“We have been informed that it is being shipped back, and the National Park Service is ready to receive it, take possession of it and take custody of it,” Jim McDaniel, the National Park Service’s liaison to the White House, said Wednesday.
“The property is being returned to government custody until such time that the issues can be resolved. It may well turn out that that property is rightly the personal property of the Clintons.”
Giving Back
After they were criticized for taking $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts with them when they left, the Clintons announced last week that they would pay for $86,000 worth of gifts, or nearly half the amount.
Their latest decision to send back $28,000 in gifts brings to $114,000 the value of items the Clintons have either decided to pay for or return......"
[snip]
" The gifts were just one of several flaps that followed the Clintons out of the White House:
Lawmakers are questioning Clinton’s desire to rent expensive office space in New York City at government expense. Because of the contention, the former president’s foundation has offered to pay at least $300,000 of an estimated $790,000 annual rent for the office Clinton favors.
Mrs. Clinton, the new senator from New York, has faced questions about the propriety of accepting the gifts in the period between her election and her swearing-in. Senate rules would have limited what she could accept had she been a senator.
Members of both parties also have criticized Clinton for granting scores of eleventh-hour clemency requests, including the pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive in Switzerland from 51 counts in the United States of tax evasion and fraud."
