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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shawn Donahue who wrote (786)	8/7/1998 1:07:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 13994

More "independence" from Janet Reno: August 7, 1998 Senatorial Courtesy Attorney General Janet Reno is most prominently in the news for refusing the opinion of FBI Director Louis Freeh and other key Justice officials that she must appoint an independent counsel to deconstruct the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. It now develops that the Justice Department is conducting an internal investigation into whether it also turned a blind eye to serious allegations against Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, a key Clinton ally. Last month, WBBM-TV in Chicago cited confidential IRS documents which reported that the Justice Department in 1995 twice blocked an IRS criminal probe of Senator Moseley-Braun's alleged misuse of campaign funds in her 1992 election. IRS officials have collected evidence that Senator Moseley-Braun and Kgosie Matthews, her former campaign manager and ex-fiance, may have used more than $280,000 in campaign contributions to purchase vacations and various items for personal use. A Justice Department spokesman confirms Justice twice declined a routine IRS request to impanel a grand jury, saying "we did not believe there was enough credible information" to open an inquiry. IRS field agents clearly thought there was something to look at. According to WBBM, they found evidence that Ms. Moseley-Braun and her then campaign manager/fiance spent lavishly on items of a clearly personal nature, such as $64,000 for travel to Hawaii, Europe and Nigeria, $70,000 on designer clothes and $18,000 on jewelry. Because the IRS lacks subpoena power, it frequently asks the Justice Department to impanel a grand jury to gain access to evidence. In the Moseley-Braun case, the IRS informed Justice it had been stymied in collecting documents and interviewing key witnesses through its normal summons process. It told Justice it also had evidence relating to allegations of bank fraud and bribery during Ms. Moseley-Braun's tenure as Cook County recorder of deeds. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, reports that Justice didn't open a grand jury probe and didn't respond to the IRS's request that it investigate those allegations. It instead told the IRS to ask the Federal Election Commission to provide some of the documents the tax agency needed. The FEC was itself conducting an audit of Ms. Moseley-Braun's 1992 Senate campaign. It cooperated in part with the IRS's requests, but also cited grounds of confidentiality in refusing to release some key information without a subpoena. The IRS then went back to Justice in fall 1995 and asked a second time for a grand jury that would grant it subpoena power. That request was also refused. Both decisions not to investigate were made by Assistant Attorney General Loretta Argrett, a former Howard University law professor, who also consulted with Justice's Public Integrity section. Ms. Argrett was appointed by President Clinton in 1993. Justice's refusals to impanel a grand jury are setting off alarms in the tax law community. Eight former officials of Justice's tax division and the IRS interviewed by Roll Call said such a refusal is highly unusual. "It's virtually unheard of," says John Bray, formerly of Justice's criminal tax division. And indeed last week Justice's internal affairs unit opened an investigation into how the decision was reached. Senator Moseley-Braun signed a privacy release last month that authorized Justice to confirm she isn't under investigation. But she has refused requests that she broaden her privacy waiver to allow access to Justice and IRS files on her case. One reason may be that what's on the record is embarrassing enough. The FEC files denied to the IRS were released to Roll Call through a Freedom of Information Act request. While FEC auditors didn't recommend further action or fines against Senator Moseley-Braun, they did find some curious practices. During a 1992 fundraising trip to Aspen, Ms. Moseley-Braun and Mr. Matthews paid close to $10,000 in cash for gold rings, cuff links and a money clip at a local jewelry store. At the time, Ms. Braun was earning $45,000 a year as an elected county official. FEC auditors also found that Mr. Matthews had charged several thousand dollars in personal expenses to the Braun campaign, but this information was never given to the IRS or to FEC commissioners before they voted to end their investigation of Senator Moseley-Braun last year. The FEC said it lacked the time and resources to finish. Senator Moseley-Braun is up for reelection this November, and of course the Democrats don't want to lose her seat. In a better world, the Clinton Justice Department wouldn't exist under such a cloud of doubt about its ability to function as a neutral arbiter of the laws it enforces. In the event, the Senator's activities in the shadows of the campaign laws have been widely reported by Chicago's newspapers and electronic media, and of course Roll Call has covered the story for her Washington colleagues. We'll find out soon enough whether the voters of Illinois are as uninterested in such behavior as the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department. interactive2.wsj.com