(Politico) – Just as Hillary Clinton braces for yet another release of her much-discussed State Department emails, the Clinton Library this week released the largest set of records ever—more than 43,000 pages—detailing her husband’s use of his executive clemency powers while he was president.
The long-secret records include new information on some of the late-term pardons and commutations that created controversy, including a pair of pardons that foilowed intervention of one of Hillary Clinton’s brothers. And the release comes as Republican opposition researchers work overtime combing through the background of the former first lady and secretary of state, whose presidential candidacy faces a tough test in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses set for Monday.
The cascade of Clinton-related files is expected to continue Friday with the expected release of about 2,000 more pages from the private email account Hillary Clinton used for work during her four years as secretary of state.
The Clinton Library files reveal additional details about clemency cases pushed by Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, who acknowledged in 2001 that he urged President Bill Clinton to pardon Tennessee carnival operators, Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, on bank fraud convictions. Rodham also said he told his sister Hillary Clinton, about the pardon request about the same time.
The Gregory pardons became the focus of a congressional inquiry in 2001, and Rodham acknowledged that he received about $325,000 from the couple over two-and-a-half years. He maintained the payments and loans were unrelated to his clemency intervention.
Hillary Clinton’s critics over the years have occasionally focused on Tony Rodham’s business ventures, which appeared to play on his high-level access at the White House and later at the State Department.
The newly released papers show the president and his aides acting with urgency on the Gregory case about the time the couple asked Rodham in late 1999 or early 2000 for help to clear their records of bank fraud convictions from the 1980s.
“He’s already lost 1 big contract over this,” Bill Clinton wrote on a December 21, 1999 memo in which longtime Clinton counselor and lawyer Bruce Lindsey reported that the White House staff was urging the Justice Department to “complete their review” of the Gregorys’ request.
“Lets [sic] get this done asap,” Lindsey wrote on a Jan. 28, 2000 letter from a Florida official urging Clinton to grant the pardon quickly so the Gregorys could continue as the key vendor for the Florida State Fair.
Clinton approved pardons for both Gregorys the following month over the Justice Department’s objections. In the House investigation that followed, Lindsey said he supported the pardons, Clinton pardon counsel Meredith Cabe said she didn’t find the Gregorys’ request particularly compelling and White House Counsel Beth Nolan said she could not remember her stance on the issue, a congressional report says.
However, the records released this week show that all three signed a memo to Clinton, urging him to “favorably consider” the pardons.
Clinton aides have long had access to the pardon files and were formally notified in October of this week’s planned release. Under the law, either former President Bill Clinton or President Barack Obama could have attempted to assert executive privilege to block the disclosure. Neither did so.
The pardon papers contain only a few direct mentions of the former first lady. One persistent advocate for early release of drug convicts, Jason Flom of Lava Records, mentions having attended fundraisers for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign.
And among the inch-thick sheaf of letters one Berkeley, Calif., man sent to the White House urging a pardon for Watergate convict G. Gordon Liddy is a missive to the then-first lady.
The files also contain indications of the chaotic process that unfolded at the end of Clinton’s presidency, as clemency applications flooded in. White House Counsel Beth Nolan sounded weary when Clinton intergovernmental affairs chief Mickey Ibarra said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson had inquired about the status of a commutation sought by a young man convicted of distributing LSD.
“Mickey, we’ll call the mayor,” Nolan emailed back. “Just so you know, we are inundated with pardon requests and anything you can do to limit expectations will be greatly appreciated.”
The commutation was granted in the final batch Clinton issued hours before President George W. Bush was sworn in.
White House lawyers also warned Clinton, who had endorsed a constitutional amendment to vindicate victims’ rights, that customary notifications of victims in some of the pardon and commutation cases were not being made because the cases had bypassed the usual Justice Department system.
“Some of these cases did not go through the DOJ process. Therefore, victims have not been contacted. We think it unlikely that these cases will present victim contact issues, but we will refrain from announcing your decision in any case where that contact is appropriate,” Cabe and Nolan wrote.
Memos going to the president sometimes highlighted how many of the applicants seeking pardons or commutations were from Arkansas. While the Justice Department was often clearly reluctant to endorse pardons, the files also show that in 1998, there were almost three dozen cases where the department endorsed pardons but Clinton’s own lawyers opposed them. The president sided with his aides and denied the pardons.
However, the papers offer new signs that by late in his administration Clinton was already undergoing a change of heart about some of the tough-on-crime policies his administration advocated and enforced. By the last year or so of his presidency, Clinton was clearly prodding his staff and the Justice Department to open up the spigot and give him more clemency cases he could grant.
On a December 1999 memo, recommending 36 pardons, Clinton wrote: “Good — send more.”
In October of the following year, the president continued to express frustration that the Justice Department and his aides were not sending him enough deserving candidates for clemency. Clinton signed off that month on a memo recommending eight grants and 117 denials of commutations, writing: “OK … Still looks like too many denials of pardons to me.”
One note shows the president considered — perhaps fleetingly — a broad clemency or amnesty for nonviolent drug offenders who had served long prison terms.
“I’m interested in this. Let’s discuss,” Clinton wrote to White House counsel Beth Nolan on Dec. 27, 2000, forwarding a letter in which former Ambassador Andrew Young urged a wide-ranging clemency for “first-time, non-violent offenders.”
