Obama’s New Advisor Stained by Clinton Pardon Scandal
Eric Holder, a member of Barack Obama's VP search committee, played an important role in the much-maligned pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Is this the Democratic candidate's idea of 'change' and 'new politics'?
June 7, 2008 - by Jennifer Rubin
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You may not always agree with his political analysis but Dick Morris, perhaps better than anyone willing to talk about it, knows his Clinton-ology. Morris reminded us that Eric Holder, recently appointed by Barack Obama to his vice presidential search committee, played a leading role in one of the most infamous events of a presidency filled with infamy: the pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. Morris dubbed the decision to select Holder as Obama’s “first clear, serious mistake.”
Rich, of course, was the commodities trader who fled the country in 1983 to escape prosecution for tax evasion, racketeering, and trading with the enemy. Rich’s attorneys circumvented normal procedures, took the pardon to the White House attorneys, and gained pardon for their client, whose wife just happened to be a friend and major donor to the Clinton library, the Democratic Party, and Clinton’s legal defense fund. A firestorm ensued as did congressional investigations in which Democrats as well as Republicans excoriated the Clintons’ conduct.
This was not a Republican-contrived controversy. Time reported at the onset of the hearings:
But most see this as a source of bipartisan outrage. Republicans and Democrats alike were dumbstruck by the Rich pardon. The federal prosecutors who indicted Rich are especially livid, particularly because, by definition, Rich appears to be ineligible for a pardon: He never took responsibility for his actions or served any sentence. The congressional panels were called to investigate the path to Rich’s pardon — which, as various documents seem to indicate, did not follow usual channels. In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. pardon attorney Roger Adams says when the White House sent over Rich’s name for pardon consideration — only a few hours before the president was due to leave office — there was never any mention of Rich being a fugitive.
Rep. Henry Waxman declared that it was a “bad precedent, an end run around the judicial process, and appeared to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful” and that had a Republican president “presided over a pardon process that resembled the chaotic mess that seemingly characterized the final days of the Clinton administration, I would be outraged and would criticize it.”
In a Senate hearing Senator Herb Kohl asked Adams how he viewed the affair:
KOHL: And in this case, do you feel good about that pardon?
ADAMS: All I can tell you, Senator, is that this case was clearly not — this was a very unusual situation. The Rich and [Rich partner Pincus] Green case were not handled anything approaching the normal way. I guess I have a parochial interest in seeing that they — I would prefer that things be handled the normal way. But when a president, for whatever reason, decides not to handle things in an orderly — in a way in conformity with the regulations, there’s very little that I can do about it.
No less than Maureen Dowd remarked that on this one the Clintons
perverted the legal system and may have traded a constitutional power for personal benefit. … The Clintons ran a cash-and-carry White House. They were either hawking stuff or carting it off.
Holder’s role is not in dispute. Without him this travesty would likely not have occurred, as described here:
Mr. Holder, the [Congressional] report says, played a major role, steering Mr. Rich’s lawyers toward Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel. Mr. Rich hired Mr. Quinn, whose Washington contacts and ability to lobby the president made the difference, according to the report. It says that Mr. Holder’s support for the pardon and his failure to alert prosecutors of a pending pardon were just as crucial. …
The panel criticized Mr. Holder’s conduct as unconscionable and cited several problems. It cited his admission last year that he had hoped Mr. Quinn would support his becoming attorney general in a Gore administration.
So to be clear, Holder helped steer the attorney for Rich, a fugitive whose pardon request would likely have been rejected through normal channels due to his status as a fugitive, to the man Holder wanted assistance with in getting his next job. Now there’s a man who knows something about conflicts of interest.
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PJM's special DC correspondent Jennifer Rubin is a writer living in Virginia. She is a regular contributor to Human Events, American Spectator and the New York Observer and blogs at Commentary’s Contentions. |
