Perry's Problems

If Rick Perry had told Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg "I'll pay you if you step down and hand over the office currently investigating my underlings for political corruption to me" then few people would be arguing he had stepped beyond the boundaries of the law. If he had told the elected official "End your investigation of my people or I'll make sure you have no resources to fund investigations into anyone" then I doubt we would hear the likes of Salon, the New York Times, or David Axelrod complaining the allegations were frivolous.

Yet, for choosing his words more carefully, those are exactly the statements that Rick Perry made. For those few that don't know, Rosemary Lehmberg is in charge of the Public Integrity Unit, a state funded agency that investigates things such as public corruption, government and election codes, insurance fraud, and other related offenses.  Among the charges that the integrity unit was investigating was a conflict of interest allegation with one of Perry's "signature achievements", the "Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas" or CPRIT.

It seems that CPRIT gave an $11 million dollar grant to a company without going through the required peer review of the company first. That alone should raise some eyebrows, but further research uncovered that the company was largely funded by a friend of Perry's, who had donated both $241,000 to Perry's personal war chest as well as $1.6 million to CPRIT itself. This was the investigation that was going on when Rick Perry made his ultimatum. Had Rosemary Lehmberg stepped down, Perry himself would have had the authority to appoint someone to complete her term and complete the investigation into the conflict of interest allegations between Perry's appointees at CPRIT and Perry's campaign donors.

These appear to be the facts that pushed the Special Prosecutor, who had served in the Bush/Quayle administration, to decide the case should move forward.

Perry's campaign is hoping to keep the view of Lehmberg's actions during her infamous arrest, which admittedly were quite atrocious for a public official, as the focus of the trial. Even this, however, becomes difficult when you note that Lehmberg is the third Texas District Attorney convicted of a DWI during Perry's administration, but is the first to draw the Governor's ire. The other two attorneys, however, were Republicans and were not involved with investigating anyone attached to Rick Perry.