Washington ? Key Republicans, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, denied on Thursday any connection between donations from a financially strapped Kansas utility and its being granted an exemption from federal law.

Federal law forbids the seeking or granting of government business in exchange for donations.

The documents state that executives of Westar Energy wanted to use the tens of thousands of dollars in donations they made to Republicans to get “a seat at the table” of a House-Senate conference committee on the Bush administration’s energy plan.

The exemption, from a law intended to protect shareholders and ratepayers, was inserted into that plan, then pulled after the utility came under grand jury investigation.

The documents show at least one Westar executive questioned why he was contributing to GOP candidates he did not know.

The answer, according to the documents: DeLay, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, Rep. Joe Barton and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby were needed for their help on the exemption and had asked that donations be directed, not to their own campaigns, but to those of fellow Republicans in tight races in 2002.

Among the beneficiaries were a DeLay fund-raising committee that got $25,000; Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who got $1,000 from a Westar executive; and Tom Young, Shelby’s former chief of staff, whose unsuccessful run for Congress attracted at least $7,200 in Westar executives’ donations.

“DeLay is the House Majority Leader” and “his agreement is necessary before the House Conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill,” one Westar executive wrote in an e-mail encouraging the donations.

“Shimkus is a close associate of Billy Tauzin and Joe Barton, who are key House Conferees on our legislation. They have made this request in lieu of contributions made to their own campaigns.”

The same e-mail added: “Tom Young is Senator Shelby’s Chief of Staff who is running for the House in Alabama” and Shelby “made a substantial request of us for supporting Young’s campaign.”

Mary Jo White, a former U.S. Attorney for New York who oversaw Westar’s internal investigations of campaign finance wrongdoing and Sen. Robert Torricelli’s ethics, led the internal probe of Westar executives.

Barton, R-Texas, said he introduced the exemption long before the donations. Shelby says he did not ask the company to make donations. And DeLay’s office said there was no arrangement to push the company’s request through Congress in exchange for donations.

“It’s presumptuous for someone to think that by contributing to candidates who have challenging elections there’s something they’ll get in return other than helping a candidate win,” DeLay spokesman Stuart Roy said. He said the documents’ descriptions were “simply incorrect and inappropriate.”

Barton’s office said flatly, “There was no quid pro quo whatsoever.”

Barton was one of the lawmakers assigned to the conference committee that completed Bush’s energy plan in 2002, and he introduced the exemption that would have freed Westar from unwanted regulatory oversight. The exemption was a critical component of Topeka, Kan.-based Westar’s plan to split its regulated utility from the rest of its businesses.

Kansas regulators had already barred the company from splitting in two, and Westar then tried to make its case through Congress.