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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Lacelle who wrote (27937)	1/14/1999 3:36:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 67261

Agnew was taking bribes in the White House, or wherever his VP office was, follow on gratuities from his Baltimore county executive stint I think. Not campaign contributions, envelopes full of cash and such. I'm not sure what he was convicted of after leaving office; without the scandal he'd be best remembered as the mouthpiece for Safire's "nattering nanobs of negatism" coinage. Ok, a quick web search reveals he indeed took a plea bargain on tax evasion: Vice President Agnew Resigns, Fined for Income Tax Evasion washingtonpost.com In a stunning and historic finale to his two-month public ordeal, Spiro T. Agnew resigned the vice presidency yesterday and accepted a criminal sentence for federal tax evasion. The sentence -- three years of unsupervised probation and a $10,000 fine -- was imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Walter E. Hoffman, who called the affair "a tragic event in history." . . . That plea, which the judge declared to be the "full equivalent of a plea of guilty" was the result of days of plea bargaining between Agnew's lawyers and top Justice Department officials. In return for the plea and his resignation, the government agreed not to prosecute Agnew for alleged acts of extortion and bribery stretching over a 10-year period and involving at least $87,500. The charges were spelled out in a 40-page Justice Department "exposition of evidence" submitted to Judge Hoffman. Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson defended the compromise and also asked for leniency in the sentencing of the former Vice President. The alternative, he said, would have been prolonged trial or impeachment proceedings. "It is unthinkable that this nation should have been required to endure the anguish and uncertainty of a prolonged period in which the man next in line to the presidency was fighting the charges brought against him by his own government," Richardson said. The Attorney General asked that Agnew not be tried "out of compassion for the man, out of respect for the office he has held, and out of appreciation for the fact that by his resignation he has spared the nation the prolonged agony that would have attended upon his trial."