Peter Cloeren

Peter Cloeren is president and majority shareholder of The Cloeren Company, also known as Cloeren Incorporated, a plastics manufaturing company in Orange, Texas.

"led astray" by Tom DeLay
In June 1998, Cloeren "pleaded guilty to paying his employees to funnel $37,000 to a Texas Republican congressional candidate. He has also told the Federal Election Commission and The Hill's Jock Friedly who led him astray. The guilty parties, Cloeren alleges, include none other than Tom DeLay, the House Majority Whip. A DeLay aide called Cloeren 'a liar, a cheat, and a fraud' before insisting that he not be quoted and threatening never to speak to The Hill again," Susan Threadgill wrote in the November 1998 issue of The Washington Monthly.

"Of special interest to criminal investigators in 2004 was DeLay's role in funneling illegal campaign contributions through corporate accounts to finance GOP candidates. Peter Cloeren, a Texas businessman and loyal Republican donor, charged that DeLay orchestrated a campaign contribution conduit scheme in which money was funneled through a variety of candidates and organizations to support a Republican candidate from Texas.

"Cloeren told a congressional investigator that DeLay told him about this scheme and showed him how to funnel cash through a corporation called Triad, which controlled non-profit foundations that held money for these purposes. Money was also illegally shuffled through other campaigns, Cloeren stated.

"While DeLay earned only the ire of campaign finance reform activists and others interested in ethics, Cloeren was fined $400,000 and received a 2-year community service sentence for his role in DeLay's campaign scheme," Joel Wendland wrote March 21, 2005, in Political Affairs Magazine.

In March 2006, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle issued a subpoena requesting "records relating to contributions made by Citizens United Political Victory Fund through Peter Cloeren, Patricia Cloeren or Cloeren, Inc."

External articles

 * "Pundit Pap," American Politics Journal, August 9, 1998. Scroll down to "Fox News Sunday".
 * Campaign Notebook : "Challenger urged to return donation," Houston Chronicle, August 18, 1998.
 * "Co. founder Peter Cloeren Sr. dies at 85," Converting Magazine, March 11, 2002.
 * "In remembrance," Converting Magazine (FindArticles.com), April 2002.
 * Todd J. Gillman and Christy Hopper, "'98 affidavit alleges he told businessman how to skirt limits; GOP leader calls claims partisan," Texans for Public Justice, July 16, 2004.
 * Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, "Delay Inc.." Salon, October 4, 2004: "In this exclusive excerpt from 'The Hammer,' Lou Dubose and Jan Reid expose how Tom DeLay turned campaign fundraising into a shadowy enterprise."
 * Lou Dubose, "The decay of DeLay. New and spreading scandals plague House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his political empire," Salon, October 4, 2004.
 * Kit R. Roane, Dan Morrison and Carol Flake Chapman, "Will the hammer fall? Once more, an ethics storm is swirling around Tom DeLay, but he's hanging tough," U.S. News & World Report, March 20, 2005. See page 2.
 * Paul Kiel, "Ronnie Earle Heads Back into the Past," TPMmuckraker, March 8, 2006.