Pardon Hillary
She blasts Bush over Libby case, but the Clintons abused the power
One of the weaknesses of Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign is that imagining her in the Oval Office brings to mind the scandals that marked her husband's time as President. Especially now, when she is trotting old Bubba out to rev up the faithful, the sordid past undermines her and boosts Barack Obama's promise for a different kind of politics.
The list of investigations, allegations and a few convictions during the Clinton administration was so long and tangled that the cases now morph into a fog. Distinctions among Travelgate and Whitewater and FileGate and GiftGate and the $100,000 commodities windfall get lost, with only Monica and the stained blue dress forever vivid.
Now and then, that fog is pierced by something that reminds us what a grubby time it was. The case of Lewis (Scooter) Libby does that.
When President Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence Monday, Sen. Clinton was quick to denounce him. Under Bush, she said, "cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."
She's right in general, though the arguments on Bush's behalf this time are considerable. But when I stumbled on a list of Bill Clinton's pardons posted on the Drudge Report, I was instantly back on Jan. 20, 2001. That's when Clinton, in his final hours as President, opened the floodgates, issuing 140 pardons and 36 commutations.
The list of people Clinton let off the hook was a rogue's gallery of drug dealers, petty criminals and the politically well-connected. One was Bill Clinton's brother Roger, one was a college friend and another was a former business partner. Their lawyers' connections were key in others, including the lawyer for a man who laundered more than $100 million for the Cali cartel.
Some cases reeked of blatant corruption. Hillary's brother, Hugh Rodham, collected $400,000 from two big-time criminals who got pardons. When the news of the payments broke, the Clintons claimed surprise and demanded Rodham give the money back.
But Bill Clinton never gave Denise Rich her money back. The former wife of disgraced financier Marc Rich gave $450,000 to Clinton's presidential library and raised and contributed more than $1 million to campaigns of the Clintons and other Democrats. Her husband, who had fled the country rather than fight charges of massive tax fraud and trading with Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, suddenly received a pardon. "Utterly false," Bill Clinton later said about charges he sold the pardon. "There was absolutely no quid pro quo."
Among those he cited who supported the pardon was Scooter Libby, a lawyer for Marc Rich.
Denise Rich, asked on TV whether she "bought" access to the Clintons, said, "Oh yes, that's true, of course." A grand jury looked at it, but no charges were brought.
Another Clinton pardon that drew a grand jury probe involved four Hasidic men from suburban New York. They had cheated the government out of tens of millions in anti-poverty programs and received prison sentences of up to 6-1/2 years. They, too, got a get-out-of-jail card, though it was not necessarily free.
As Daily News reporters later proved, leaders of the sect the men belonged to hoped that by supporting Hillary's 2000 Senate campaign, they would be rewarded with a pardon.
"They thought if they unilaterally showed support for Hillary, maybe they would get a pardon," their lawyer told The News.
And that's just what happened. On the advice of the group's rabbi, the community voted for Clinton over Republican Rick Lazio by 1,400-to-12. A month later, that rabbi had a White House meeting with Bill and Hillary Clinton and pleaded for the pardon. He got it. Again, a grand jury came up empty.
Clinton said yesterday that her husband didn't play politics with pardons, but that Bush has with Libby. Depends on how you define politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment