Retirement Account of DeLay's Wife Traced

In his 2001 disclosure, DeLay said for the first time that the account was valued at between $15,000 and $50,000. Beginning in 2003, he listed it as a joint asset, though Cullen said in an interview that it remained in Christine DeLay's name and that such a listing was not required. "I believe the IRA has remained in Christine's name since the inception and that [the joint] designation must have been an error," Cullen said.

DeLay's salary from the House during this period ranged from $136,700 to $180,100. He will receive a pension starting at about $56,000 annually, and he is eligible for a defined-contribution retirement program, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

Cullen said that the Schwab account was a routine way for Buckham to contribute to an employee's retirement needs and that Christine DeLay, like others who worked at Buckham's now-defunct lobbying firm, received funds for the account as a percentage of her income during her employment. Charles Wm. McIntyre, a colleague of Cullen's at the McGuireWoods law firm, said DeLay and his office are unaware of any particular interest in the retirement account by federal investigators.

Besides financing the retirement account, Buckham played a role in two other streams of income that indirectly benefited DeLay.

One involved payments to DeLay's family by his principal political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), which drew its largest donations from corporations. Three former DeLay staffers with firsthand knowledge of Buckham's activities have described him as a decision maker for the group, even though it was formally run by its executive director.

An arm of the group paid Buckham a monthly consulting fee, and Buckham in turn employed its executive director as a consultant to his lobbying firm. The two of them shared a single office on the top floor of a townhouse owned by a nonprofit organization that Buckham created and directed. Buckham's role is relevant because from 2001 to Jan. 31, 2006, ARMPAC paid Christine DeLay; DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro; and Ferro's Texas firm a total of $350,304 in political consulting fees and expenses, according to public records.

The Washington Post previously disclosed that from 1998 to 2002, Buckham's lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group, paid Christine DeLay a monthly salary averaging between $3,200 and $3,400. Cullen initially said the payments were for telephone calls she made periodically to the offices of certain members of Congress seeking the names of their favorite charities. Christine DeLay then forwarded that information to Buckham, along with some information about those charities.

Last week, Cullen said the payments were also for general political consulting Christine DeLay provided to her husband. Cullen said he does not have complete records of the salary payments or the dates when Christine DeLay performed the work from the couple's home in Sugar Land, Tex. But a source familiar with the pay records said the total she received from the Alexander Strategy Group was about $115,000.

Together with the retirement account worth about $25,000, this means the family's total financial benefits from entities at least partly controlled by Buckham exceeded $490,300.

Before being paid by ARMPAC for political consulting, Christine DeLay, a homemaker and advocate for foster care, had not done paid work of that type. That circumstance has figured in government investigations of payments to other lawmakers' spouses, on the grounds that, if the compensation began after a lawmaker's election, it might have been meant to influence official acts.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group that has criticized payments to lawmakers' spouses, said that "the real scandal in Washington is what is legal."

"This is a prime example of that," she said. "But there is a distinction between what is legal and what is right. . . . What was DeLay doing for all that money? Even Ed Buckham was not paying DeLay and his family out of the goodness of his heart."

Buckham's lobbying clients during the period in question included Enron, AT&T, the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, Freddie Mac, Nextel, United Parcel Service, Time Warner, Microsoft, BellSouth, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Coalition to Preserve Dietary Supplements.

Several groups represented by Buckham also helped sponsor lavish overseas travel by DeLay and his family.

"Tom DeLay has never taken an official act that was not based on his strongly held principles," Cullen said. Buckham and his attorney did not return several telephone calls seeking comment.

Database editor Derek Willis, researcher Madonna Lebling and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.