The Huntsman interests contributed $20,000 to DeLay's legal defense fund in the last quarter of 2004, as the House Ethics Committee was investigating three different complaints against the House leader. The committee wrote letters admonishing DeLay in all three cases.

Now DeLay is under renewed scrutiny for allegedly accepting improper campaign contributions, taking trips paid for by lobbyists or business interests and paying family members with campaign funds.

In 2004, DeLay spent $399,806 from the Tom DeLay Legal Defense Fund. He raised $434,500, according to disclosure forms.

That includes the maximum contribution of $5,000 each from Jon M. Huntsman Sr., Huntsman Corp., the Huntsman Political Action Committee, and Peter Huntsman, the company's chief executive officer.

Combined, they appear to have been the leading contributor to DeLay's legal defense.

“I don't think anything should be read into it other than the fact that the fund existed and we made the contribution,” said Don Olsen, spokesman for the Huntsman Corp.

Olsen said the company gives to politicians on both sides of the aisle and had previously contributed to DeLay. Records show a $4,500 contribution to DeLay's political action committee in the last election cycle.

“Giving someone $20,000 is certainly a way to get attention,” said Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for the group Common Cause, which has been a vocal critic of DeLay. “To us this would just be one more way to get closer to DeLay. A significant contribution like that, donors are looking to gain access.”

DeLay used his muscle in 2003 to insert a provision into the Energy Bill that would have benefited makers of the fuel additive MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, including Huntsman Chemical, one of the nation's largest MTBE producers.

MTBE is used to help gasoline burn cleaner, but it was found to be leaking from underground tanks and makers of the additive had been sued in nearly two dozen states seeking billions of dollars in cleanup costs.

The provision added by DeLay and then House Energy Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., would have immunized the MTBE makers from liability. Opposition to the MTBE language helped kill the Energy Bill in the last Congress, but it is once again in the bill before the House Energy Committee.

Olsen said the company had reasons to support DeLay beyond his work on MTBE.

“You give your political dollars to those places where you think you can have the most impact for the good of your organization and the good of the industry, so surely MTBE is an issue, but it would be incorrect to say it's the only issue,” Olsen said.

Last January, Huntsman also hired the Washington firm Alexander Strategies to lobby House members on the Energy Bill.

One of the three lobbyists working for Huntsman is Tony Rudy.

Rudy spent five years working for DeLay, eventually serving as his deputy chief of staff.