Time: Fri Aug 22 11:57:41 1997
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 11:09:21 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Trouble for Clintonites, for Real
<snip>
>
>New York Daily News
>August 22, 1997
>
>Trouble For Clintonites, For Real
>
>WASHINGTON
>
>California businessman Johnny Chung has a $25,000 check
>and a story that could put members of the Clinton
>administration in jail.
>
>Chung wrote the check, he says, to obtain a meeting
>with former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. An Energy
>Department official collected it. Chung met O'Leary.
>
>Instantly we have moved beyond the hazy charges and
>righteous denials about whether the Clinton administration
>unethically raised campaign contributions.
>
>This is not even a campaign finance issue, with its
>hairsplitting distinctions that allow politicians to
>argue they have broken no laws as they pocket checks
>without limit.
>
>"You don't need to know anything about 'soft money'
>and why it's different from 'hard money,' " says a
>Republican congressional staffer. "This is very simple.
>It's bribery to get access."
>
>Chung told NBC's Tom Brockaw he made out the check to
>Africare, one of O'Leary's favorite charities, at the
>suggestion of a lobbyist and an Energy Department
>official.
>
>In addition, he said, the official who picked up the
>check also collected an official fax that had been
>improperly sent.
>
>"That's possible obstruction of justice," says Rep.
>Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.), who demanded yesterday
>that an independent counsel investigate O'Leary -
>and by extension all the Clinton administration's
>fund-raising practices.
>
>Solomon is so sure the Republicans at last have a
>solid case against the Clinton administration that
>he is willing to make a stunning deal.
>
>"I would go so far as to close down the House and
>Senate investigations [headed by Republican Rep.
>Dan Burton of Indiana and Republican Sen. Fred
>Thompson of Tennessee] if Janet Reno agrees to
>an independent counsel," he said.
>
>"The two congressional committees are tainted by
>partisan politics. An independent counsel would be
>least partisan of all."
>
>Not necessarily. Kenneth Starr, the bumbling Whitewater
>investigator, has given independent counsels a bad name.
>
>Just last month, Federal Judge Thomas Eisele, a Republican
>appointee, wrote in a scathing analysis of Starr's intention
>to work for a school funded by right-wing financier Richard
>Mellon Scaife: "It is difficult to argue that Mr. Starr is
>not laboring under at least an appearance of conflict."
>
>But what Solomon wants is another counsel named by the
>same three-judge panel that selected Starr.
>
>That panel is headed by Judge David Sentelle, a Republican
>appointee with a weird definition of independent: "Independence . . .
>has always been universally understood as independence from
>the administration under investigation, not independence
>from the entire American political system."
>
>Under Sentelle's definition, an "independent" counsel could be
>a Republican hatchet man, so long as he was independent of the
>Democrats he investigated.
>
>But Starr's plight shows the dangers of the partisan approach.
>Anything he does against the Clintons can be dismissed as
>partisanship; any failure to mprosecute is magnified into a
>cleaner bill of health than they deserve.
>
>The Clinton administration has managed to elude its pursuers
>for so long because its opponents have constantly overplayed
>their hand. They have tried to make major-league cases out
>of the bush-league transgressions of Whitewater, the White
>House travel office, personnel files - even the Lincoln
>Bedroom.
>
>Now Johnny Chung has handed them evidence they can take to
>court.
>
>All the Republicans have to do is play this one perfectly
>straight. Let the Justice Department prosecute.
>
<snip>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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========================================================================
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