Posted on 09/30/2016 5:39:33 PM PDT by maggief
Tough ethics rules meant to slow the revolving door between public office and the private sector were announced Wednesday for top officials of the incoming Clinton administration.
They are the strongest standards any president has asked of his employees, said Warren Christopher, Clinton's transition director.
The rules would bar appointees making more than $104,000 a year from lobbying their former government agencies for five years after they leave office.
The officials also will be required to make a lifetime pledge never to represent foreign governments or foreign political parties. Christopher said the rules may be extended to bar representation of any business firm that has foreign government ownership.
Clinton's U.S. trade negotiators will be required to pledge they will not lobby for foreign governments or foreign business entities for five years.
Christopher said the rules will cover 1,100 top political appointees, from Cabinet secretaries to deputy assistant secretaries and general counsels. About 100 people in the president's executive office also will be covered.
Christopher said Clinton will impose the rules through an executive order immediately after he takes office Jan. 20. Thus the rules will be on the books before Clinton appointees take their jobs.
(snip)
The new Clinton ethics rules were written against a background of concern that bans on future employment would deter many talented people from joining the new administration.
With this in mind, Clinton approved rules that allow scientists and other highly technical specialists to serve in government with the understanding that they can leave, join a nonprofit institution such as a college or state and local government, and immediately lobby for their new employer's interests or seek government grants and contracts, said Cheryl Mills, a Clinton aide.
Christopher said the Clinton administration would seek to enforce the rules by asking a federal court to act against any violator by issuing an injunction against lobbying or by confiscating income from lobbying or other banned activity.
SOURCE: Index terms: CLINTON
ETHICDateline: LITTLE ROCK, Ark.
Record: 036
(no link)
Stanford’s Washington Presence - Clinton administration loaded with alumni of law school
San Francisco Chronicle (CA) (Published as THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE) - May 5, 1993
Author/Byline: Mark SimonEdition: FINAL/PSection: NEWSPage: A13Column: PENINSULA INSIDER
There are enough Stanford Law School alumni in key Clinton administration positions for them to hold their own caucus — second in number only to Yale Law School alumni, including the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The most recent Stanford Law alum named to a key post was Anne K. Bingaman, who received her J.D. from Stanford in 1968. A member of the Stanford Board of Trustees, she was named last week to head the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, the first woman appointed to the post.
But Bingaman is just the latest of the Stanford Law alums to be appointed to the Clinton administration. The most notable is Secretary of State Warren Christopher (Law School Class of 1949). Cheryl Mills (Class of 1990) was a member of the Clinton transition team and has been serving as a White House associate counsel to the president.
The U.S. Senate recently confirmed the appointment of Ronald Noble (Class of 1982) as undersecretary of enforcement in the Treasury Department, which will put him in charge of the investigation of the events involving the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.
Larry Irving (president of the Class of 1979) has been nominated director of the National Telecommunications Information Administration, an arm of the Commerce Department that traditionally serves as the president’s chief adviser on telecommunications policy.
In addition to the appointments, two Class of 1984 classmates were elected to Congress in November — Eric Fingerhut, D-Ohio, and Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles.
(snip)
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Counsel emerges as riveting figure in impeachment trial - Long-serving official becomes 3rd black person to speak from Senate floor
Dallas Morning News, The (TX) (Published as The Dallas Morning News) - January 24, 1999
Author/Byline: Ann Scales, Boston Globe
EXCERPT
Ms. Mills, a Stanford Law School graduate, is one of Mr. Clinton’s longest-serving lawyers. She was the third White House lawyer to argue on his behalf, following on the heels of White House counsel Charles F.C. Ruff and special counsel Gregory Craig.
Her job before the Senate was to poke holes in the Republican prosecutors’ case by rebutting charges that Mr. Clinton obstructed justice when his secretary, Betty Currie, retrieved gifts from Monica Lewinsky.
Ms. Mills said Ms. Currie testified before the grand jury that Mr. Clinton had not ordered her to get the gifts from Ms. Lewinsky. Ms. Mills said it was an insult to Ms. Currie to suggest that her loyalty to Mr. Clinton “breeds dishonesty.”
