February 25, 2001

Bring on the Hook, We Can’t Get Clinton Off Stage

New scandals about last-minute presidential pardons make one wonder whether the Clintons are stupid, arrogant or corrupt.

How about all of the above?

Slick Willie, with his patented cute smile, told us on his last day in office that he was going to stay up all night to savor the presidency. At the time, this seemed winsome. Childish enthusiasm generally is.  

Now, a month later, we learn that his shy pronouncement was intended only to allay any curiosity about why the lights in the White House west wing were going to be on all night.  

Clinton’s last hours in the Oval Office were spent churning out 140 pardons and 35 commutations of sentences for his F crowd -- friends, family and financiers.

 Aides report that the reprieve for fugitive criminal Marc Rich was decided by a 1:30 a.m. phone conversation with Clinton’s former White House lawyer Jack Quinn.

Rich, remember, was charged with secretly buying oil from Iran when that country was holding American embassy personnel hostage. Such transactions with proclaimed enemies were officially banned. The wealthy commodities trader attempted to hide his duplicity by omitting $48 million in taxes on his IRS return.

Uncle Sam will overlook just about any transgression if the price is right. But tax evasion is not one of them. Rich fled to Switzerland to escape prosecution and renounced his U.S. citizenship.

Rich has grown tired of skiing and whiling away the hours at fancy resorts. There is not much action in little Switzerland. Bankers there won’t deal him into the lucrative business of laundering money for international crooks.

Quinn pointed out to Clinton that the American hostages were released after a year. Therefore, it was appropriate to put the old charge behind us. Besides, Rich had funneled $1.3 million to the Democratic National Committee through his divorced wife, Denise, for the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.

Oh, yes, there was the $450,000 that Denise donated to the Clinton Library, $110,000 to Hillary’s senatorial campaign, $7,000 for a couple of overstuffed chairs and a gold plated saxophone. She also persuaded another Democrat fat cat, Beth Dororetz, to give $1 million to the Clinton Library.

Rich donates big bucks himself directly to Israeli causes. Prime Minister Ehud Barak called President Clinton three times to urge a pardon for their mutual benefactor.

Bill Clinton avers that money or politics had nothing to do with the Rich pardon. "It was just the right thing to do."

Sez hoo?  Not the Justice Department, IRS, FBI, or New York Prosecuting Attorney Mary Jo White who filed the original charges against Rich. Normally these would have been consulted before overturning legal processes already rendered.

Ms. White is busy trying to reopen the case. Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, is holding hearings to try and turn over some rocks.

The new scandals last week involve Hillary’s lawyer-brother Hugh Rodham. He was paid $400,000 for phoning his brother-in-law and obtaining pardons for Glenn Braswell, another tax cheat; and for Carlos Vignali who had served six-years of a 11-year prison term for distributing cocaine big time.

Senator Clinton, "deeply disturbed," rushed to the TV cameras to declare she knows noth-ing, noth-ing, about her brother’s or husband’s pardoning activities. Sergeant Schultz should take notes.

Strange.  For a smart lawyer, she is incredibly dumb.

She knew nothing about subpoenaed Whitewater billing records -- until they were found two years later in the White House living quarters by a secretary tidying up the reading room.

She knew nothing about firing White House travel office employees in order to hire Hollywood friends – until a memo by her ordering the firing was discovered.

She knew nothing about hundreds of confidential FBI vetting records about Republicans – until an aide revealed she had requested them.

She knew nothing about the personal papers of White House lawyer-friend Vincent Foster stored in the Clintons’ bedroom closet for two days after his suicide.

She knew nothing about Bill’s many adulteries. She stood by her man’s several perjuries.  

 Slick Willie defended his pardons with an op-head letter to the New York Times that was a masterpiece of what "is" is. Even the Times felt constrained to point out the many misrepresentations and errors of fact in his mea culpa.

We wouldn’t mind the Clintons’ stupidity so much if they didn’t think we are more stupid than they.

[ PARTING SHOTS ]

Public opinion has forced Bill Clinton to move his office from pricey, uptown New York to low-rent Harlem. There is something incongruous about white trash ending up in a black neighborhood.

* * *

Hillary Clinton has made her brother give back that $400,000 he made by two mid-night phone calls to her husband. She has an inviolate rule: when caught with your hand in the cookie jar, eat fast.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers