Krisit Willis, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D - TX), admitted stealing about $168,000 from Rep. Doggett’s campaign.
A former staffer for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett will be spending her upcoming weekends in jail for stealing about $168,000 from the Austin Democrat’s campaign coffers.
Kristi Willis, 38, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and four years of probation after pleading guilty Tuesday in state district court to aggregated misapplication of fiduciary property, a second-degree felony with a maximum sentence of 20 years.
She also admitted to stealing money from the Capital Area Democratic Women and from Democrat Andy Brown, then a candidate for the Texas House.
Willis could have (and should have) been given a maximum sentence of 20 years in a state prison for her crimes. Instead, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle accepted a plea bargain from Willis.
Willis will end up spending as little as 10 days in jail in a deal that lets her serve 48 hours on weekends and get credited for three days, plus three days of good behavior credit. She also can then petition to have the whole matter expunged from her record upon repayment.
This is the same crooked Ronnie Earle who has abused the power of his elected office time-and-time again to exact baseless political retribution against his opposition.
In his witchhunt against Tom Dealy, Earle convened six Grand Juries in an attempt to indict Delay. None of the first five Grand Juries could so much as indict a ham sandwich, much less Tom Delay. Not to be deterred, Mr. Earle convened a sixth Grand Jury (and I was wondering why my taxes where so high here in Travis County last year). Mr. Earle was finally able to find a Grand Jury who would hand down the indictment that he was begging for.
But even then, the grand jury only came through with a vaguely worded indictment for the last-resort charge of “conspiracyâ€.
What do you suppose Earle’s proposed sentence would have been if Willis had been the employee of a Republican? What if she had been working for Delay? Somehow I doubt very much that it Earle would have been so lenient.
Poor innocent put-upon Tom Delay. Snicker.
Left by MiGrant on September 5th, 2006 at 12:11 pm