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THE RESIGNATION OF JIM WRIGHT : Wright Rebuttal on Wife’s Job, Mallick’s Role and Book Deal

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Times Staff Writer

Jim Wright is not, by training, an attorney. But as his extraordinary address Wednesday to the jury of his peers demonstrated, the House Speaker has all the talents of a fine Texas lawyer.

With his hands resting on his hips, his eyebrows flaring, his brow glistening with sweat, Wright got the chance for which he said he had “ached.” The chance to “clear the air.” The chance to stand up for what is “right and honorable.” The chance to clear his name.

Six weeks earlier, the House Ethics Committee, a panel of 12 of Wright’s peers, charged the Speaker with 69 instances of financial impropriety. After a 10-month investigation by a special attorney, the committee said in essence that Wright appeared to have schemed to get around House rules limiting what members can accept as gifts and as outside income.

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Equivalent to Indictment

The charges were the congressional equivalent of an indictment. Wright would still have an opportunity to defend himself in front of the committee before the committee would ask the House to find him guilty and approve punishment.

By instead announcing his intention to resign as Speaker and then as a House member, Wright used Wednesday’s speech to defend himself.

He insisted that he faced not 69 charges but only three. The larger number, he said, represented multiple counts of three basic charges. He offered rebuttals to all three:

1--Betty Wright’s employment.

The Ethics Committee held that Wright and his wife, Betty, had improperly received $145,000 in gifts from Ft. Worth businessman George A. Mallick Jr. in the form of four years of salary for Betty Wright at $18,000 a year, as well as the use of a luxury car and an apartment in Ft. Worth.

Wright insisted that the salary, car and apartment represented compensation for services provided by Betty Wright to a company called Mallightco, an investment partnership wholly owned by the Wrights and Mallick and his wife.

Viewed as Sweetheart Deal

Richard J. Phelan, special counsel to the Ethics Committee, viewed the investment firm as a sweetheart deal. Mallick put money in, he told the committee, and the Wrights took it out.

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Wright offered a different version. He said that he and the Mallicks were too busy to operate the company. So the work fell to his wife.

“How the committee could conclude that there was no evidence that Betty performed duties is very puzzling to me,” Wright said.

He ticked off a few of her tasks. “She studied and followed the stock market on regional stocks,” he said. “She went to New York and studied the gemstone business.” Later, she studied “the wine culture industry.” She considered an investment “in the movie ‘Annie,’ ” he said. She even examined the possibility “of building apartment complexes for young people.”

Betty Wright recommended against making all these investments, Wright said. “It’s lucky for us that she did,” he added, “because people that invested in them lost money.”

2--Mallick’s legislative interest.

The Ethics Committee held that Wright violated House rules by accepting “gifts” from Mallick because Mallick had a direct interest in federal legislation.

“Now, how do they arrive at that suggestion?” Wright asked the House. “I’ve known this man more than 25 years. He’s been my friend--good, decent, hard-working man of Lebanese extraction. His father had a wholesale grocery store there. His grandfather came with a wagon, a cart.”

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Not Registered Lobbyist

Mallick, Wright said, did not meet any of the House rules’ definition of those who have an interest in legislation. He was not a registered lobbyist, he did not employ a registered lobbyist, he did not operate a political action committee and he was not someone who was known to have “a distinct and special interest in influencing or affecting the legislative process.

“Never once in all the years I have known this man has he ever asked me to vote for or against any piece of legislation--not once,” Wright said.

The ethics panel said that Mallick qualified because of his extensive oil and gas investments and his special interest in taxes affecting the oil industry. “Every taxpayer’s got an interest in the tax code,” Wright countered.

(In Ft. Worth, Mallick commented to the Associated Press on Wright’s decision to step down: “I’m sad. The city of Ft. Worth and the state of Texas have lost a very, very good public servant. But I think that you will hear more from Jim Wright in the future.”

(Speaking later on Dallas radio station KRLD, Mallick said he hoped Wright’s announcement would cool off the anger and political fire in Congress.

(“Let’s hope that what he did today will douse that fire, will dull that fire,” Mallick told the station. “Because if it doesn’t, and they continue with this eye for an eye, they’re all going to be walking around blind up there. And who is going to see the way to lead our country?”)

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3--The Speaker’s book.

The Ethics Committee said that Wright deliberately evaded House limits on income from speaking fees by urging groups he addressed to buy boxes of his book, “Reflections of a Public Man.”

Organizations such as the Fertilizer Institute, the National Assn. of Realtors and the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Assn. bought thousands of dollars worth of Wright’s book, the committee held. At times, it said, they paid for more copies than were shipped to them.

To the committee, Wright told the House, this “was kind of a sham and a subterfuge . . . a scheme for me to exceed and violate the outside earning limitations of the members of Congress. Do you think I’d do something like that?

Little Monetary Gain

“The purpose of the book--$3.25 is what I got out of it and I didn’t get any advance--was to publish something that could be sold at a small price and get wide distribution. If monetary gain had been my primary interest, don’t you think I would have gone to one of the big Madison Avenue publications, the houses there that give you a big advance?”

He pointed out that the author of “Mayflower Madam” received a $750,000 advance for her book. His predecessor as House Speaker, Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), got a $1-million book advance. Author Kitty Kelley recently received a $2-million advance for a forthcoming book on Nancy Reagan. “As I understand it, it is not even her authorized biography,” he added.

Wright said he was distressed that the Ethics Committee believes he would sell his honor for a few thousand dollars.

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“I don’t want the money,” he said. “That’s not important. What’s important is the person’s honor and his integrity.”

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