"COIN-GATE"
White touted Bush ties to help get federal post
Now he investigates GOP, Noe
Gregory White sought Bob Taft's help in 2002.
( THE BLADE/ALLAN DETRICH )
Zoom
By MIKE WILKINSON and STEVE EDER
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
COLUMBUS — U.S. Attorney Gregory White, a leader in a multiagency task force investigating powerful Republicans in Ohio, asked for help from Gov. Bob Taft’s office to get the federal post he now holds, records released by Mr. Taft’s office yesterday show.
Mr. White asked the governor to call President Bush on his behalf in August, 2002. A week later, top Bush aide Karl Rove was given the phone numbers of Brian Hicks, the governor’s former chief of staff.
In February, 2003, after Mr. White was named interim U.S. attorney, Mr. Hicks sent a congratulatory e-mail to Mr. White.
“Great to hear! The Gov. just asked me this morning if I had heard anything about your status. He was pleased to learn of the news,” Mr. Hicks wrote on Feb. 2.
The e-mails show a relationship between one of the lead attorneys in Ohio’s biggest corruption scandal in decades and the governor whose administration is under intense scrutiny.
Mr. White could not be reached for comment last night. Both the Justice Department and the White House could not say what role, if any, Mr. Taft played in the appointment.
On Aug. 21, 2002, Mr. White requested, through Mr. Hicks, that the governor call President Bush and touted his help as a local leader in the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. In the e-mail, Mr. White expressed frustration with an interview for the post that had gone poorly.
“I wonder what it is that went so badly. This is very frustrating to me,” Mr. White wrote. “I believe that my record speaks for itself, and I doubt there are too many county chairs for the Bush Campaign that worked harder.”
Josh Earnest, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, questioned whether the news affects Mr. White’s ability to continue with the investigation.
“To restore faith in the probe, an impartial investigator should be appointed to find out whether tainted funds were funneled to the President’s re-election campaign,” he said last night.
However, Julia Bates, the Democratic prosecutor of Lucas County and also a member of the task force, defended Mr. White, saying he is a man of integrity.
“Greg is a prosecutor doing his job,” she said. “We still answer to our oath as lawyers and our oath as prosecutors before we answer to our political affiliations.”
Mr. White’s office has been investigating former Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe for more than six months. Federal prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Noe skirted federal campaign finance limits by giving money to others so they could contribute to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2003.
The investigation has morphed into a larger look into Mr. Noe and his role with the now-shuttered $50 million rare-coin funds that he ran for the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. As part of that investigation, prosecutors — including Mr. White — are looking into other state and local officials, including Mr. Hicks, who was charged yesterday with a misdemeanor ethics violation.
‘Too close for comfort’
Ms. Bates said none of the evidence so far uncovered indicates that the President did anything wrong with the fund-raising. “The evidence is that people who supported Bush did something wrong,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) said last night that Mr. White’s relationship with key Republicans appears “too close for comfort.”
“Generally, someone like this would step down and recuse themselves,” Miss Kaptur said. “It sounds like he had a lot of close connections to principals who are being investigated.”
The series of e-mails between Mr. White and others were part of more than 30,000 pages of records released yesterday by the governor’s office. The release was in response to public records requests from The Blade and other Ohio newspapers seeking e-mails and other records from key aides to the governor.
More than two dozen reporters spent hours poring over the records of Mr. Hicks and aides Cherie Carroll and Orest Holubec. Mr. Hicks left the governor’s office in 2003 to found his own lobbying firm and later hired Ms. Carroll. Mr. Holubec is still the governor’s communications director.
Many of the e-mails deal with mundane issues, including office parties and weight-loss contests, and many more deal with people trying to find jobs with the help of Mr. Hicks and his aides.
One of the most high-profile job searches involved Mr. White.
Touted his record
Two years after helping President Bush win in 2000, the former Lorain County prosecutor sought the governor’s help, touting his record and saying he has broad support and the “ability to work with law enforcement at all levels.” The next February, Mr. White was appointed interim U.S. attorney and officially took over that office in March, 2003.
State Rep. Chris Redfern (D., Catawba Island) withheld criticizing Mr. White.
Representative Redfern said it was not uncommon for Bush supporters to seek the governor’s help. “So I’m not going to judge whether the U.S. attorney should step down in this case,” he said.
Conyers’ reaction
He gave Mr. White’s office good marks in the investigation conducted to date. “It appears right now that the U.S. attorney’s office is being as cooperative as any agency” involved in the Noe case, he said.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D., Detroit), who has raised questions about whether Mr. White delayed investigating Mr. Noe until after the election, said the news should lead to changes in the probe.
In June, Mr. Conyers sent a letter to Mr. White asking him about his probe. The U.S. attorney’s office was first given evidence about the money laundering allegations on Oct. 12, roughly three weeks before the general election narrowly won by the President, but did not announce the investigation until April.
Ohio was the most closely contested state, with its electoral votes swinging the election for President Bush and Mr. Conyers was trying to determine if Mr. White had waited until after the election to begin his investigation.
“[Mr.] White has already raised concerns by failing to respond to my letter asking him to explain discrepanies and delays in his federal investigation,” Mr. Conyers said.
Special counsel sought
“If Governor Taft did indeed contact President Bush on Mr. White’s behalf, that makes the need for a special counsel in this case all the more compelling. It is clearly unacceptable to have a prosecutor who owes his job to an individual investigating that same individual’s office and aides.”
In related news:
*A Franklin County judge has approved the sale of a 2004 Jeep Liberty that Mr. Noe was attempting to sell to his sister-in-law.
The sale was stalled as Lucas County officials wondered if it violated a $15,000 limit on asset sales by Mr. Noe. He tried to sell the vehicle for $14,000, although it may have been worth more than $16,000.
Contact Mike Wilkinson at:mwilkinson@theblade.com
or 419-724-6104. |
