Representative Tom DeLay, forced by criminal charges to step aside last month as House majority leader, was fingerprinted, photographed and released on US$10,000 bond on Thursday after turning himself in at the Harris County sheriff's office in downtown Houston.
The booking photo of DeLay, whose surrender was carefully choreographed, showed him smiling, his congressional pin visible on his suit lapel, and did not include booking numbers that many associate with a mug shot. His allies on Capitol Hill joked that the picture was suitable for the Congressional Directory.
"I just may use that photographer for my family Christmas photo," Kevin Madden, a spokesman for DeLay, said in Washington.
DeLay had been expected to surrender in adjacent Fort Bend County, his home. By doing so here instead, he avoided a scrum of about 25 journalists waiting outside the Fort Bend sheriff's office, many with cameras. Democrats were thus deprived of powerful videotape.
The Fort Bend County sheriff, Milton Wright, said DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, had earlier inquired whether the congressman could "come in unnoticed and leave unnoticed." Wright said he had told DeGuerin that DeLay could probably enter the building without being seen but that "the only way out is through the front."
DeLay, accompanied by DeGuerin, surrendered about 12:15pm. After being taken before a magistrate, who informed him of his legal rights and the nature of the charges against him, he was fingerprinted and photographed, and then posted bond before being released about 12:45.
DeLay's surrender was in response to an arrest warrant issued Wednesday in connection with indictments returned in Austin last month charging conspiracy and money-laundering. The indictments allege a scheme by DeLay, along with two associates, to funnel corporate money to Republican legislative candidates. Texas law bars corporate contributions to state candidates.
The congressman is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Friday in Austin, the state capital. His legal team filed a motion late Thursday to move the case elsewhere because of extensive publicity in Austin, and asked the presiding judge to recuse himself, citing numerous contributions that the lawyers said the judge had made to Democratic causes.
For a time on Wednesday, the Web site of the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, provided a link to a copy of the arrest warrant. Pelosi later said the link was a mistake.
"That connection should never have been there," she said, adding that she had some sympathy for DeLay and his family. "But I even feel sadder," she said, "for the American people who've had their lives affected by the culture of cronyism and corruption that exists in Washington, DC, because of the impact on their lives, because of a special-interest agenda in Washington, DC, at the expense of the middle class in America."
"It all feeds into the public's perception that whatever is going on, there is a strong whiff of illegality," said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster.
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