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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (66427)	3/10/2000 3:43:00 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 67261

We now return to our regularly scheduled program....... newsmax.com Long Suppressed Report Says Reno Covered-Up For White House NewsMax.com Friday, March 10, 2000 A blistering report, long suppressed by Attorney General Janet Reno, says that special treatment was given President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, first lady Hillary Clinton and former White House aide Harold M. Ickes during the investigation of campaign finance irregularities. In an edited version of the 94-page report written by former task force supervisor Charles G. LaBella and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department official charged that Reno and her cohorts used double standards in the appointment of independent counsels - naming them to investigate Cabinet-level Clinton administration officials while refusing to refer similar or stronger cases involving top White House figures to outside counsels, according to the Times. While failing to accuse the president, vice president, Mrs. Clinton and Ickes, of committing crimes, LaBella's report cited questionable actions by them and "a pattern of conduct worthy of investigation" by an independent counsel. He cited administration dealings with various Asian American fund-raisers for the Democratic National Committee as well as with wealthy foreign nationals that, he said "suggests a level of knowledge within the White House--including the president's and first lady's offices--concerning the injection of foreign funds into the reelection effort." Noting that "half of the report reviewed by The Times was excised to protect grand jury secrecy and ongoing investigations,? the newspaper reported that: "Most of that missing information relates directly to the task force cases against Clinton, Gore, Ickes and Mrs. Clinton. In one instance, documents obtained by the Times show, task force investigators eyed the timing of Clinton's appointment of friend and fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie to a United States-Pacific trade advisory panel in 1996 with suspicion. Trie was appointed after he carried $460,000 in donations from a Taiwan-based Buddhist sect to the president's legal defense trust fund. One document the Times saw referred to this as "a potential quid pro quo" that should be probed by an independent counsel. Calling himself a "mailman," Trie delivered a total of $639,000 in checks and money orders from the Buddhist group. The donations were turned down by the trust, however, because it was from foreign sources. Documents show that Ickes and Mrs. Clinton met with a member of the defense fund trust to talk about Trie's donations, and both the president and first lady agreed that the money should be returned. "According to the report, none of the three--the president, Mrs. Clinton or Ickes--informed the DNC, where Trie was a major fund-raiser, that he was bringing in foreign donations to the Democrats, which was illegal,? the Times said, noting that all three had a probable fiduciary responsibility to warn Democratic fund raising officials. The report charged that Mrs. Clinton's "potential criminal involvement" was a result of her failure to alert the DNC. As a result, Trie continued to raise large sums for the Democrats. He pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations last May. And some of the strongest accusations targeted Vice President Al Gore, who the report bluntly suggests "may have provided false testimony." Regarding Gore, task force documents indicate skepticism of the vice president's "failure of recollection" and other inconsistencies in his story. The charge results from "a marathon fund-raising effort launched over White House phones in late 1995, purportedly to raise unrestricted ?soft money,? which was outside the election law ban on political fund-raising conducted from a federal workplace. The money was for ads to help the DNC and state party organizations? according to the Times. Gore told investigators he believed that no "hard money" was raised or used for such purposes but DNC records later showed that some money Gore raised ended up in the DNC?s so-called "hard-money accounts.? Soft money is defined as unlimited contributions by individuals, corporations and labor unions to political parties unregulated by federal election law. Hard money means restricted donations that can be spent directly on behalf of candidates. Gore denied he?d done anything wrong. He first said he broke no laws because there was "no controlling legal authority" covering such fund-raising solicitations. The DNC said that funds went to hard-money accounts without Gore's knowledge. "Confronted with notes and memos indicating that a November 1995 meeting Gore attended in the Map Room of the White House included discussions about raising hard money, the vice president said he did not recall such conversations or the memos? according to the Times. Other investigative documents seen by the Times show that former White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta told FBI agents that he remembered Gore "attentively listening" to discussions about the hard money aspects of the media fund and "walking through the papers" as the November 1995 meeting progressed. These documents also indicate that the task force had photographs from that meeting that show Gore looking at papers that he insisted he did not remember ever reviewing. Although Reno ordered the Justice Department to undertake a 90-day review of the Gore phone calls in 1997, she finally decided there was insufficient grounds to appoint an independent counsel. Then, when a new memo from the 1995 meeting was discovered, Reno launched a second 90-day review to determine if an independent counsel should be named to investigate possible perjury charges against Gore. After department officials reported there was "clear and convincing" evidence that Gore did not lie about the matter, Reno again decided against asking for an outside prosecutor. "The action spared Gore an investigation likely to overlap his presidential campaign?. the Times noted.