The records also show Clinton aides tracking proposals for early release of a broad swath of low-level offenders, one of which called on him to let out nearly 500 prisoners.
In his final months, Clinton ultimately commuted the sentences of 29 drug offenders — with most of those commutations issued on his last day in office. It’s unclear whether he soured on the idea of a broader clemency or whether he and his staff considered it impractical as his eight years in office ended.
The papers also show the sensitivities of Bill Clinton and his aides to ensuring that pardons and commutations for the politically connected were made public along with similar actions for folks who lacked such ties.
In December 1999, Clinton’s advisers persuaded him not to issue a commutation to former Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.), who was in prison on bank fraud charges and had previously been convicted of sexual assault, abuse and child pornography charges over his relationship with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer.
“We recommend that you not act on his request this year. His would be the only commutation announced this holiday season,” Lindsey wrote. “We wanted to make you aware that many petitions for commutation request this same remedy, and for the same reason—namely, that the petitioner be allowed to work and earn money to support his or her family….We will be sending you more clemency recommendations next year, so you will have another opportunity to act on his request.”
Clinton held off and then issued the Reynolds commutation with others in January 2001. It allowed his release to a halfway house. Reynolds was indicted again last year on charges he failed to file tax returns for four years. He has entered a not guilty plea and is awaiting trial.
When forwarding the proposed pardon for Archie Shaffer, a Tyson Food lobbyist convicted of giving illegal gifts in an independent counsel investigation into Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, White House aide Lisel Loy advised that if Clinton acted quickly, officials could “announce your decision on the attached tomorrow along with the clemency decisions you made earlier this week.”
“Yes — do it, but important,” the president wrote on the December 2000 memo, drawing a line back to the language about releasing the Schaffer pardon along with the others.
Still, Clinton didn’t seem bashful about the pardon, which went to a nephew of one of the president’s closest mentors, Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), and was supported by all the members of the state’s Congressional delegation. “I want the case laid out in the clemency statement — It’s wrong and we should say so,” Clinton wrote.
The fact that the Justice Department opposed the Gregory pardons was reported in 2001 by The New York Times. However, the actual memo was not made public until this week.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report on the pardon controversy says the panel was unable to obtain any Justice Department records about the Gregory pardons. The panel attributed the lack of access to what it called “the refusal” of the Bush administration to make records available.
Gregory “and his wife used the Wilcox bank for their own purposes over an extended period of time, displaying complete disregard for the interests of its other investors and customers and ignoring the concerns repeatedly raised by state and federal banking authorities,” Justice Department pardon attorney Roger Adams wrote in a Feb. 25, 2000 memo, urging denial of the pardon requests.
“Given the lenient sentence petitioner received and his unwillingness to admit culpability, a pardon would tend to denigrate the seriousness of his conduct and undermine the deterrent effect of his conviction,” Adams added.
Three days later, after Adams’ memo was signed, White House lawyers sent a memo to Clinton saying he should grant the pardons. The White House memo acknowledged that Adams and the U.S. Attorney involved had recommended denying the pardons, but the Clinton aides said other concerns were more weighty, including the fact that convictions were reportedly interfering with the Gregorys’ ability to compete for a key state fair contract in Florida.
“Given the remoteness of the Gregorys’ offenses, their expressions of remorse, their demonstrated generosity in charitable giving and active involvement in the communities in which they work, the many attestations of business associates to their character and integrity and the official views of the Florida Commissioner on Agriculture, we recommend that you favorably consider pardoning Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory,” the White House lawyers wrote.
In addition to Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham and Bill Clinton’s half-brother Roger Clinton found themselves in the spotlight in the furor over last-minute pardons. Hugh Rodham, an attorney, took $400,000 to pursue clemency for two individuals who received it. He later returned the money. Roger Clinton denied taking money but acknowledged he urged pardons for five of his friends. They did not receive them.
The former president and first lady said they were unaware Hugh Rodham had been paid to advocate in the cases. “I’m just extremely disappointed in this terrible misjudgment that he made,” then-Sen. Clinton said in 2001.
At least three GOP opposition researchers have visited the Clinton Library’s research room in recent weeks, although none appears to have been on hand since the new pardon materials went public Tuesday.
The pardon records released this week have been the subject of Freedom of Information Act requests dating back a decade. The conservative group Judicial Watch sought the full set of clemency files in August 2006. In the following years, similar requests flowed in from journalists with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” CNSNews.com, Politico and a former Washington Post reporter.
Narrower sets of Clinton White House records have been released in the past about high-profile pardons, such as the clemency granted to fugitive investors Marc Rich and Pincus Green. However, none of those releases approaches the scale of this week’s release.
Several thousand pages of the records continue to be withheld on privacy grounds. The National Archives, which processes the records for release, indicated that more pardon-related records are still being prepared for release.
Some clemency-related records from the Clinton Library were accidentally forwarded to the investigating House committee in 2001. The National Archives ultimately asked for the records back.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, opened an investigation in 2001 into whether Clinton’s pardons to Rich and Green were linked to donations Rich’s former wife, Denise, made to the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising drive to build the Clinton Library. The probe also looked into the possibility that pardons for some Hasidic Jews were linked to donations to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.
A grand jury heard from several witnesses in the case and subpoenaed documents. The investigation was eventually closed without charges by White’s successor, James Comey, who now serves as director of the FBI.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/hillary-clinton-pardon-record-218331
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