Texas Governor Rick Perry will be escorted to the Travis County criminal courthouse in Austin today to be officially booked on charges of public corruption, his lawyer, Tony Buzbee, said.
Perry’s defense lawyers have rejected his indictment by a grand jury last week as an attempt to criminalize politics and damage his prospects as a potential presidential candidate in 2016. One of the two counts against him carries a maximum prison sentence of 99 years.
The 64-year-old Republican is accused of abusing his power by trying to force out the Democratic prosecutor whose office probes government corruption across Texas. Perry’s action against Rosemary Lehmberg came after she was convicted of drunk driving. When she refused to step down, Perry vetoed funding for her office’s ethics prosecutors.
According to the nonprofit group that filed the initial complaint, Perry’s bid to remove Lehmberg was part of a cover-up designed to derail an investigation of a cancer-research funding program he championed. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has been criticized for funneling state funds to Republican donors, and a former official was indicted last year for mishandling grant money.
Buzbee said Perry was following the state constitution and exercising his First Amendment rights when he vetoed funding for the Travis County Public Integrity Unit. Texas’s longest-serving governor will fight the accusations “100 percent and at the end of the day he will prevail,” Buzbee said at a press conference yesterday.
Michael McCrum, the white-collar defense lawyer brought in as a special prosecutor to lead the Perry investigation, expressed confidence in charges he said are based on more than 40 interviews and hundreds of documents.
“I looked at the law and I looked at the facts,” McCrum, a Republican, said last week. “The grand jury has spoken that at least there’s probable cause he committed two felony crimes.”
Perry was indicted Aug. 15 on two charges, one of abuse of official capacity and one of coercion of a public servant.
The abuse of official capacity charge is a first-degree felony and carries a possible prison sentence of five to 99 years, McCrum said. The coercion charge is a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison, he said.
Defends Himself
Perry defended himself during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio program yesterday.
“This needs to be exposed for the absolute corrupt process that it is,” the governor said, pointing to the timing of the indictment as he’s trying to boost his national profile ahead of a potential 2016 White House bid.
“The timing is suspect, to say the least,” he said.
Perry supporters are planning a rally outside the Austin courthouse at 5 p.m. today.
The case is Texas v. Perry, D-1-DC-14-100139, 390th Judicial District of Travis County, Texas (Austin).
