The Scandal That Keeps on Giving
The pardon mess just keeps getting smellier
In Congress, the universe for investigation also is expanding. The House Government Reform Committee will now look into Rodham and Rich. The committee has subpoenaed records of the Clinton Library Foundation, seeking donor lists. It also demanded that foundation president Skip Rutherford appear before the committee to testify on March 1. Investigators were angered by what they saw as a lawyerly nonresponse from foundation lawyer David Kendall. "It was a whole lot of zip," said committee spokesman Mark Corallo. Investigators want to comb the donor list for possible connections between pledges to the libraries and pardons. The documents that have been turned over confirm that Rich's ex-wife Denise gave $450,000.
Pardons for votes? A federal law enforcement source confirmed that U.S. Attorney White, who has an ongoing criminal investigation of the Rich pardon, also is investigating whether Clinton commuted the sentences of four convicted swindlers in exchange for votes for Hillary Clinton from their Hasidic community in New Square, N.Y. The four men were convicted of stealing more than $40 million worth of grants and loans by creating a fictitious school.
The pardon controversy is not the first time Hugh Rodham has embarrassed the Clintons. "Whenever his name came up, people would just roll their eyes," one former White House aide said. Rodham was unlucky in politics and in business. He lost a U.S. Senate race by a landslide in 1994, then several years later he and his brother, Tony, pulled out of a business deal with the Republic of Georgia to export hazelnuts after White House officials persuaded them to drop the venture.
It remains unclear how Rodham knew Braswell or whether Braswell, who has a habit of retaining armies of well-connected lawyers, hired him solely for the assignment of courting favor with his brother-in-law. Braswell also had been represented in his pardon efforts by Kendall Coffey, who worked for former Vice President Al Gore during the Florida recount. Coffey did not return phone calls. Some of Rodham's contacts were through Bruce Lindsey, the former White House deputy counsel and a close Clinton friend. As with so many of the Clinton contretemps, there were more questions about the pardons than answers--a point the senator seemed to acknowledge when she said the former president should "put those reasons out."
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