Posted on 02/19/2003 5:27:10 AM PST by Liz
Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2002
With President Clinton´s encouragement, his half-brother, Roger, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of as many as 13 people seeking presidential pardons and other favors, a key congressional panel has found.
This characterization goes far beyond what Roger Clinton has acknowledged about his activities in seeking presidential pardons and suggests that he was much more deeply involved than previously known.
The new revelations about the Clinton brothers are contained in the final report by the House Government Reform Committee, which for the last year has been investigating the pardon scandals.
The probe concluded that the former president and his administration repeatedly failed to properly check the backgrounds of people seeking pardons and sentence commutations. It also said the Clinton White House permitted a culture that provided easy opportunities for relatives and close associates of the president to make money on the side by lobbying for clemency and other presidential favors for convicted felons.
The Clinton team was besieged by requests for pardons and other favors. Some of those requests bypassed the normal Justice Department review system and instead went directly to the Oval Office, often at the urging of those who had the president´s ear. "Bill Clinton made some very bad decisions when he gave away pardons," said one official close to the committee´s investigation. "His administration very seldom did real background checks on many of those seeking pardon."
Roger Clinton could not be reached for comment. Bill Clinton has denied that pardons were for sale. The committee is expected to publicly release its report and vote on the findings Thursday. It carries no legal weight.
The House committee is headed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), a longtime Clinton adversary. Clinton White House officials have decried the review as nothing more than a partisan attempt to hound the Clinton administration long after it has left the White House. The panel´s report also provides new details about the prison commutation granted to convicted cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali of Los Angeles.
Congressional investigators found that the president´s brother-in-law Hugh Rodham repeatedly misled the White House in seeking a commutation for Vignali and suggested that former
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was also behind the commutation. In addition, investigators have concluded that Rodham, despite his public statements to the contrary, has returned less than one-fourth of the $204,000 fee that he said he had given back to the Vignali family.
The committee also determined that President Clinton granted a pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich only after his sponsor, former White House Counsel Jack Quinn, went around the Justice Department. Quinn apparently did so on the advice of then-Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., who was hoping to be elevated to attorney general if Al Gore was elected president, the report found. For instance, the committee said it found one e-mail from Holder to Quinn, written during the 2000 presidential recount, telling him to "go straight to wh [White House]" and that the "time is good" for a Rich pardon.
Holder has said that he learned of the Rich pardon just as Clinton was about to leave office and had hoped that prosecutors in New York, where Rich was convicted, were being allowed to give their recommendation against the pardon. While strongly suggesting that laws were broken and that more FBI and Justice Department investigation is needed, the committee stopped short of alleging criminal wrongdoing.
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(Excerpt) Read more at 216.239.57.100 ...
The House committee found a completely different picture. The report siad the "Roger Clinton engaged in a systematic effort to trade on his brother´s name," and that most of Roger's efforts involved pardons.
The report stated "President Clinton encouraged Roger Clinton to capitalize on their relationship and that at the beginning of his second term, President Clinton instructed Roger to use his connections to the administration to gain financial advantage." The report quotes George Locke, a former Arkansas state senator and close associate of Roger.
How many people do you know who have 6 of their closest friends in prision, needing a pardon?
The entire Klintoon Klan is such trash!
LOL. Good one.
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