Another Pardon, Another Controversy
by Jim Geraghty, SpeakOut.com Staff Writer
Thursday, February 22, 2001
http://speakout.com/activism/news/5653-1.html
President Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich has become the dominant news story of the first month of the Bush presidency. But just as the Rich story seemed to have played itself out, a new round of controversies about other Clinton pardons has surfaced. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother Hugh was asked to return $400,000 he was paid in exchange for lobbying for two of the Clinton pardons and her Senate campaign treasurer apparently helped obtain last-minute pardons for two convicted felons.
Hugh Rodham received a contingency fee in connection with a pardon application for Glen Braswell and a fee for work on Carlos Vignali’s commutation application. In 1995, Vignali was convicted of masterminding a scheme to distribute 800 pounds of crack cocaine, worth millions of dollars, from Los Angeles to a narcotics ring in Minneapolis. Glenn Braswell, a marketer of health treatments, was convicted for perjury and mail fraud in 1983 and is currently under investigation for tax evasion and money laundering.
“I’m disappointed, I’m very saddened, and I was very disturbed when I heard about it,” she said. “I have not spoken with him. I do not want to speak with him because, frankly, I didn’t want anybody to draw any wrong conclusions about what I might or might not have said to him, so I have not spoken with him.”
Hugh Rodham returned the money late yesterday. The House Government Reform Committee has demanded documents and answers from Rodham.
In comments before reporters today, Senator Clinton said she was “very disappointed” with her brother, while reserving judgment on her campaign treasurer, William Cunningham III.
Cunningham is the law partner of longtime Clinton adviser Harold Ickes. Cunningham said the firm was paid $4,000 for the work of preparing and sending the applications to the Justice Department. He said he neither contacted the White House nor discussed the pardons with Hillary Clinton or the former president. The two men, Robert Clinton Fain and James Lowell Manning, were convicted in the 1980s on tax charges.
Cunningham said he did not believe his role as Clinton’s treasurer during her Senate campaign in New York last year had any effect on the ex-president’s decision.
“My connection is really with Senator Clinton, and not the president,” Cunningham said. “These applications really cried out on the merits that these are the folks who should be pardoned, and the fact that their request was assembled by me really operates independently,” he said.
“I know Mr. Cunningham is a fine person and a good lawyer,” Senator Clinton said. “And I know lawyers prepare and process pardon applications. So I’m not going to make any statement of any kind about something I know nothing about, other than to please ask you to make a distinction between Mr. Cunningham’s background and experience and my brother, who as a family member, should not have been involved in this situation.”
President Clinton has repeatedly denied that any impropriety was involved in the decision to grant the pardons.
“In the last few months of my term, many, many people called ...” [snip]
Ping.