Here's the Aaron Brown interview with Klayman:
BROWN: Larry Klayman is a full-service pain in the rear. He spent much of the Clinton years suing the president, the president's wife, and a fair number of others in the White House.
So, if you thought the change in administrations meant the end of Mr. Klayman, you were not listening carefully. He has sued the administration for the release of Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force notes, and now today, sued the vice president and the company the vice president used to run, Halliburton, for fraud, cooking the books essentially.
The company says it's all nonsense, though that is not the first time Mr. Klayman and his group, Judicial Watch, has heard that. Mr. Klayman joins us from Miami tonight. It's nice to see you.
LARRY KLAYMAN, GENERAL COUNSEL, JUDICIAL WATCH: Aaron, thanks for inviting us.
BROWN: Thank you for joining us. The White House kind of gave this thing the back of the hand today, said without merit. What do you make?
KLAYMAN: Well, that's what you'd expect under these circumstances, but you know that in and of itself, Aaron, shows the sensitivity, the defensiveness because it's very unusual for a president to comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. In fact, it's considered to be improper.
What he was, in effect, doing was signaling his Securities and Exchange Commissioner Harvey Pitt not to look into Halliburton. He was signaling his Justice Department, under John Ashcroft, not to investigate, and he was talking to the court and the jury in our case, and frankly it's improper and it shows that there's something there. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
BROWN: That is the most cynical take you could possibly make, the dismiss it without merit, would you agree with that?
KLAYMAN: Well, not coming from the president you see. Now the president should not be intervening in private matters. Just yesterday, Aaron, he said he's going to let the chips fall where they may and no matter who's involved, they're going to be held accountable.
Now, he's saying on behalf of Vice President Cheney, and he's accountable for his own vice president, that there's no merit. Yesterday, he was saying he was going to investigate, so what is it? It shows a certain hypocrisy.
BROWN: As simply as you can state it here, what is it that you believe you will find?
KLAYMAN: Well, as we set forth in the complaint, what Halliburton did was, is that they categorized his profits, certain transactions that were in dispute, and that resulted in an overvaluation of the shares.
Now, they did not disclose to the buying public that they made this change in accounting principles and this was such a significant change that it had to have been discussed and, in fact, passed upon by Vice President Cheney.
As the complaint also says, and you can see it on our Web site at judicialwatch.org, the vice president has done promotional videos for Arthur Andersen. He said they were a creative accounting firm. Well, I guess they really were creative.
Unfortunately, as alleged in the complaint, it was a creative fraud.
BROWN: Now, whether it was a fraud or not -- that's the allegation, we'll find out -- the vice president has said...
KLAYMAN: That's right.
BROWN: ... or the vice president's office has said, and Halliburton has said that whatever accounting changes they made, that the vice president, when he was the guy running the company, did not know about them.
KLAYMAN: Well, and if you believe that, we're in deep trouble in the war against terrorism. This is a hands-on vice president. He is the de facto president. And he runs this country, in effect. He's a very sharp guy. He's known for his hands-on management style, particularly when he was secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf War.
This is not someone who lets go of the reins of power. And even as CEO, he's legally responsible for what went on at Halliburton.
BROWN: Someone raised an interesting -- what at least to me was an interesting question. In talking about, they said, Look, why, Larry, are you doing this? The country's at war. The economy is fragile. The market, stock market's worse than fragile. The last thing the administration needs is to be distracted by this, to have to deal with what in this person's view was a frivolous lawsuit.
KLAYMAN: Aaron, the...
BROWN: Are you concerned about any of those things?
KLAYMAN: No. In fact, Aaron, I'm glad you asked the question, because in the words of John Adams, perhaps our greatest American president, our second president, he said, "Statesmen, my dear sir" -- he said this 13 days before the Declaration of Independence was signed -- "you can change your rulers and your forms of government many times, but without ethics and morality, you will not have liberty."
And unless we have an honest government that we can trust, and more than ever we need to trust the vice president and the president, then you will not have a strong nation. And to allow corruption to continue in our government -- and this is a president and vice president who, after the Clinton years, said, Move on, we now know what they meant, they didn't want anyone looked at, whether it was Democrat or Republican, everybody scratches everybody's back in Washington, D.C.
The American people have lost trust. And today on your network you have -- on your Internet site at cnn.com, "MONEYLINE," you've asked the question, Lou Dobbs asked it, Should the vice president answer questions? It's running 94 percent yes. That's, in effect, an endorsement of this Judicial Watch lawsuit that we're going to make the vice president answer questions and be held accountable under the rule of law.
BROWN: About 20 seconds. I assume the next thing we do is discovery, and do you intend to depose the vice president?
KLAYMAN: Oh, absolutely. And of course the vice president will have very good lawyers, and I'm sure he'll be able to defend himself. And let the jury decide whether or not there was a fraud committed here. But at least the American people will know, and our clients will get justice, that in fact all the facts came out, and that the right decision was made by a court of law.
BROWN: Larry, it's good to talk to you. I suspect you don't get invited to any of those Washington dinner parties any more by anyone.
KLAYMAN: As Groucho Marx said, Aaron, I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.
BROWN: Thank you, Larry, it's nice to talk to you.
KLAYMAN: You're welcome.
BROWN: Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, sued the vice president and Halliburton today.