Rick Perry is free at last!
Free of the indictment that he said was politically motivated. Free of the cloud that threatened to rain buckets of trouble all over him. Free of the snickering from his foes.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal appellate court, has dismissed the indictment that charged the former governor with abuse of power. A lower court had tossed out another indictment that charged Perry with coercion of a public official.
This is one of the decisions that one can respect while disagreeing with the findings.
The system did its job.
A Travis County grand jury indicted Perry on charges of abuse of power over his veto of money for the Public Integrity Unit run out of the Travis County district attorney’s office. The DA, Rosemary Lehmberg, had pleaded guilty to drunken driving and served some time in jail. Perry said she should resign and if she didn’t he would veto money for the Public Integrity Unit, which is charged with investigating wrongdoing among public officials.
Lehmberg should have quit. But she didn’t. So Perry followed through on his threat and vetoed the money. I must add here that Lehmberg is a Democrat, while Perry is a Republican.
So, the grand jury indicted him — while Perry was finishing up his stint as governor and preparing to run for president of the United States. Perry accused the grand jury of playing politics. Travis County is a Democratic bastion; Perry, of course, is a Republican. I’ll point out, too, that the special prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury also is a Republican.
I actually thought the lesser of the charges — the coercion part — had more staying power. Silly me. I didn’t expect a lower court to toss that one first.
I never liked the idea of a governor telling an elected county official to quit. That wasn’t his call to make, given that the district attorney is answerable only to the people who elected her. Gov. Perry tried to bully Lehmberg into doing his bidding and that — to my way of thinking — is fundamentally wrong.
As for the veto itself, the governor could have — should have — simply vetoed the money appropriated for the integrity unit without the fanfare he attached to it. That’s not the Perry modus operandi, however. He sought to make a show of it, which also is wrong — but not illegal, according to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
As for the politics of this case … if the governor alleged that the grand jury indictment was motivated by politics because Travis County comprises mostly Democrats, is it fair to wonder whether the top appellate court dismissal occurred because all its members are Republicans?
Hey, I’m just thinking out loud.
So, the case is over.
Now we can all turn our attention to the Greatest Show on Earth, which would be the Republican Party presidential primary campaign. Let’s bring out the clowns!