Who is Tim Berry?

A couple of months ago, I looked at the players in this scandal who might be offered immunity by the Justice Department. In that post, I offered up a guess that former DeLay Chief of Staff Susan Hirschmann was a good candidate.

The qualifications to make this list are (1) Candidate obviously must have been an aide to Tom DeLay; (2) Candidate must have violated some law or regulation that the DoJ can hang over him/her; (3) Candidate must have had a responsible enough position to be able to provide useful information to the Justice Department; yet (4) Candidate must not be so enmeshed in the scandal that the DoJ wouldn't consider immunity. [Edwin Buckham fails test #3. If Buckham gets immunity, I'll go ballastic.]

Given those constraints I want to hedge my bets and throw another name in the immunized DeLay aide hat: Former Chief of Staff Timothy Berry.

Admittedly, the tea leaves rather small with respect to this speculation. But first, a little factual background courtesy of the Washington Post:

A week later, Abramoff and his partners leased a corporate jet to ferry congressional staffers down to Tampa for the Super Bowl game and a night of gambling aboard a SunCruz ship. Among those aboard were DeLay aide Tim Berry, who is now DeLay's chief of staff, and two staffers to Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, by then a newly minted lobbyist working for Abramoff, was there, too.

Berry failed to report the trip on his disclosure forms. A DeLay spokesman said Berry had no idea SunCruz paid for the trip. He thought it was a Republican fundraising trip allowable under House rules.

The St. Petersburg Times hints that Mr. Berry's trip may not have been legitimate due to the fact that Jack Abramoff had funded it:

None of [the Congressional staffers, including Berry] filed a report for the trip, as congressional rules would require for a privately paid trip to a meeting or speaking engagement. Rules allow them to accept travel expenses for meetings or "fact-finding" trips, but there's been no indication there were any such events over Super Bowl weekend. Other rules prohibit members of Congress and staffers from accepting a gift valued at $50 or more, or a total of $100 or more in a single year.

Mr. Berry meets my criteria:

1. Mr. Berry was an aide to DeLay.
2. Mr. Berry may be on the hook for wrongdoing.
3. Mr. Berry's position as DeLay Chief of Staff would provide him with extraordinary insight into operations of the office.
4. It doesn't appear that Mr. Berry was involved in this scandal any deeper than the Super Bowl trip.

Don't be surprised if you hear Tim Berry's name again.