The Clinton Pardons - At ten o'clock on the morning of Jan. 20, 2001 - just two hours before he left office - then-President Bill Clinton signed 177 controversial pardons and commutations. Most of them never went through the Justice Department's pardon office, which was legally tasked with contacting prosecutors to inquire if they had objections.
[The Rev. Jesse] Jackson asked Clinton to grant clemency to three friends.
Top on the list was Dorothy Rivers, a well-known Chicago social activist who was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison in 1996, following a forty-count indictment that detailed how she defrauded the homeless of $5 million in government grants. Court records show that Rivers bought six fur coats, including a $35,000 sable, with money that was earmarked to build shelters for homeless families and pregnant teens. She embezzled grant money from her Chicago Mental Health Foundation to buy an $800 purse, a $3,500 dress, a Mercedes-Benz car and business investments for her son, and spent $125,000 on party decorations, invitations, flowers, and alcohol for political fund-raisers.
WHEN challenged why he asked for her pardon, Jackson retorted, "She ain't shot nobody. She ain't dealt in drugs. She ain't [running] a house of prostitution . . . She's a good person who overspent a grant or so." The charge had personal resonance for him, since he also had been accused of overspending government grants and, under President Reagan, had reimbursed the government more than half a million dollars. The Justice Department subsequently revealed that no clemency application had ever been filed for Ms. Rivers; Jackson made the request directly to Clinton as a personal favor. Clinton agreed.
Four months after her pardon, Jackson put Ms. Rivers on the board of directors of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, corporate filings show.
Next came John Bustamante, the Cleveland, Ohio, lawyer responsible for setting up the complex web of Jackson's nonprofit empire. Bustamante, now seventy, pleaded guilty in 1993 to a federal charge of defrauding an insurance company, after a federal judge threw out his 1991 conviction on five felony fraud charges.
As in Ms. Rivers's case, there was no clemency application on file with the Justice Department on his behalf, so Jackson appealed directly to the president. Clinton agreed.
The third person was former Illinois congressman Mel Reynolds, convicted in 1995 on felony charges of soliciting sex with a minor. Clinton, impeached for lying under oath about his own sexual escapades, sprung Reynolds from jail, and Jackson promptly hired him as a highly paid consultant on prison reform.
‘THIS is a first in American politics," syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock tells me. "An ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate won clemency from a president who had sex with a subordinate, then was hired by a clergyman who had sex with a subordinate. How more insulting to the nation's intelligence can you be?"
Ken Timmerman, author of the best-selling book Shakedown: Exposes the Real Jesse Jackson and uncovers Jackson’s numerous illicit activities. How can he allegedly defraud the government, threaten journalists, help finance dictators like Qaddafi, lie about his relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr., assault other black leaders, and still claim to be a “civil rights” activist?
Suit Filed Against Jesse Jackson by Rival Conservative Civil Rights Leader Jesse Lee Peterson
Judicial Watch announced that Jesse Jackson has been personally served with the complaint for civil rights violations filed by its client, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND.
Peterson was assaulted and attacked by Jackson and his followers at a recent meeting with Toyota officials who were providing $700 million in minority assistance. Before the assault, Peterson had simply pointed out that Toyota did not have to give all the money to Jackson and his followers, as the African American community had other venues for the aid.
The complaint, which was filed in California state court in Los Angeles, must now be answered. Since this case is not complicated, discovery will thus begin shortly, and the case will likely go to trial within the next year or so. In California cameras are allowed in the courtroom and the trial will likely be televised.
It will be most instructive for the public to see the real Jesse Jackson defend himself and brought to justice for violating the civil rights of other African Americans. When it comes to money, Jackson is second to none in putting greed ahead of principle. But now he will pay the price in the form of damages, A stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.
"Judicial Watch stands for the principle that no one, not even Jesse Jackson, is above the law," added Judicial Watch President Thomas Fitton.
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