In opening her argument, Ms. Mills said that “as a lawyer, as an American and as an African-American,” she strongly holds the principle of the rule of law.
“It is what many have struggled and died for, the right to be equal before the law,” she said, speaking deliberately and using the cadence of her voice for effect.
“I’d hate to take her on in a courtroom,” said Minyon Moore, the White House deputy political director who took a break from working to watch Ms. Mills.
At the White House, Ms. Mills is teasingly referred to as “Dr. No,” for having a tendency during Mr. Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996 to veto certain expenditures to avoid possible ethics violations.
She joined Mr. Clinton’s campaign in 1992, moving from the Washington area to Little Rock, Ark., to serve as a deputy general counsel during the Clinton-Gore campaign. She joined the White House staff after the inauguration, rising from an associate counsel to holding the dual title of deputy assistant and deputy counsel to the president.
A close associate at the White House, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Ms. Mills “puts a face on the president and his commitment to civil rights” and that she offered a potent counterpunch to Republican prosecutors who accused Mr. Clinton last week of rolling back civil rights by his conduct in the Jones case.
“If you think about it, there is absolutely no way something like this could have happened even 10 years ago . . . where an African-American woman would be arguing on behalf of the president, really in any capacity, let alone in a capacity this momentous,” Ms. Mills’ colleague said.
Distributed by New York Times News Service.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-15/news/mn-24214_1_white-house
Lawyer Loses Whitewater Notes to Car Burglar
July 15, 1995
WASHINGTON — A burglar broke into the car of a White House lawyer preparing for Senate questioning in the Whitewater affair and stole copies of her handwritten notes about the handling of the late Vincent Foster’s papers, a source familiar with the matter said Friday.
Foster, who was the deputy White House counsel, died in 1993.
The blue gym bag stolen by the burglar also contained copies of the file that White House lawyer Cheryl Mills kept on the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., said the source, who is close to the White House and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
The binder of Waco material included copies of Mills’ notes and some correspondence between the White House and Congress, said the source.
(snip)
December 23, 1996
A month after learning about suspicious donations to the first family’s legal defense fund, six senior White House aides met with the fund’s director and expressed concerns about offending donors if the money was returned, officials confirm. The high-level meeting on May 9, which is likely to draw the interest of investigators, included the president’s most trusted adviser, Bruce Lindsey, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, the officials said. The purpose was to discuss $460,000 in two large manila envelopes that had been delivered to the defense fund on March 21 by Charles Yah Lin Trie, an Asian-American businessman and friend of the president. The money was eventually returned because of suspicions about its origins.
(snip)
Also at the meeting were Margaret Williams, chief of staff for the first lady; deputy chiefs of staff Harold Ickes and Evelyn Liebermen; White House counsel Jack Quinn and associate counsel Cheryl Mills.
A Justice Department task force looking at Democratic Party fund-raising added the defense fund to its probe last week and issued subpoenas to the White House and the fund.
More than $2 million already has been returned by the Democratic party or the president’s legal fund. Disclosures have revealed a sloppy fund-raising system that allowed hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations from prohibited foreign entities or questionable sources to be collected.
White House Links Dead Aide To Hiring of Ex-Security Chief
By ROBERT D. HERSHEY JR.JULY 1, 1996
The White House said today that the initial decision to hire Craig Livingstone as the head of the office that handled F.B.I. background checks was made by Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993.
Appearing today on the ABC News program “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos, a senior adviser to the President, gave the Administration’s first account of how Mr. Livingstone had been hired.
Mr. Stephanopoulos said Mr. Livingstone, who resigned last week as head of the White House security office in the face of blistering bipartisan criticism about his role in obtaining the files, had later been approved for the post by William F. Kennedy 3d, another White House lawyer with special responsibility for security.
Ever since the disclosure earlier this month that the White House security office under Mr. Livingstone improperly obtained hundreds of files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Congressional Republicans have been pressing to determine how he got his job.
Last week Mr. Livingstone told a House panel that he did not know who had made the decision, and the White House said it was not sure and could not ask for fear of interfering with the investigation of the episode by the Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr.
