Posted on 06/20/2002 7:46:48 AM PDT by RaceBannon
Ashcroft to Make it Official: Clintons Are Above the Law
Attorney General John Ashcroft is said to be ready to close out a key aspect of his Justice Department investigation into the Clinton pardon trading scandal, effectively confirming that both the ex-president and his New York senator wife are now officially above the law.
"The Justice Department is expected within a month to shut down its probe into whether (then-President) Clinton gave clemency to four convicted felons of the Hasidic enclave of New Square after the town voted 1,400 to 12 for Hillary Clinton in her Senate election," the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
"The New Square part is likely to be closed without criminal charges being brought," a source familiar with the investigation told The News.
Four New Square Hasidic rabbis, who had been jailed for bilking the government out of millions of dollars earmarked for anti-poverty programs, were freed from jail earlier this year as a result of the Clinton clemency deal.
Hasidic communities surrounding New Square that weren't granted any special presidential favors voted heavily for Mrs. Clinton's opponent, Rick Lazio.
The decision to clear Mrs. Clinton comes despite earlier reports that at least one witness had fingered her in the vote-trading conspiracy.
Prosecutors had found a witness who says the senator was present during discussions of clemency before the election, sources familiar with the probe told the News in January.
The investigation into Clinton's illegal pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, as well smoking gun evidence that former first brother Roger Clinton traded pardon promises for cash, remains open. But after more than a year of relative inactivity, observers also expect those probes to end without indictments.
The contrast with other more recent Justice Department prosecutions couldn't be more stark, illustrating what government probers can do when they're not constrained by political considerations.
The accounting giant Arthur Andersen, for instance, was convicted just last week based on an indictment that charged the entire company with obstruction of justice. The conviction left more than a few legal experts wondering about prosecutorial overreach.
The recent conviction of Michael Skakel for the 26-year-old murder of Martha Moxley was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, in a case that appeared far weaker than the one prosecutors have built against the Clintons.
Though the Skakel conviction wasn't a federal prosecution, the surprise guilty verdict illustrates what prosecutors can accomplish when they're interested in actually enforcing the law.
Beyond Pardongate, the Bush Justice Department has either plea bargained or abandoned outright other possible prosecutions against the Clintons, while ignoring altogether additional serious reports of wrongdoing, including:
• Allegations that Indonesian billionaire James Riady illegally funneled millions of dollars into Clinton presidential campaigns.
• Reports that the Clinton White House withheld and or attempted to destroy millions of evidentiary e-mails that had been subpeonaed by the Office of Independent Counsel.
• Complaints from Clinton accusers Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Elizabeth Ward Gracen that they were subjected to politically motivated IRS audits after speaking out about sexual encounters with the president.
• Charges from Democratic Party contributor Peter Paul that the Clintons failed to report his $2 million donation to the Federal Election Commission.
• Allegations that Mrs. Clinton's acceptance of an $8 million book advance after she was elected to the Senate may have violated federal bribery statutes.
• A complaint from White House whistleblower Linda Tripp that officials with the Clinton Pentagon illegally leaked information from her confidential employment file to the media.
• Reports that a Westchester County police officer may have been threatened with the loss of his job for talking about an accident where he was seriously injured by a car carrying Mrs. Clinton.
I guess so!!!
SELLING pardons (accepting a bribe) IS against the law, but bribery is very, very difficult to prove. We can assume that votes were traded for pardons, but how in the heck are you going to prove it?
Then, assuming you could get someone to testify against these folks, you have to bring them into a DC court, which would have jurisdiction. They WOULD demand a jury trial (as is their right) and the jury pool would be drawn from the most loyal group of Clinton worshippers in the country. An OJ verdict is a foregone conclusion.
What would be the point? To get the message of their corruption to the people? The networks would make sure coverage was limited to the shabby treatment Senator Clinton was receiving.
I am all for prosecuting them for something they have done recently, hopefully in a place where they couldn't demand a DC jury.
