Perry Lawyer Calls CPRIT Motive 'Red Herring'

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DALLAS - An investigator in the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney's office has signed an affidavit saying that Gov. Rick Perry was never a target of the unit's probe into misuse of funds from a state cancer research program.

Attorneys for Perry released the affidavit Aug. 21 to counter suggestions that Perry was seeking to curtail an investigation of his office and his campaign contributors by cutting off funding for the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney's office.

Perry was indicted Aug. 15 on two felony charges of misusing his office and state funds in an attempt to coerce Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign after her conviction for driving while intoxicated.

Perry said that his only motive in vetoing the $7.5 million of funding that provided the only support for the PIU was his outrage over Lehmberg's conduct.

"Despite the otherwise good work the Public Integrity Unit's employees, I cannot in good conscience support continued State funding for an office with statewide jurisdiction at a time when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public's confidence," Perry wrote in his line-item veto of the spending measure in Senate Bill 1 on June 14, 2013. "This unit is in no other way held accountable to state taxpayers, except through the State budgetary process. I therefore object to and disapprove of this appropriation."

The veto came after threats to cut funding unless Lehmberg resigned.

Perry would have then been allowed to appoint Travis County's first Republican DA. The Republican Party did not field a candidate against Lehmberg in her 2012 re-election campaign.

Perry's critics note that three Republican district attorneys in Texas had been convicted of driving while intoxicated before Lehmberg and that he had made no statements about them remaining in office.

At the time Perry vetoed the funding, the PIU had made no statement about where the investigation was headed.

"It is a large one [case], and one that is still in the investigative phase," Gregg Cox, head of the PIU, testified to the House Appropriations Committee on June 20, six days after Perry's veto.

With the indictment of a single executive from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas on Dec. 6, 2013, the Travis County DA's office pronounced the investigation closed.

The affidavit released Aug. 21 came from Chris Walling, a former investigator for the Travis County district attorney's office who was part of the CPRIT investigation. Walling's affadavit says that special prosecutor Michael McCrum contacted him during the grand jury investigation of Perry. Walling said he told McCrum that Perry was never a target of the investigation.

"I made it clear to him that there was absolutely no evidence even suggesting wrongdoing on the part of Governor Perry and in no uncertain terms that, after a lengthy investigation, no evidence was found to suggest wrong doing on the part of the Governor, the Governor's office, nor any Board Member of CPRIT," Walling's affidavit said.

The PIU has not said whether it gave Perry assurances that he would not be investigated before the investigation began. The Bond Buyer's calls to Cox for comment were not returned.

CPRIT, an agency created by voters in 2007 to spend $3 billion of bond money on cancer research, came under investigation after an oversight committee disclosed that the agency had approved an $11 million grant to Peloton without scientific review.

One of Peloton's initial investors was Dallas philanthropist Peter O'Donnell, a friend of Perry's who has donated $241,000 to his campaigns since 2000, according to the Texas Tribune, which cited campaign records.

The Dallas Morning News reported that O'Donnell had also given $1.6 million to the CPRIT Foundation. State law prohibits the CPRIT Foundation from accepting donations from CPRIT grant recipients.

The public integrity unit eventually indicted Jerry Cobbs, CPRIT's former chief commercialization officer, for allegedly deceiving CPRIT officials about the grant given to Peloton Therapeutics.

The CPRIT scandal led to numerous resignations of top officials and a 2013 legislative reform of the agency.

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