Hiding the Cisneros Report
Hillary Clinton's lawyer is staying very busy.
Friday, October 7, 2005
The Wall Street Journal
© 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
(excerpt)
What don't David Kendall, the law firm of Williams & Connolly, and clients such as Hillary Rodham Clinton want the public to know?
We'd have thought that question would be on more Washington lips as the report of Independent Counsel David Barrett languishes under seal at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Barrett is the fellow who began investigating a tax-fraud case involving former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros but expanded his probe to include alleged abuses by the Clinton Justice Department and IRS.
Yet instead of exhibiting any curiosity, the press corps is again writing its semi-annual stories about the costs of keeping Mr. Barrett's office open. The fact is that Mr. Barrett would love to close up shop if only Democratic lawyers and the judges of the so-called "special division" that oversees his work would let him.
Readers may recall the last iteration of this drama in April, when Senators Byron Dorgan, John Kerry and Richard Durbin attached an amendment to a war appropriations bill that would have stopped funding Mr. Barrett's office. We pointed out that this would have returned control of the Barrett probe to one of the very departments implicated--Justice--and, happily, the amendment was killed.
Now a new report from the Government Accountability Office is being used as an excuse for still more complaints about the Barrett probe. We agree it's high time it finished, but this isn't possible until somebody puts a stop to delaying tactics by lawyers for those named in the report. (Mr. Cisneros himself long ago pleaded guilty, and was pardoned by Bill Clinton in 2001.) |
