DeLay Defends Trip and Vote, Attacks Critics

A larger-than-life Rep. Tom DeLay is projected on a screen at a national Republican tax summit that the House majority leader addressed as he worked to shore up support among conservatives. (Jason Reed -- Reuters)

DeLay said the financing of the trip and his vote had nothing to do with each other. He said he had voted against the anti-gambling bill only because it was too weak -- adding that he later supported a measure that remedied its flaws.

DeLay said the bill "fell short of its intended purpose," was unenforceable and "would not have reduced illegal gambling over the Internet." He said it would have "opened the doors to the expansion of gambling like horse racing, dog racing and jai alai over the Internet."

DeLay mentioned a different version of the bill passed in 2003. "I voted for it," he said, "because those specific exemptions that would have given explicit federal permission for the expansion of gambling on the Internet were no longer in the bill." Both votes, DeLay said, were based on the bills' merits.

But lawmakers and lobbyists who worked on the 2003 bill that DeLay supported said it was in many respects weaker than the bill he opposed in 2000. Its constraints on Internet gambling left more room for individual states to decide what to permit.

The 2003 bill did not prohibit Internet wagering on jai alai, horse racing and dog racing. The 2003 bill exempts "any lawful transaction with a business license or authorized by a state."

The Justice Department said the legislation was too ambiguous to be effectively enforced. Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said in a letter to Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) that the 2003 bill could allow "the expansion of gambling opportunities" by letting states legalize Internet gambling currently considered illegal under federal law.

Before DeLay voted for the 2003 bill, the political landscape on the legislation had changed and the tribe and eLottery were no longer active on the legislation, according to their lobbying disclosure forms.

The majority leader castigated what he called "a growing frenzy surrounding the ethics committee, with Democrats and their allies attempting to use it as a partisan tool for partisan ends."

"When some stories recently emerged about me and the inevitable politically motivated allegations along with them, I instructed my staff to consult the ethics committee to get to the bottom of them," he told reporters. "We want to work with the ethics committee to prove how baseless these and other allegations are." He said he welcomes "the opportunity to respond with facts and information -- not the fiction and innuendo that have been thrown around by some."

DeLay said that the House "needs an ethics committee" and that he will work to resolve the current impasse. House Republicans turned back an effort yesterday by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to create an ethics task force.

DeLay and two Florida Republicans -- Reps. Ander Crenshaw and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- wrote to the ethics committee March 11 explaining their decision to accept a trip in 2001 from the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, which registered as a foreign agent right before the trip began. They said they did not know the group had registered and were "as surprised as everyone when this new information was brought to us this week." Several Democrats made similar trips.

DeLay saved his most caustic comments for The Post's coverage of the funding of his trip to Britain.

"Through implication and innuendo, not facts, The Post attempted to lead readers to the conclusion that, one, I was somehow aware of how the National Center for Public Policy Research funded a trip they invited me on, organized and paid for," he said, reading from a statement. He said that the article "implied that because of that trip, I cast a vote against a particular bill" and added that the accusation "is why I'm just a little less than my normal chipper self."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, for the second day in a row, offered a careful endorsement of DeLay yesterday. "The majority leader is someone that we support," McClellan said. "He is someone we'll work very closely with in Washington to get things done on behalf of the American people."

DeLay chuckled but did not directly answer a question about whether he would step down for the good of his party if issues about his conduct became too big a distraction. A few hours later, DeLay received a standing ovation when he addressed about 1,000 party donors at a National Republican Congressional Committee luncheon at a hotel here.

He began with a dig at Howard Dean, the presidential candidate who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and joked that "Republicans from Texas aren't known for our eloquocity." DeLay strode in to the strains of "Still the One."

Staff writers Shailagh Murray and R. Jeffrey Smith and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.