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Burton's backed by bipartisan indignation
By MARY JACOBY © St. Petersburg Times, published February 9, 2001 WASHINGTON -- This is it! At long last, congressional Republicans are investigating a bona fide scandal that provokes bipartisan outrage about Bill Clinton. Too bad the guy's no longer president. Still one step ahead of the posse, Clinton is safely ensconced in private life in New York City while his old nemesis, House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana, pursues yet another investigation of him, this time into his controversial pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich. The media circus in Burton's committee was a distraction from President Bush's Rose Garden announcement that he was sending his $1.6-trillion tax-cut plan to Capitol Hill. Instead the cable news networks were broadcasting live from the same hearing room where Republicans battled Democrats for so long over such GOP investigative flops as Whitewater, Travelgate, the Clinton administration's improper collection of FBI files on Republicans, the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster and the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign fundraising abuses. The excitable Burton had usually found himself the object of ridicule from Democrats. Clinton's defenders never failed to bring up such episodes as the backyard ballistics test the Indiana Republican once conducted on a melon in an attempt to determine whether Foster, who died from a gunshot wound to the head, had really committed suicide. No one was laughing Thursday, however. Burton conducted the hearings with decorum and gravity, and Democrats joined Republicans in expressing outrage at the Rich pardon. Only Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel's top Democrat and a liberal stalwart, made any mention of Burton's long history of trying to nail Clinton. "Everyone is eventually going to have to come to grips with the fact that Bill Clinton is no longer president and the cottage industry for Clinton scandals is going to have to go out of business," Waxman said. Other than Waxman's token complaint, Democrats made no concerted attempt to portray Clinton as being unfairly hounded, a theme they have hammered home in the past, most notably during the impeachment hearings of late 1998. Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, fled to Switzerland in 1983 and renounced their citizenship rather than face prosecution on charges of illegal energy trading and not paying $48-million in corporate taxes on $100-worth of allegedly illegal income they had not disclosed. In all, they were indicted on 51 counts of tax fraud, illegal trading with Iran and other charges. Rich and Green were included in dozens of pardons that Clinton made hours before he left office Jan. 20. The pardons have been met with outrage because of the pair's long history of thumbing their noses at the U.S. justice system. For example, while their Swiss company was being cited for contempt of court for refusing to hand over documents, Rich's and Green's representatives were caught trying to fly two steamer trunks of subpoenaed papers out of the country. The audience began to titter when Rich's lawyer, former White House counsel Jack Quinn, told the committee that Rich and Green had merely asked that the subpoenaed documents be shipped to Switzerland for their review. Not even black Democrats, who have always been among Clinton's most vocal defenders, had anything good to say. "When people look at Mr. Rich, who goes off to another country and has the money to do so," they get angry, said Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y. "They think, "I may have done one millionth of what they did, but I'm sitting in jail.' "My constituents have a major problem with that, and I do, too," Owens said. "Everything about it seems sleazy," added Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. For nearly nine hours, Quinn was grilled over such questions as why Rich's pardon application went directly to Clinton instead of being reviewed first by the Justice Department, as is customary. Tampa lawyer Sandy Weinberg Jr., who as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York headed the Rich prosecution in the early 1980s, said there was "no legitimate reason" for the pardon. Asked if he believed Rich had offered Clinton some sort of financial quid pro quo in return for the pardon, such as campaign contributions, Weinberg, who heads the Tampa office of the Washington-based Zuckerman, Spaeder law firm, said he did not know. "One does wonder why the only alternative is a presidential pardon," Weinberg said. "Why not try the case?" Martin Auerbach, who was Weinberg's assistant in the Rich prosecution, called the pardon a "deal with the devil." When asked if there had been any quid pro quo, Quinn said: "I don't believe so." After renouncing his American citizenship, Rich became an international philanthropist with a focus on Israel. His charitable gifts in Israel prompted then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to ask Clinton "on a number of occasions" to pardon Rich, Quinn said. Former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder said the Rich pardon had not been on his radar screen until a White House attorney, Beth Nolan, told him that Barak had urged it. After that, Holder said his stance became "neutral leaning toward favorable if there were foreign policy benefits that would be reaped by granting the pardon." The committee asked Rich's ex-wife, New York songwriter Denise Rich, to answer questions. But she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in declining to appear. Her attorney had told the committee's staff that Denise Rich had given "an enormous sum of money" to the non-profit foundation set up to pay for Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. Ms. Rich also was a major contributor to the Democratic Party and to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign. Burton said the committee would consider asking the Justice Department to grant Denise Rich immunity so she could testify about the library donations and whether Marc Rich was the source of the funds. Rich had also given the Clintons more than $7,300 worth of furniture. The Clintons have said they will reimburse her.
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