Let's shed some light on how Clinton scrambled to sneak MEGAmole Deutch into his pardons "shortlist":
Clinton's Last-Day Clemency Benefits 176
By Amy Goldstein and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 21, 2001
Just two hours before surrendering the White House, President Clinton gave parting gifts that lifted 176 Americans out of legal trouble, granting pardons to figures from the Whitewater scandal, former Cabinet members, an ex-governor, onetime fugitive heiress Patricia Hearst Shaw and his own brother, Roger Clinton.
The extraordinary list, eclipsing in magnitude and scope the last-minute legal forgiveness dispensed by previous presidents,...
Other beneficiaries of Clinton's generosity include an international financier and indicted fugitive, Marc Rich; [...] and John Deutch, who was in the midst of negotiating a plea agreement with the Justice Department over security violations while he directed the CIA.
[...]
Taken together, the pardons were a dramatic final gesture for a president whose tenure was marred by his own legal controversies -- and who had reached an agreement with prosecutors only one day earlier to ward off any possibility of his own indictment.
Through some of his pardons, Clinton appeared to be tying up loose ends from many of the independent counsel investigations that had daunted him and several senior members of his administration virtually from the beginning of his tenure.
Some of his wide-ranging pardons provoked swift denunciation, although relatives of people whose prison sentences he lifted praised him lavishly.
Sources from both the Clinton White House and the Justice Department said the final list emerged from a frenzied and secretive process in which the outgoing president brooded over several prominent names until early yesterday morning. Clinton, who remained awake throughout his entire final night as president, did not give the list his final approval until mid-morning, immediately before it was made public.
Roger Adams, the U.S. pardon attorney in the Justice Department who has been involved with pardons throughout the Clinton administration and now oversees the process, said yesterday: "I've never seen anything like this."
"We were up literally all night as the White House continued to add names of people they wanted to pardon," Adams said. "Many people on the list didn't even apply for pardons." Some requests from the White House arrived so late, Adams said, that pardon officials did not have time to conduct record checks with the FBI.
[snip]
washingtonpost.com
Pardoning MEGAmole Deutch is outrageous because the guy had yet to be prosecuted and --if need be-- convicted of high treason charges.... Attorney General Ashcroft had YET to proceed against MEGAmole Deutch, but now, Clinton just took the wind out of the Justice Dept's sails! I mean, does it make sense to pardon somebody who has not been tried --and less convicted-- yet?!
Gus. |
