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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (75108)	6/2/2018 5:43:47 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 364492

It occurs to me Trump may next go into 'Pay for Pardon' mode. Some money to be made pardoning rich folks.... he's probably got another lawyer skulking around setting up as the bagman now.

To: combjelly who wrote (75108)	6/2/2018 6:01:20 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 364492

Clinton pardon of Marc Rich a saga of power, money chicagotribune.com President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich is a saga of secrecy, tenacity, sleight of hand and pressure from Rich's ex-wife and one of her friends, who together have steered millions of dollars to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's causes and those of fellow Democrats. Whether it is a story of bribery as well or illegal gifts from abroad is the subject of congressional inquiries and a criminal investigation by the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in New York. Behind the pardon is a tale of intrigue, unintentional humor and celebrity involving, among others, two former Israeli prime ministers, a onetime operative for the Mossad, a stubborn U.S. attorney and a misunderstood desire to find a rabbi in the White House. New interviews in Israel and an examination of e-mails and documents in the hands of investigators as well as testimony before congressional committees show that Rich, 65, perhaps the wealthiest fugitive in the world, mounted an immense effort to persuade the Justice Department and then the president to cut a deal and let him come home. Justice was skeptical, but Clinton agreed. What he got in the deal was a pledge that Rich would waive a statute-of-limitations defense should an agency, such as the Internal Revenue Service or the Energy Department, sue him for civil fraud. But experts say such a suit is unlikely. Moreover, Rich runs businesses valued at $30 billion and would not be likely to feel the pain of any financial judgment against him. Many things about the Rich pardon are still a mystery. So far, however, this is the story of the deal that Bill Clinton did not refuse. It is marked by ongoing protest and bitterness, best symbolized, perhaps, by the fact that, as of late Saturday, a full 28 days after Clinton granted Rich his pardon, federal officials still had not removed his wanted poster from their international crime alert Web site. On the (posh) lam The saga began in the fall of 1999. Rich was No. 6 on the government's list of most wanted fugitives. The mug shot on his wanted poster showed his thinning black hair. He had been on the lam, albeit a posh one, for 16 years, ever since his 1983 indictment by a grand jury on more than 50 counts of wire fraud, racketeering, trading with the enemy and evading more than $48 million in income taxes. The government accused him of conspiring with Iran in 1980 to purchase over 6 million barrels of oil, in violation of a trade embargo imposed by the United States because Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Payments for the oil, federal agents said, were made fraudulently through American banks and by the illegal use of American telecommunications facilities. Rich was an American. His father, a Holocaust refugee from Belgium, made burlap bags in New York. Young Rich dropped out of New York University to make a fortune as a broker in commodities. He married Denise Eisenberg, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. With the indictment imminent, Rich, his wife and his trusted partner, Pincus Green, decamped to Zug, a bucolic burg south of Zurich, Switzerland. He refused to return to the United States and surrender to authorities for trial, and Switzerland refused to extradite him. The Riches lived in magnificent exile, protected by security guards from Israel, while Rich ran enterprises that brokered oil, gold, sugar, grain, aluminum and nickel.