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On July 6, 1995, Daniel Pearson was appointed independent counsel and charged with investigating Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's financial dealings.
Charges in the Brown case centered upon whether Brown had "accepted things of value" - reported to total $500,000 in 1993 -- from Nolanda Hill, a Dallas businesswoman. Brown and Hill jointly-owned a company, First International Inc., and were also linked through a series of complex financial transactions involving Hill's deeply-indebted media company, Corridor Broadcasting.
Pearson was also tasked with investigating whether Brown had improperly omitted information from his government financial disclosure forms, or had made false statements on a mortgage application in 1993.
Following the Secretary's death in an airplane crash in Croatia on April 2, 1996, the independent counsel investigation ended. In his November 1996 final report, Independent Counsel Pearson noted that "the unfinished state of the investigation and considerations of fairness preclude our office from drawing conclusions about the allegations regarding possible criminal conduct by the Secretary." Several aspects of the probe, however, were transferred to the Department of Justice for further investigation.
In March of 1998, a federal grand jury indicted Hill and another Corridor executive, Kenneth White, on fraud, false statements and tax evasion charges resulting from the Justice Department's investigation. Hill and White have pleaded not guilty. Though the grand jury did not specify Brown by name, the indictment also suggested that Hill's `business partner and co-shareholder at First International Communications Corp.' -- apparently a reference to the late Commerce Secretary -- had personally benefited from money funneled through business entities and a lawyer.
Hill made more headlines in March when she alleged in other testimony that the White House had sought campaign contributions from businesses in exchange for spots on government trade missions overseas. At the time, the Justice Department was reported to be studying whether the claims were sufficiently specific and credible to initiate a new independent counsel investigation. A Department of Justice spokesperson refuses to comment on Hill's charges or to confirm the existence of any inquiry.
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