Torricelli and Hillary: A Tale of Two Suspects
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Thursday, April 19, 2001 2:40 p.m. EDT
Robert Torricelli and Hillary Clinton have a great deal in common.
Both are Democratic liberals elected to the U.S. Senate from populous Northeastern states. Both enjoy lavish personal lifesyles that require financial support beyond their respective Senate salaries.
And both have been accused by Asian businessmen of selling governmental favors for personal and political contributions, allegations uncovered since 1996 as part of the Justice Department's campaign finance probe.
Yet only one, Torricelli, appears to have been seriously pursued by federal prosecutors, who may be about to indict him.
Meanwhile, the former first lady continues to skate on serious and credible allegations that she not only sold governmental favors from her West Wing White House office, but also was a key player in a conspiracy to sell out America's national security interests.
A review of the evidence against Torricelli and Hillary reveals a staggering prosecutorial double standard at work.
The latest charges against the New Jersey senator come from David Chang, who contributed $53,700 to Torricelli's campaigns and also supplied personal gifts in exchange for help with several international business deals.
The gifts included a Rolex watch, some earrings for a girlfriend, 10 tailored Italian suits and other assorted items.
On the surface Chang's charges sound very serious. But so far he's the only one of several Torricelli supporters who have pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations to implicate the senator in any illegality.
One of the most damaging allegations comes from one of Chang's assistants, Audrey Yu. In 1997 she said she personally delivered an envelope from Chang stuffed with $10,000 in cash to Torricelli at his home.
Yu also claims she accompanied Chang to Torricelli's home the year before when the senator took a $25,000 payoff.
Unfortunately for prosecutors, both transactions were in cash, making the accusations hard to prove.
Not so with Johnny Chung, who made his donations to Bill, Hillary and the Democratic Party by check, copies of which have been in the hands of prosecutors for years.
In fact, Chung makes Chang look like a piker. Not only did he tell the Justice Department that he showered $366,000 on Democrats in order to gain influence for his own international business deals, but Chung also says the money bought him direct access to both Bill and Hillary Clinton starting in 1994.
"Welcome to the White House, my good friend," Mrs. Clinton told Chung, whom she had never met before, after the California businessman handed her chief of staff a check for $50,000 inside the White House.
Chung was told his donation would be used to pay for a White House Christmas party hosted by Hillary - expenses apparently not covered by the normal operations budget and therefore owed by her personally.
Hillary got more help with her personal expenses in 1996, when Charlie Trie, another Asian contributor, showered the Clintons' Legal Defense Fund with $642,000 - all of it in laundered money.
She kept close tabs on the fund's balance sheet along with White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, who worked questionable donors hard on behalf of the Clintons. Both Hillary and Ickes suspected that Trie's money was tainted but didn't return it till another $600,000 Trie contribution to the Democratic Party proved to be illegal.
In testimony last year to the FBI, Trie implicated Mrs. Clinton in enough serious wrongdoing that investigators for the Justice Department's Campaign Finance Task Force wanted an independent counsel to probe her role, as well as her husband's, in the larger scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But unlike what has happened to Sen. Torricelli since the campaign finance scandal erupted in 1996, the Justice Dept. demurred.
Other allegations against the unlucky New Jersey Democrat include insider trading, stock deals that allowed him to make thousands in the market in the early 1990s.
That's something else Mrs. Clinton has in common with her New Jersey colleague.
But when it came to the New York senator's own insider trading - a highly suspect killing in high-risk cattle futures that investment experts say would have been impossible without cheating - there was no controlling legal authority.
Interestingly, Torricelli has hired high-powered Washington attorney Theordore V. Wells to handle his growing legal problems. It's a good choice.
Wells had the Justice Department's backing in 1999 when he beat the rap for former agriculture secretary Mike Espy, who had been indicted for taking gratuities from businesses regulated by his department.
Torricelli said last month that Chang has also made damaging allegations against the Clintons, but his office won't elaborate. Neither will investigators whose job it is to verify Chang's stories.
At least one of Torricelli's colleagues has openly attacked the key prosection witness's credibilty, citing a record of false testimony. "I would encourage people not to form an opinion based on the allegations of a known perjurer," New Jersey's junior senator John Corzine told the New York Times Friday.
No such allegation has ever been leveled against Mrs. Clinton's campaign finance accusers. In fact, at Johnny Chung's sentencing, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real criticized the Justice Department for not following the evidence he provided.
"It's very strange that the giver pleads guilty and the givee gets off free," Real told the court.
But if Torricelli has any complaints about the Justice Department's egregious double standard - one that has him issuing angry denials almost daily now while Sen. Clinton continues living large off the proceeds of big-buck book deals and gifts like Denise Rich's $7,000 sofa - he isn't saying so out loud.
In the end, his best legal option may be to change his name to Clinton. |
