Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Impeach those who fire federal prosecutors?

Amazing how tough it was to Google any mention of Clinton's mass firing of federal prosecutors.... or any analysis of his motives.

JWR Sowell archives 9-15-98
By firing all U.S. Attorneys shortly after becoming president -- something no other president had ever done before -- Bill Clinton got rid of the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas who was investigating the Whitewater-Madison Guaranty scandals and replaced him with Paula Casey, a Clinton protege and one of his political campaign workers.

The entire article:
Hillary Rodham Crook?
AFTER FINISHING HIS WORK on potentially impeachable offenses growing out of the Lewinsky scandal, Kenneth Starr is still investigating other activities by the president and others, which could add to the list of potentially impeachable offenses by the president and criminal indictments against others.
Billary: Like husband, like wife?Or is it the other way around? Let's go back to square one. This all started with the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into financial frauds in Arkansas, in institutions connected with Hillary and Bill Clinton.
The Clintons were partners with Jim and Susan McDougal in the Whitewater Development Corporation, whose accounts were kept in the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, run by Jim McDougal, with Hillary Clinton as an attorney. Federal bank examiners testified that Madison Guaranty was a "politically corrupt institution that routed millions of dollars to politically connected Arkansans."
In the more reserved language of an official report, Madison Guaranty was the scene of "embezzlement," "money laundering," "falsification of loan records and board minutes," "wire fraud" and "illegal campaign contributions" -- among other crimes.
Part of the money looted by Jim McDougal found its way into the Whitewater account and into Bill Clinton's political campaign funds. These frauds left the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to pay more than $60 million to depositors with accounts in Madison Guaranty. That was more than all the years of Kenneth Starr's investigations cost.
Why was a special prosecutor necessary? Because the Clintons had used their political clout to obstruct the investigations and corrupt the normal processes of government, at both the state and federal levels. This was not just Bill Clinton's method of operation when dealing with scandals in "his private sex life." It was a technique used by both Clintons in matters having nothing to do with sex, long before anyone ever heard of Monica Lewinsky.
When both state and federal investigators first moved in, Hillary Clinton was able to stop the state officials from closing down Madison Guaranty. She was more than just another lawyer appearing before state officials. She was the wife of the governor who appointed those officials.
The Clintons could not interfere with the feds, however -- at least not until they were in the White House. By then, Madison Guaranty had been closed down and federal investigators were on the trail of the frauds. By firing all U.S. Attorneys shortly after becoming president -- something no other president had ever done before -- Bill Clinton got rid of the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas who was investigating the Whitewater-Madison Guaranty scandals and replaced him with Paula Casey, a Clinton protege and one of his political campaign workers.
The president's Arkansas appointee had no experience as a prosecutor, but she had political ties to the people being investigated -- including the Clintons and Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker.
Other federal authorities who sent information to Ms. Casey for criminal investigations of Tucker and the Clintons got nowhere. She officially declined the criminal referrals. She even kept the information from reaching Justice Department headquarters in Washington, until others went over her head to tell the top brass at Justice in D.C.
Other investigators in another federal agency were told that higher-ups would take "a dim view" of their pursuing the Whitewater-Madison affair. When these investigators failed to take the hint, they were put on administrative leave in August 1994, without warning and without explanation.
Meanwhile, White House lawyers and the Clintons' private attorneys were being briefed repeatedly on how much dirt the feds had dug up on the Clintons back in Arkansas. It was a complete violation of the rules and practices for federal investigators to reveal what they had found out to those who were being investigated.
All that kept this cover-up and obstruction of justice from succeeding was the appointment of a special prosecutor. Kenneth Starr could not be put on administrative leave. He got more than 20 felony convictions out of an Arkansas jury in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, despite later White House spin that this was all just Republican "partisanship."
Against this background, it is easy to see why various records showing Hillary Clinton's work for Madison Guaranty were destroyed and others stolen by Webster Hubbell and "lost" in the White House.

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