Now there’s a paper trail (login) to substantiate charges that U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted dirty money to fund a 2000 junket.

The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff’s credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.

DeLay’s expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.

House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay, who is now House majority leader, has said that his expenses on this trip were paid by a nonprofit organization and that the financial arrangements for it were proper. He has also said he had no way of knowing that any lobbyist might have financially supported the trip, either directly or through reimbursements to the nonprofit organization.

Most people are pissed at him because he’s an asshole who latches on to all the rubbish coming from the religious wing of the Republican Party, not because he went on a junket funded by lobbyists. Assholes wear big targets on their backs by virtue of being assholes, so he shouldn’t have expected anything less than a full-scale war when he left any daylight between himself and the law. He helped nothing by going on a proactive campaign to raise his profile as a major league asshole (with his rhetorical war against the judiciary and the whole idiotic T___ S___ drama) when he should have been holed away somewhere not speaking to the press. This may have blown over had he just kept his fat mouth shut.

Found on Cracker Squire.

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made it clear he’s not in DeLay’s corner in his much-ballyhooed remarks taped for a Family Research Council event (emphasis mine):

When we think judicial decisions are outside mainstream American values, we will say so. But we must also be clear that the balance of power among all three branches requires respect — not retaliation. I won’t go along with that.

As you might remember, DeLay has kept himself in the news against his best interests in part by making vocal threats of political retribution against judges who don’t rule the way he wants them to.

It’s a lot easier for Frist to speak against DeLay since he rarely has to deal with him. If you haven’t noticed, he’s been hopping from bandwagon to bandwagon lately. What a gutless whore.