Via The Hill: DeLay: FBI ‘running amok’

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is calling on the Justice Department either to drop its investigation of his wife and former political associates or else to bring charges quickly.

DeLay said he has given the FBI documents exonerating his wife, but an associate of the former lawmaker said that agents have followed up with a fresh round of subpoenas.

[…]

The Justice Department’s persistence shows it has run amok, DeLay says, echoing a charge leveled last week by Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) in response to reports that he is under federal investigation.

“They’re not going after me,” DeLay said of the FBI. “They’re going after other people and they’re questioning the other people about whether they know anything I may have done. And we’ve given them all the records and that’s the problem they’re having.”

DeLay said the evidence shows that his wife did not accept improper payments: “She did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.”

Speaking after a meeting with former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) on Capitol Hill, DeLay said, “We have cooperated with everything. We’ve given them everything, including computers; they’ve taken computers that I had here. They’ve gotten everything that’s got anything to do with my life.”

I do not know enough to comment on the merits of the investigation, but this story struck me because if I recall properly, DeLay has been quite the proponent of expanding governmental powers, including those of agencies like the FBI, to gather information on citizens in the hopes of rooting out terrorists. As such it is more than a little ironic that DeLay finds the disruption of his life in the pursuit of justice by perhaps over-zealous bureaucrats to be so onerous.

After all, they are just trying to enforce the law and if Tom and Christine have nothing to hide, what’s the harm?