Former DeLay aide pleads guilty to conspiracy charge - 04/01/06 - The Detroit News" Tony Rudy, DeLay's onetime deputy chief of staff, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to a single charge of conspiracy in connection with the scandal, admitting that he trafficked in cash, gifts and other favors both while working in the leadership office and after leaving government to lobby his old acquaintances for Abramoff and his clients.
The agreement by Rudy, 39, to cooperate with prosecutors follows a similar deal struck in November with DeLay's former press secretary. It indicates that the Justice Department's effort to tunnel deeper into the congressional bribery scandal that Abramoff ignited is making headway.
In particular, the Rudy plea signals further trouble for Ohio Republican Robert Ney, who was previously identified as being a recipient of Abramoff largesse and who is mentioned anew -- albeit anonymously -- in Rudy's agreement with prosecutors.
A lawyer for DeLay said Friday that he had supplied investigators looking into the scandal with more than 100 e-mails from DeLay's congressional office as well as other information. But the lawyer continued to assert that his client was innocent, and said that he had been told several months ago that DeLay was not a target of the investigation. Some of the information he supplied might have been used by prosecutors to force the former aides to the plea bargaining table.
"Tom DeLay has said for several months now that he has never taken an official position, never cast a vote, based on anything other than his strong, principled beliefs in Republican philosophy and conservative government," said his lawyer, Richard Cullen. "A clear reading of the legal documents today indicates that there's nothing in there that is inconsistent with that."
The Rudy plea agreement offers another window into how Abramoff became deeply invested in congressional staffers, although it largely repeats the pattern of questionable dealings that surfaced earlier, including documents laying out Abramoff's own agreement to plead guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges last January. In effect, Rudy admitted to being on the payroll of Abramoff even before he left government to work for the lobbyist at his once high-flying practice at the Washington, D.C., law and lobbying firm of Greenberg Traurig."