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AUSTIN, Texas (Associated Press) December 5, 2005 — A judge dismissed the conspiracy charges Monday against Rep. Tom DeLay but refused to throw out the money-laundering counts, dashing the Texas congressman’s hopes for now of reclaiming his post as House majority leader.

Judge Pat Priest, who is presiding over the case against the Republican, issued the ruling after a hearing late last month in which DeLay’s attorney argued that the indictment was fatally flawed.

After he was indicted in September, DeLay was required under House rules to relinquish the leadership post he had held since early 2003. While Monday’s ruling was a partial victory for DeLay, he cannot reclaim his post because he remains under indictment.

“The court’s decision to dismiss Ronnie Earle’s numerous charges against Mr. DeLay underscores just how baseless and politically motivated the charges were,” DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said, referring to the Democratic district attorney who brought the case.

“Mr. DeLay is very encouraged by the swift progress of the legal proceedings and looks forward to his eventual and absolute exoneration based on the facts and the law.”

DeLay and two Republican fundraisers, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, are accused of illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate donations to 2002 Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature.

In asking that the case be thrown out, DeLay lawyer Dick DeGuerin argued that one of the charges — conspiracy to violate the Texas election code — did not even take effect until September 2003, a year after the alleged offenses occurred. Priest on Monday agreed, and dismissed that charge.

Prosecutors, however, said the crime of conspiracy was already on the books, and could be applied to the election code even though such uses were not explicitly in state law at the time.

The judge was unpersuaded by that argument, and dismissed the conspiracy charge.

With DeLay’s help, the GOP took control of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years, then pushed through a congressional redistricting plan engineered by DeLay that resulted in more Texas Republicans going to Congress.

Under Texas law, corporate money cannot be directly used for political campaigns, but it can be used for administrative purposes.