Get them before they got me.
Tuor
Give me liberty or give me death.
The FBI files do intrigue me relating to Hillary..that could be something that would be easy to prove
I really can't even attribute it to the media's liberal slant. The guy is no poster boy for the Cause; he's a no-class hayseed whom history granted the political equivalent of a royal flush when Ross Perot entered the race in '92. The man served 8 years in the most powerful office in the world and accomplished zero. Zero. He didn't even try. He has used every single person he needed to get what he wanted, personally.
The blindness of the majority baffles me....
The bottom line is: the buck stops at Bush and Ashcroft. If they are not cleaning house there at the Justice Department, after nearly 2 years in office, then we can safely assume it is because they do not want to clean house.
Actually, yelling at the wall is theraputic, it will help more. Also punching the wall works in extreem cases.
(Not recomended for those who depend on their hands to make a living or those who do not know how to hang drywall ;-)
That's the exact message Ashcroft should stress when he drops the investigation. This is a winning political strategy. Ashcroft has been smeared to the point that he would look bad even when he was doing the right thing concerning the Clintons. Hillary would love to play the victim again. By dropping the investigation, the Liberals will be much more disappointed than the Conservatives. Yes, the Justice Department is infested with Liberals/Socialists/Progressives/Leftists of every type....
I guess we all need to realize the old sayings: "Birds of a feather, flock together" and "like two peas in a pod" ring true when it comes to Clinton and Bush.
They are very much alike and anyone who thinks otherwise has their head in the sand. This clown is Bill Clinton in a conservative suit. I voted for him because at the time I sincerely felt he would change the "wrongs" the country suffered under the realm of clintonianism...obviously, I was very wrong....the whole damn country deserves another 8 years of clintonianism to really get the "message" to sink in of how evil they really were/are....I'll either hold my nose and vote for Hitlery (at least she's consistantly verrry evil) to force this point, or not vote at all. I'm tired of being spat on by what I thought was a fellow conservative. The present administration is really blowing us off...they're one-termers for sure. Flame away, Bushbots....I don't care.
So what's Satan doing right now, the Jig, the Charleston, The Jitterbug, The Electric Slide, The Macarena...what?
No. She did! Really. She did. She did right after she made copies of every page of every file.
Tuor
Give me liberty or give me death.
Rush Limbaugh started the phrase RULE OF LAW...whatever happened to it?
Oh, they will, bet the rent, just as sure as the idiots from the other beltway party attempted to defend their leader.
I, too, am eager - like we all are - to see the Clintons be brought to justice.
But we have to remember they are a CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION - THAT INVOLVES NOT JUST THEIR "PARTY" BUT ALSO ALL THE MAJOR MEDICA, ACADEMIA, THE WORLD'S GLOBALSOCIALISTS, the TRIAL LAWYERS, ETC.
They are like the mafia.
It is going to take years and years and years to "nail" them in court....and it will likely be on a some small "slip up"....like income tax evasion.
And, frankly, our government was never setup to deal with such an entity. It was never envisioned and, frankly, I think our Founding Fathers would today be just as bamboozled as we are as to what to do about it. (I imagine some of them would have voted for another "Revolution" - which is what happened in 1860....but that's a whole nother discussion and one we should not get into here). Most Americans are not up to another Civil War. And, certainly, you would be hard pressed to find state governments who are ready to vote for a national fight, with armies and militias, etc. So what would our founding fathers do today?
Would some of them decide it's easier to switch than to fight? Probably - just like some in the Republican party have so decided.
But to hold them to be co-equals is just wrong.
And you will find out soon enough the difference if we allow Hillary to keep her command in the Senate and to take the House and then the White House in 2004.
Did you notice that the dems were howling yesterday because the Administration wants Homeland Security exempt from civil service rules? Why do you think they want that?
So that they can FIRE people!
It is very hard to fire even one civil service employee. You have to jump through a lot of hoops and deal with complaints by the government employees union.
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