Posted on 04/19/2004 7:02:20 AM PDT by kattracks
The Federal Election Commission has opened a formal probe into a star-studded Aug. 12, 2000 Hollywood fundraiser for then-first lady Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, Fox News Channel reported on Sunday.
And some say the development is at least partly responsible for Sen. Clinton's claim that she's not interested in joining John Kerry's presidential ticket.
The allegations themselves are not new: Two of the event's organizers, Hollywood producer Peter Paul and charity fundraiser Aaron Tonken, have detailed a series of transactions undertaken in conjunction with Hillary's campaign that could violate FEC regulations, with Paul charging that the campaign failed to report nearly $2 million he spent producing the event.
The question for the Clintons, not to mention the Democratic Party, is: What prompted the FEC to finally get off the dime?
Three years ago the Commission snubbed requests from Paul's legal team, the Washington-based group Judicial Watch, for a probe. And the Justice Department left him languishing in a Brazilian jail on unrelated stock fraud charges until last September.
But months before Paul was returned to the U.S. to stand trial in the stock case, Hollywood fundraiser Aaron Tonken began cooperating with federal probers. Tonken has said that he's a star witness against the Clintons in a federal grand jury probe in New York into Mr. Clinton's Marc Rich pardon - and has been cooperating with the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who's probing his fundraising activities.
As the case reheats, some Democrats sound like they sense trouble.
"This is nonsense," Hank Sheinkopf, who worked on the Clinton-Gore reelection team in 1996, told Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn. "If there was a case here, why did the government wait so long?"
Asked about a paper trail that reportedly backs both Tonken and Paul's account, Sheinkopf said that even if the charges were proved, they would be "a violation of [FEC] regulations, not a violation of law."
True enough. But grand juries in New York and Los Angeles are conducting parallel investigations into possible criminality, with the focus shifting to whether witnesses have made false statements to probers in the case.
A recent conviction on similar charges has home decorating diva Martha Stewart looking at the business end of a substantial jail term.
And while prosecutors say publicly that Mrs. Clinton isn't part of any criminal probe, the investigation is moving perilously close to her.
In December the feds announced they were investigating David Rosen, the finance chairman of her Senate campaign, in connection with the Paul-Tonken event.
There are also indications that prosecutors are concerned about tipping their hand, and don't want key witnesses saying anything that might kill their case. Fox newsman Shawn reported that a recently scheduled jailhouse interview with Peter Paul was scuttled at the last minute - even though Paul had agreed to do it.
No wonder Sen. Clinton decided it was better to lay low this election year rather than invite the kind of media scrutiny that a her presence on a presidential ticket might bring to Paul and Tonken's accusations.
Maybe,just maybe it was the information he had on Bush Sr at the time....just a guess....
Eternal Verities
The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the Federal Election Commission has joined a ballooning, multi-agency investigation focusing on an August 2000 Hollywood gala that raised more than $1 million in Senate campaign contributions for then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is continuing its public corruption inquiry into the activities of Chicago consultant David Rosen, who, as Mrs. Clinton's finance director, had a major role in organizing the Hollywood event, held on the eve of the Democratic National Convention and billed as a tribute to outgoing President Bill Clinton. The Justice Department is said to be concerned about possible false statements or other forms of obstruction by one or more witnesses. And a federal grand jury in Los Angeles is said to be examining evidence of related but much wider criminal wrongdoing by several people involved in the city's Clinton-friendly celebrity circuit.
One such person, fundraising impresario Aaron Tonken, has already pleaded guilty to fraud and has cooperated with federal investigators while awaiting sentencing. For instance: Tonken, whom Mrs. Clinton described as "my good friend" in a videotape broadcast at the August 2000 affair, is also a longtime friend of Denise Rich, and Tonken is reported to have talked to the FBI about President Clinton's controversial last-minute pardon of Rich's ex-husband, billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. For now, Tonken will say nothing about any of this publicly. But he may soon break his silence. At an April 15 creditors' session of his Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy proceeding, Tonken testified ...
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