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http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2001/06/rich200106

The Clinton Pardons
THE FACE OF SCANDAL

(snip)

“Every year there was a new initiative,” says Comey, who in 1992 joined Otto Obermaier, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District, at a meeting in Switzerland with Rich and Green and their lawyers. Comey says they had been led to believe that the two men were ready to plead. “But it quickly became apparent to us they wanted to explain their enormous good works and debate the merits of the case.

(snip)

At one point Garment hired two tax experts, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband, Martin Ginsburg, and Harvard professor Bernard Wolfman, for more than $70,000. They rendered an opinion that, “according to the facts given” them—which prosecutors insist were far from complete—Rich and Green were technically not guilty of criminal tax evasion. Comey says Garment came to see him with a flip chart and said, “Yes, it’s true [Rich’s] companies kept two sets of books, and it appears they desperately tried to commit a crime.” But then their actions were compared to those of a car thief intending to steal a car: Having larceny in his heart, he breaks into the car in the dark of night and drives it away only to find it’s his own car! Comey adds wryly that this argument “lacked a certain appeal.” But that opinion is pretty close to the heart of the petition Clinton responded to with a pardon, ostensibly convinced that Rudolph Giuliani’s original indictment was flawed and that Rich’s actions warranted at most civil penalties.

#INTENT

http://observer.com/2003/06/meet-marthas-prosecutor/

He said he uses similar tactics that parents use on children. “You’d still be looking at your shoes when you were supposed to be looking at your mother, you ran away, you hid stuff-anything like that indicates that you knew that you were doing wrong. In the grown-up world,” Mr. Comey continued, “we look at things like shredding documents, fleeing and lying. And as I have said a number of times, e-mail was the 20th century’s greatest gift to law enforcement, because it never goes away, despite what people think.” Mr. Comey said that he’s read e-mails which include lines like: I just hope the S.E.C. doesn’t find out what we’re doing here.

“When you see stuff like that, that helps you understand what goes on inside somebody’s head,” Mr. Comey said. “They also tend to have very good lawyers who are paid a lot of money.”