Does that extend to Jason Zengerle as well?
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| LARRY KLAYMAN, THE GOP, AND "BLOWBACK." Friendly Fire by Jason Zengerle
This week, Larry Klayman wasn't in Washington, the city where he made a name for himself and his conservative legal watchdog group by filing scores of lawsuits against the Clinton administration. Instead, the Judicial Watch chairman was catching rays on the deck of the MS Masdaam as she toured the Caribbean. On the trip, billed as the "Cruise to Clean Up Corruption," Klayman, along with special guests like Gennifer Flowers and Donato Dalrymple, regaled about 30 Judicial Watch supporters--who paid between $2,000 and $5,000 apiece for the ride--with tales of Clinton administration corruption. Before embarking on his cruise, which included a port of call at Grand Cayman, the Judicial Watch chairman had predicted, "By the time we're done, we will have renamed this tropical island the `Grand Klayman Island.'" A growing number of Republicans would be happy if Klayman stayed on his island. That's because ever since Bill Clinton left the White House, Klayman has been turning his fire on the GOP. In recent months, Judicial Watch has lambasted President Bush and other "gutless Republicans" for not carrying on the Clinton inquisition. The group has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding China's return of the American spy plane's crew to "find out if any secret promises were made to the `Butchers of Beijing' behind closed doors." And, most ominously, Judicial Watch has initiated legal action against House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and the National Republican Congressional Committee (nrcc) for their fund-raising practices. "It can now be understood why the Republicans and the Bush administration have used the mantra `Move on,'" Klayman declared at an April press conference. "But, ironically, we'll move on--we'll move on to the illegal activities of the Republican Party ... and Tom DeLay." The standard view of Klayman's recent strafing of his fellow conservatives is that it represents a cynical, calculated bid to stay relevant. Klayman has realized, the theory goes, that without Clinton to kick around anymore, he needs a new high-profile target to keep himself in the news and the donations pouring in. But there's a problem with this view: It assumes Klayman is acting rationally. When he says Ron Brown did not die in a plane crash but was murdered because he was about to air the Clintons' dirty laundry ("[T]hey found a bullet hole in Ron Brown's head"), he's not doing it for effect; he really believes it. Klayman's rantings aren't careerist or partisan; they stem from an overwhelming urge to believe the worst about those in power. And, unfortunately for Republicans, that now means them.
here's no arguing with the fact that Klayman built himself on the back of Bill Clinton. Before founding Judicial Watch in 1994, Klayman was an obscure trade lawyer. But thanks to the Clinton scandals, he became a fixture on talk shows like "Crossfire" and "Rivera Live," and his exposure turned Judicial Watch into a cash cow. In 1996 the group took in a mere $67,620 in donations; two years later its annual haul had shot up to $12.4 million and, two years after that, to $17.6 million--most from direct-mail donations and grants from Clinton haters like Richard Mellon Scaife. But while the end of the Clinton presidency represents a blow to business for Klayman, it isn't necessarily crippling. After all, with Hillary Clinton in the Senate and Terry McAuliffe at the Democratic National Committee, there are still plenty of Clinton-related scandals for Klayman to monger--and lots of lingering anti-Clinton sentiment to mine for contributions. Indeed, Judicial Watch has already filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee and the Federal Election Commission against Hillary Clinton over her role in Pardongate. And the group still has about 80 cases ("I don't count on a daily basis," Klayman says) pending against Bill Clinton. Just last week Klayman deposed Doris Matsui, the wife of California Representative Bob Matsui and former Clinton White House deputy liaison, as part of his ongoing Chinagate litigation. But Klayman's outrage has spread way beyond the Clintons. Judicial Watch now has branch offices in Dallas, Houston, Miami, and San Marino, California, and is delving into state and local matters. Klayman even has global ambitions: He hopes to open a European office in the future. (Closer to home, Judicial Watch is currently representing Paul Weyrich in a defamation suit against The New Republic.) The group inserted itself into the Florida recount, inspecting ballots in six counties; in California, it recently sued Governor Gray Davis for access to documents that, the group alleges, show Davis and other pols have taken "political payoffs" from utility companies; and last month in Texas Ross Perot's former right-hand man Russ Verney left his Reform Party post to head Judicial Watch's new Southwest regional office. "We're becoming the ACLU of government corruption," Klayman crows. And Klayman sees government corruption everywhere, as his complaint against DeLay and the NRCC makes clear. On behalf of the NRCC, DeLay invited small-business owners to Washington earlier this month to take part in something called the Business Advisory Council, made up of smallbusiness owners who give money to the nrcc. "As an honorary member [of the council]," DeLay said in a recorded telephone solicitation, "you will be invited to meetings with top Bush administration officials, where your opinions on issues like tax reform will be heard." DeLay's solicitation was no different from thousands of other fund-raising schemes. While carefully avoiding an explicit quid pro quo, he promised access to those who gave money. That's how fund-raising works. But, according to Klayman, this run-of-the-mill solicitation runs afoul of federal anti-bribery statutes, federal election law, and House ethics rules. By Klayman's logic, then, practically all political fund-raising is illegal.
iven that view, it's no surprise Judicial Watch is going after Republicans on other fund-raising fronts. The group hounded House Speaker Dennis Hastert for his involvement in the nrcc fund-raising event--he was a scheduled participant, and a fax promoting the event had been sent out under his name--so ferociously that he ended up skipping it altogether. Judicial Watch has threatened to sue the National Republican Senatorial Committee for setting up similar meetings between donors and Bush administration officials. It recently initiated litigation over the Bush administration's awarding of diplomatic posts to campaign contributors. It's investigating the possibility that Trent Lott is using the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at the University of Mississippi as a conduit for political contributions. It's looking into a New York Times report that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson met with political donors in his government office. Judicial Watch is even dredging up a decade-old charge that Dick Cheney, as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, held fund-raisers at the Pentagon. "The Pentagon claims they have no records," huffs Klayman, "so we brought a lawsuit." Naturally, all this isn't sitting so well with some of Klayman's old supporters. Although Judicial Watch has occasionally gone after Republicans in the past--it once called on Newt Gingrich to resign, and it has lobbed criticisms at Rudy Giuliani and Orrin Hatch--the group's bread and butter was always Clinton, and, now that it isn't, some in the GOP are worried. According to a recent report in Roll Call, congressional Republicans are pressuring one long-standing Klayman ally, Georgia Representative Bob Barr, who has publicly promoted Judicial Watch (and who is being represented by the group in a violation-of-privacy suit against Clinton), to end the association. And David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, recently penned an op-ed in The Hill castigating Klayman for behaving more as "a super litigious Common Cause type than as a conservative" and raising the question of "whether he can get conservatives or others to write checks to his operation while he attacks DeLay rather than Clinton." (Klayman calls the article "defamatory" and, according to Keene, has made noises about suing.) "The people who gave money to Judicial Watch gave money because it was a way to go after Bill Clinton," Keene elaborated to me. "They weren't interested in creating another good-government, Common Cause-type group." But that, in a loonier version, is what they've gotten. While Klayman's bipartisan scandal-mongering may eventually hurt his bottom line, for the time being he has enough money to wreak some serious havoc. In this sense, his recent turn against the GOP is a political form of blowback. Much as the CIA suppressed its qualms about arming Islamic radicals to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, Republicans ignored their doubts about funding a serial suer like Klayman, so long as he was suing Clinton. But, just as some of those Islamic radicals now visit their terror upon the United States, Klayman, with Clinton gone, has trained his sights on the GOP. For years, Klayman has insisted that "Judicial Watch is nonpartisan." Who knew he meant it?
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