Posted on 03/13/2002 6:24:40 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Independent Counsel Robert Ray, who succeeded Ken Starr as head of the eight-year-long probe into Bill and Hillary Clinton's Whitewater involvement, has resigned amidst allegations that the job posed a conflict of interest with his highly publicized ambitions to seek New Jersey's U.S. Senate seat this year.
While Ray filed his final report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal last week, and cut a "no indictment" deal with Clinton in the same case on Jan. 19, 2001, he has yet to issue a report on the larger Whitewater scandal.
Neither Ray nor Starr have ever issued findings on the original impetus for the investigation - reports that Whitewater related evidence was removed from the office of the late deputy White House counsel Vince Foster on the night of July 20, 1993, when he was found shot to death in a Virginia Park.
Two Secret Service agents then stationed at the White House testified that they saw top Clinton aides, including Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff Maggie Williams, removing documents from Foster's office.
Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, ruled Foster's death a suicide on June 30, 1994, saying he would issue a report on the Foster office phase of his investigation within weeks.
But less than five weeks later Fiske was replaced by Starr, and his Foster office report never saw the light of day.
In November 1997, Starr seconded Fiske's Foster suicide finding, issuing a 100 page report that ignored allegations that possible Whitewater evidence had been removed from Foster's office.
In November 1998, Starr announced that beyond Lewinsky, his Whitewater, Travelgate and Filegate probes had uncovered insufficient evidence to indict Bill or Hillary Clinton.
But neither he nor Ray has ever explained why their office failed to act on criminal referrals from Senate Whitewater probers for Webster Hubbell, Maggie Williams and Harold Ickes related to their Foster-office phase testimony.
Ray will be succeeded by Julie Thomas, who had previously served as spokesperson for the OIC. Thomas will reportedly issue the final Whitewater report "soon."
On Monday, the public interest lawfirm Judicial Watch announced that the Federal Election Commission had launched an investigation into Ray, based on its complaint that his Senate campaign activities "are a gross violation of ethics regulations and a violation of law."
"There's now reason to believe that portions of Ray's final report were falsified in the name of political expediency," Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman said.
As for Klayman, he's an honest man, but he has a supersized ego, and he doesn't seem to know how to pick his fights. While clinton was in office he did a lot of good, unearthing stuff no one else could find; but now he's like a dog fighting over a used bone.
It was this joke on the legal system that convinced many of us that republicans we'd voted into office were in fact spineless little puppies, just as culpable as the 'rats.
That's why it's not rare to see posts in FR wondering how best to cast a protest vote in a two party system.
(answer, there ain't no way that does not make things even worse!)
The other is for the ruling class where the rule is that you literally get away with murder if you have enough power and money.
Supposedly we fought a revolution to get rid of that type of system.
It might hurt his chances in the Senate race for crying out loud!!!
I don't think NewsMax is correct. I beleive the report was filed by Ray some time ago and the court just now released it. Same with Whitewater. I suspect he's already filed it, so to say he's "abandoning" is a bit of a stretch.
If we have to wait for billandhill to make their response, we could be here until 3002. Was Ray to hang around waiting on those two scummies?
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