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When Tom Delay was forced to step down as House majority leader in September, much of the credit went to Ronnie Earle, the Texas prosecutor who indicted DeLay on charges of money laundering. But the most powerful man in Congress would not be facing a possible life sentence if not for the work of Craig McDonald.
As executive director of Texans for Public Justice, McDonald was the first to call the cops on DeLay. Back in 2003, McDonald decided to dig into the federal paperwork filed by DeLay's fund-raising group, Texans for a Republican Majority. DeLay, he suspected, had illegally used corporate donations to give Republicans control of the Texas statehouse -- enabling them to redraw legislative districts and send five new Republicans to Congress in 2004.
"We looked at the IRS reports, and lo and behold, DeLay's group was keeping two sets of books," McDonald says. "They'd raised over half a million dollars in corporate funds that were never reported to election authorities. We figured out where the money came from, what it was spent on, and marched down to the DA's office to demand that Ronnie Earle open an investigation."
To date, that inquiry has yielded forty-three indictments. DeLay himself stands accused of obscuring the source of $190,000 in illegal donations -- a class-one felony. "Craig is an extraordinarily determined investigator," says Ralph Nader. "That's what it takes with crooked politicians like DeLay." McDonald is modest, preferring to share the credit. As he puts it, "It takes a village to slay a dragon."
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