Tom DeLay indicted

WASHINGTON — Tom DeLay, the iron-fisted Republican leader, relished a take-no-prisoner approach as he rose to the top of Congress. Now he faces a historic battle to keep himself out of a prison cell.

A Texas grand jury on Wednesday indicted DeLay on a charge of conspiring to violate political fund-raising laws, making him the highest-ranking member of Congress to face criminal prosecution. House Republican rules forced him to temporarily step aside as majority leader while he fights the charge.

A defiant DeLay said he had done nothing wrong and denounced the Democratic prosecutor who pursued the case as a "partisan fanatic." He said, "This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history. It's a sham."

Nonetheless, DeLay's temporary departure and the prospect of a criminal trial for one of the Republicans' most visible leaders reverberated throughout the GOP-run Congress, which was already struggling with ethics questions surrounding its Senate leader.

Republicans quickly moved to fill the void while voicing polite support for DeLay. Speaker Dennis Hastert named Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt to take over most of DeLay's leadership duties.

Ronnie Earle, the Democratic prosecutor in Austin who led the investigation, denied politics was involved. "Our job is to prosecute abuses of power and to bring those abuses to the public," he said. He has noted previously that he has prosecuted many Democrats in the past.

DeLay, 58, was indicted on a single felony count of conspiring with two political associates. The two previously had been charged with the same conspiracy count. They are John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

The indictment stems from a plan DeLay helped set in motion in 2001 to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections for the first time since Reconstruction.

The grand jury accused the men of conspiring to route corporate donations from DeLay's Texas committee to the Republican Party in Washington, then returning the money back to Texas legislative candidates. It was a scheme intended to evade a state law outlawing corporate donations going to candidates, the indictment said.

The indictment also mentioned another Republican figure, President Bush's campaign political director Terry Nelson, though it did not charge him with any wrongdoing.