a look at the troubled Republican agenda will confirm.

The question that comes from listening to DeLay is this: If he is completely innocent, and will be exonerated on everything, why is he resigning?

His answer: The 10-year campaign against him has taken its toll in support in his district. He took a poll there recently, and it showed he had no better than a 50-50 chance of winning reelection.

And for Tom DeLay, the biggest loss of all would be to see Democrats take over his seat. So he has chosen to let another Republican make the race, confident that the GOP will win in the heavily Republican district.

What will happen in the end? Will DeLay be proved right? Will time pass and nothing come of it all? Or are the Abramoff prosecutors slowly closing the circle around him?

We’ll know more in a few months. But say this about Tom DeLay: he’s a man who, by all appearances, strongly believes he’s done nothing wrong — and will do whatever it takes to ensure a Republican victory this fall.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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