Mr. Stephanopoulos said today that Mr. Livingstone had been hired by the counsel’s office. He said that Mr. Livingstone found out about the White House opening from Christine Varney, the Cabinet secretary, after he had worked on the planning of Mr. Clinton’s inauguration, although Mr. Stephanopoulos said he did not know whether Ms. Varney had recommended him.
Then, Mr. Stephanopoulos said, Mr. Livingstone met jointly with Mr. Foster and Cheryl Mills, an associate White House counsel, before “Vince decided to put him in the security office on a temporary basis.”
(snip)
Nothing more than an attempt to suppress the competition.
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/124146575/
GOP Fund Probers Assailed - Demos Allege Bankrupt Tactics
Tulsa World (OK) (Published as Tulsa World) - November 8, 1997
EXCERPTS
Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa. “We are chasing fanciful goblins. “ At the hearing, a White House lawyer conceded for the second time in two days that she did not turn over a document later deemed relevant to a House subcommittee’s investigation of a White House computer database.
“You were splitting hairs in order not to comply,” Burton told Deputy White House Counsel Cheryl Mills.
Mills said that in September 1996, she saw the June 28, 1994, memo written by presidential aide Marsha Scott, titled “Recommendation for Design of New Database. “ Scott was charged with setting up the White House database, known as WhoDB.
Mills said she did not turn the memo over to the committee because she believed it referred to another database.
(snip)
Mills was repeatedly questioned about why it took her office seven months to find the videotapes that had been sought by congressional investigators.
Mills said she did not know of videotapes of coffees that Clinton had for donors until they were discovered last month.
“How many times have you been asked that question? “ queried Rep.
Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
“I have been asked that question at least 35 times,” Mills replied.
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Clinton lawyers accused of stonewalling
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR) - November 7, 1997
Author/Byline: BY TERRY LEMONS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
WASHINGTON — The top House campaign-finance investigator accused President Clinton’s legal team Thursday of an “unprecedented” delay in turning over fund-raising records ranging from coffee videotapes to computer records.
(snip)
Ruff and White House Deputy Counsel Cheryl Mills testified during a meeting that stretched six hours. It marked the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee’s second hearing into fund-raising questions from the 1996 campaign and the first session since the Senate indefinitely suspended its hearings last week.
(snip)
The delay in turning over the videotapes and computer database records reflects a White House strategy that has been seen in Whitewater and other Clinton troubles, Burton said.
(snip)
On another issue, Republicans questioned Ruff and Mills about the year-long delay in turning over records involving a White House computer database. In a document released last week, a presidential aide wrote that the White House wanted the information “integrated” with Democratic National Committee computers “so we can share” information.
The note added that Clinton “wants this.” The document also said a meeting would be called involving several White House aides, including longtime Arkansan Marsha Scott, who was spearheading the project.
White House spokesman Barry Toiv said the White House database information was never integrated into the Democratic computer system.
Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., said using a taxpayer-funded White House computer to help the Democrats amounted to a potential “illegal activity.” The database included information about Clinton supporters, including party donors.
“There is nothing to suggest a misuse of government assets,” Ruff countered.
Ruff agreed with Republican suggestions the database document should have been released earlier. The document was found last year before Ruff became the top White House lawyer.
Mills said she and former White House Counsel Jack Quinn made the decision last year not to turn over the document. She said it did not fall under a seven-point subpoena issued by McIntosh’s subcommittee.
“It didn’t ask for all documents,” Mills said.
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/110298/LA0692.shtml#.V-8XzmW9HFI
Judiciary committee may summon Lindsey
Published: Monday, November 02, 1998
EXCERPT
Two other White House lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Lanny Breuer, are balking at answering Starr questions, based on privilege claims by Clinton.
Mills, a deputy White House counsel, refused to testify about conversations she had with private lawyers and grand jury witnesses such as Mrs. Currie.
“Did you ever discuss with Ms. Currie directly her testimony in the grand jury?” a prosecutor asked Mills.
“Well, if I did, I believe that would be the subject of a privilege,” Mills replied.
Mills’ grand jury appearance came seven months after Mrs. Currie first testified to the grand jury.
“It’s possible that I have” had discussions about the substance of the secretary’s testimony but “I don’t have a particular recollection of doing so,” Mills testified. “I talk to Betty Currie relatively frequently. She’s a friend of mine.”
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