WASHINGTON -- Gov. Rick Perry of Texas remained unrepentant Sunday about a veto he made that led to his indictment on charges of abuse of power, saying that "if I had to do it again, I would make exactly the same decision."
The governor, who appeared on Fox News Sunday, also used the occasion to criticize President Barack Obama, saying he was responsible for a national erosion of the "rule of law."
Perry's appearance Sunday was his first national television interview since his indictment Friday on two felony counts stemming from his effort to pressure the Travis County district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat, to step down by threatening and carrying out a veto that would remove state funding for her office in an attempt to get her to resign after her arrest on a drunken-driving charge.
Grand jurors in Travis County charged Perry with abusing his official capacity and coercing a public servant.
On Fox, Perry laid out his complaint against Lehmberg -- saying she had almost three times the legal blood-alcohol limit and was "abusive" when arrested. He then added, of the indictment: "This is not the way we settle differences -- policy differences -- in this country. You don't do it with indictments. We settle our differences at the ballot box."
Perry repeatedly invoked the "rule of law," suggesting that it had suffered under Obama, whether in the scandal over the Internal Revenue Service, enforcement of border security or surveillance by the National Security Agency.
The governor said he had received support from a range of political figures, not just Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but also, less predictably, from the other end of the political spectrum. He quoted a Twitter post from David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to Obama, as saying the indictment seemed "pretty sketchy."
Axelrod's full post read: "Unless he was demonstrably trying to scrap the ethics unit for other than his stated reason, Perry indictment seems pretty sketchy."
Perry also cited Alan Dershowitz, a retired professor of constitutional and criminal law at Harvard University. Dershowitz told Newsmax, the conservative news website, that he was a "longtime Democrat who would never vote for Rick Perry," but that the indictment represented an unacceptable "criminalization of party differences."
On Saturday, in a news conference in Austin, Perry made some of the same arguments, saying that Lehmberg had lost public confidence, adding, "I wholeheartedly and unequivocally stand behind my veto."
The indictment Friday marked a change in fortunes for a man who has been an unrivaled power in Texas. Throughout his nearly 14 years as governor, Perry has filled every position on every board and commission in the state. That amounts to thousands of appointments.
But one powerful institution he does not control is the prosecutor's office in the state capital. The office has often been a potent irritant to state politicians.
At the time of Lehmberg's drunken-driving case, in which she pleaded guilty, her office's Public Integrity Unit had been conducting an investigation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which received a steady stream of lucrative state grants.
The investigation, since concluded, led to the indictment of one of the institute's former executives, who was accused of improperly awarding an $11 million grant to a Dallas firm. Depending on what deal was worked out if Lehmberg had resigned, Perry could have been in a position to name her successor.
Information for this article was contributed by Manny Fernandez of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/18/2014
