If one paid attention to media reports about Rick Perry’s recent indictment, it would appear that he may very well be the most persecuted politician in America these days.
And as is typical of indicted politicians, Perry and his supporters are trying to control public perception by whipping up a lot of spin over the circumstances surrounding the allegations contained in that indictment.
Watching the reporting to date and observing the pundits in action on the matter, it seems Perry’s spin is working.
As the Texas Observer reports: “Judging from the reaction of national pundits and journalists, the verdict in the case of State of Texas vs. James Richard “Rick” Perry is already in: Rick Perry is not just innocent, he’s being railroaded by liberal Democrats in a vindictive, politically motivated prosecution.”
The rush to judgment happened almost immediately after the indictments came down on Friday, even as our friends in New York and Washington confessed that they knew little of Rick Perry’s legal troubles and in some cases hadn’t even read the two-page indictment, much less bothered to understand the issue in the larger political context. Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine called the indictment “unbelievably ridiculous” and fulminated that Perry “is exactly as guilty as” a “ham sandwich,” referring to the old saw that a good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.
The Observer add:
The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson wrote that she “felt sorry” for Rick Perry and compared the case against the governor to the congressional Republicans’ lawsuit against Barack Obama.
Even legal analysts seemed strangely lazy about the whole thing. UC-Irvine law professor and blogger Rick Hasen admitted he hadn’t “studied Texas law or the indictment closely enough” but nonetheless went on to make the sweeping claim that the indictment represents the “criminalization of politics.”
Even some liberals, such as former Obama adviser David Axelrod, weighed in last week on Twitter:
Unless he was demonstrably trying to scrap the ethics unit for other than his stated reason, Perry indictment seems pretty sketchy.
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 16, 2014
Perry’s slight of hand is two-fold:
- The indictment was politically motivated with liberals at the helm;
- The issue is Rosemary Lehmberg’s disgraceful behavior and his use of the power of veto.
So, we are going to take a few moments a briefly go over the lies associated with Perry’s claims.
Was the indictment politically motivated by liberals?
As Huffington Post reported earlier this week: “There wasn’t a single Democrat involved in the investigation and indictment.”
In fact, Perry appointed the presiding judge in the case, Billy Ray Stubblefield of the 3rd Judicial District. Stubblefield named retired Judge Bert Richardson of Bexar County (San Antonio) to handle the grand jury investigation, and Richardson picked Mike McCrum to be the special prosecutor in the case. McCrum, who withdrew his name from consideration for U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, had the support of the two Republican Texas U.S. Senators and the state’s Democratic officeholders, which hardly makes him a Democratic Party hack. (A Washington gridlock over the confirmation process in the U.S. Senate caused him to withdraw.)
That all makes it hard to sell the partisan attack narrative that reporters are spreading for Perry.
Texas Observer adds that Michael McCrum was “a former police officer and prosecutor in the George H.W. Bush administration”— that “[t]here is no evidence that McCrum has a partisan axe to grind—quite the contrary.”
Rosemary Lehmberg’s “disgraceful behavior” and Perry’s use of the veto have nothing to do with the issue.
First of all, the indictment is not about Rosemary Lehmberg or Perry’s exercise of the power of veto. As Texas Observer reports:
The criminal case against Perry centers on his “coercion” of a local elected official using threats and promises. It is not premised—as has been repeatedly misreported—on the veto itself. Craig McDonald, the head of Texans for Public Justice and the original complainant, has said as much. As McDonald told CNN:
“The governor is doing a pretty good job to try to make this about [Lehmberg] and her DWI conviction. But this has never been about his veto of her budget and about her. This is about his abuse of power and his coercion trying to get another public citizen to give up their job.”
And if that isn’t enough, Huffington posts adds:
The idea that he was concerned about Lehmberg’s drunk driving is also fatuous nonsense. Two other Texas DAs were arrested for DUI during Perry’s tenure in office and he spoke not a discouraging word about their indiscretions. Kaufman County D.A. Rick Harrison drove the wrong way into traffic and was found guilty of drunk driving in 2009 and in 2003 Terry McEachern, DA of Swisher County, was convicted of a DUI. Perry said nothing. It’s probably only coincidental that both of those individuals were Republicans and did not oversee an investigative unit responsible for keeping elected officials honest in the capitol.
Concerning Perry’s use of the veto, Huffington writes that “Perry’s advisors have him concentrating on defending his constitutional authority to exercise the line item budget veto. Except that’s not what this case is about.”
Perry is accused of using his veto authority to coerce a publicly elected official into leaving office. And when the veto threat, and later the actual exercise of the veto didn’t work, he may have tried a bit of bribery, which is why he is facing criminal charges.
Not because he exercised his constitutional veto authority.
It is still early in the game and a lot can happen. Perhaps the case against Perry is flimsy as his supporters claim, but maybe not. According to Peggy Fikac of the San Antonio Express-News, McCrum said he “interviewed more than 40 people, reviewed hundreds of documents and read many dozens of cases.”
As Texas Observer notes, “Fikac and other reporters who staked out the courthouse long before the national press spent five minutes reading the indictment watched ‘current and former Perry staffers, Travis County employees and state lawmakers’ entering the grand jury room over the summer.”
It is entirely possible that McCrum has gathered enough information about Perry’s actions and motivation to obtain a conviction. Time will tell.
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