Former DeLay aide pleads guilty

WASHINGTON — A former top aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and promised to help with an investigation of bribery and lobbying fraud that has netted three convictions and triggered calls for an ethics overhaul in Congress.

Tony Rudy, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, admitted conspiring with lobbyist Jack Abramoff while Rudy worked for the Texas congressman and after he left the lawmaker's staff to become a lobbyist himself, according to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Rudy entered the plea as part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed not to pursue other possible charges against him or his wife, Lisa, who had received payments arranged by Abramoff.

The guilty plea and agreement to cooperate brought the investigation closer to DeLay, who stepped down as majority leader last year, when he was indicted in a separate case in Texas involving the alleged laundering of political contributions to state legislative candidates.

However, there were no allegations against DeLay in documents released Friday as part of the plea agreement. DeLay has denied wrongdoing.

Rudy faces up to five years in prison, but the sentence could be reduced considerably if he cooperates with prosecutors, the judge said in court.

He is the second former DeLay worker to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the lobbying investigation. Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay press secretary who later became a lobbying partner with Abramoff, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to bribe public officials.

Prosecutors charged that from 1997 through 2004, Rudy conspired with Abramoff and others to accept and offer bribes, among other offenses.

Court papers for the first time referred to a third former DeLay aide, Ed Buckham. Buckham, a onetime DeLay chief of staff, is described only as Lobbyist B but is easily identifiable because the documents say Rudy worked with him after a stint at Abramoff's lobbying firm.

Court papers say Rudy arranged payments through Abramoff and Buckham to a consulting firm that he created and Lisa Rudy ran. Liberty Consulting received $86,000 from or at the direction of Abramoff and others while Rudy worked for DeLay.

Rudy, 39, entered his plea two days after Abramoff was sentenced in Miami to five years, 10 months in prison for his role in the fraudulent purchase of a fleet of casino cruise ships.

In another case, Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. The plea deal in that case required him to provide evidence about members of Congress, congressional workers, other lobbyists and employees of the Interior Department and other federal agencies.

According to court papers, Rudy will provide key corroborating information regarding the case prosecutors are building against Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who was taken by Abramoff on a trip to Scotland in 2002. Rudy admitted to prosecutors he offered Ney the junket, telling Ney's chief of staff by e-mail on May 24, 2002, that the trip would involve golf, "drinking and smoking cubans [cigars]."

Ney's lawyer, Mark Tuohey, said a guilty plea by Rudy doesn't change Ney's situation. The congressman continues to maintain his innocence. Tuohey said he hadn't seen the court papers filed Friday and couldn't comment in detail.

After leaving DeLay's staff at the end of 2000, Rudy joined Abramoff's lobbying team at the Greenberg Traurig law firm. Soon after, he signed on with Buckham at the Alexander Strategy Group. DeLay's wife, Christine, also worked there.

The case has Seattle ties. The plea agreement says Rudy, while working for DeLay in 2000, arranged for other House aides to travel to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and helped get Congress to pay for construction projects in the U.S. territory.

Rudy did this, in part, to help Abramoff and the Seattle-based law and lobbying firm Preston Gates & Ellis, where Abramoff worked at the time, according to the plea agreement.

The Marianas government was a client of Abramoff's and Preston Gates, which was hired to help keep Congress from imposing minimum-wage increases on the islands' garment factories.

The firm lost its lobbying contract there in late 1998. The contract was reinstated in August 2000. Two months later, the House Appropriations Committee, on which DeLay served, approved money for Marianas construction projects.

In another incident, Abramoff admitted in his own guilty plea in January that he funneled money through a Mercer Island religious foundation as part of an attempt to influence Rudy.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin said his Mercer Island foundation, Toward Tradition, took $50,000 from two Abramoff clients and, at Abramoff's suggestion, used it to hire Lisa Rudy, to organize a Washington, D.C., conference for the group. Toward Tradition is a conservative Judeo-Christian group for which Abramoff once served as chairman of the board.

Lapin said he and his board had no idea the money was part of Abramoff's scheme to influence Congress and, in this case, stop legislation to raise postal rates and ban online lotteries.

The business interests that paid the money in 2000 and 2001 said they didn't know it would be used to hire Lisa Rudy.

Compiled from The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

Material from Seattle Times reporter Alicia Mundy and The Seattle Times archives is included in this report.