Perry’s Lawyers React

By: Ben Philpott, KUT News

Governor Rick Perry and his allies have spent the days since his indictment Friday focusing attention away from charges of abuse of power…and towards a more easily digestible argument.   A District Attorney who drove drunk – and – they say – deserved to be removed from office.

KUT’s Ben Philpott reports that strategy extended to Monday’s initial press conference by Perry’s legal team.

AUSTIN–The press conference started with a video montage of the Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg’s 2013 arrest.

It showed her yelling at police…slurring her speech, making faces and even pointing her finger like a gun at the deputy taking the video. Houston Lawyer Tony Buzbee is heading up the Perry legal team.

Buzbee:  “That individual was responsible for $7.5 million of state taxpayer moneys. Governor Perry, as the Governor, is responsible to ensure that those moneys are spent wisely and are overseen by his office. And that’s why he vetoed that line item of $7.5 million dollars.”

But according to the special prosecutor leading the investigation – and Texas Democratic Party executive director Will Hailer, Lehmberg’s DWI is irrelevant.  That’s because the indictments focus on the Governor’s threat to veto funds – unless Lehmberg resigned.

Hailer:  “The governor made a political decision to go after the DA’s office, the Public Integrity Unit’s office. This is a fight that they have had long before her incident. This is a fight that goes back to at least 2005.”

Perry’s lawyers, of course, see it another way.  During Monday’s press conference, the legal team hammered the idea that Governor Perry was within his constitutional rights to veto the funding for the Public Integrity Unit, the legal team that polices corruption in state agencies and lawmakers.  Perry Lawyer Ben Ginsberg said the governor never said why he was vetoing the funding before he officially made the veto.

Ginsberg: “But in a hypothetical, if the governor did say, here’s why I’m going to veto a bill, that actually is transparency in government, that you guys are all supposed to be for.”

Governor Perry will be arraigned August 29th But he doesn’t have to be in court on that day. A date for Perry to be photographed and fingerprinted will be set later.
Ben Philpott KUT News.