PRESIDENTIAL BYPASS
WHY CLINTON SNUBBED JUSTICE ATTORNEYS
Bill Clinton spent eight years warring with the Department of Justice, the federal courts, and special prosecutor Ken Starr. Little wonder that, when given the chance, he participated in a little pay-back.
Each and every attack on Clinton was also an attack on the Presidency. At times one would think it was the Department of Justice, not the White House, that was the supreme power in the land. So, it is not at all unthinkable that, before turning off the Oval office lights to catch the Limo to his successor's swearing-in, president Clinton signed a whole stack of Pardons without consulting so much as a janitor at the Justice Department.
"How dare he," was the headlined outcry, wailed by US prosecutors and Capitol Hill pundits who still believe that US Justice officials are as pure as Lourdes water.
Clinton sent a message by excercising the one power given the president that no one can second guess or compromise. The Power to pardon.
Those who have bothered to look into the Marc Rich case pieced together by Mary Jo White, the US Attorney in New York, will readily see it was a civil matter that should have never been heared by a federal grand jury. Using the outdated grand jury system, based on British Common law, and abolished in Great Britian in 1933, American federal prosecutors can actually indict a ham sandwich. Today a grand jury is meer puty in a prosecutor's hand. Mary Jo White and her covey of prosecutors made good use of it.
Media outrage, flamed by leaks from the New York US Attorney's office, has focused on Rich's renouncement of US citizenship almost twenty years ago and his trading with America's enemies list. They fail to grasp that Rich has not been an American since 1983 and is not breaking any law anywhere by doing business with countries the federal government loves to hate.
Rich is being painted with the same demonized brush so familiar to anyone who has been targeted by the Department of Justice.
What was on Clinton's mind when he penned the Rich pardon and many others that are now the subject of Congressional committee hand wringing?
Clinton cleverly sent a message to those who plotted against him and his presidency almost from the beginning. The pardon flap has caused Congress to grind to a halt, distracted from dealing with anything George W. Bush want's.
It has allowed Clinton to stick it in the eye of the FBI, who relentlessly went after anyone who the Clinton's rubbed shoulders with.
It raised the question about Justice Department prosecutorial conduct, where flies are routinely swatted with baseball bats.
Most importantly, Clinton may have ignited a flame that could lay bare the black practices used by federal prosecutors to win at any cost.
If you were Bill Clinton would you seek the advise and consent of a Justice Department that has practiced nothing but injustice?
Justice prosecutors allowed a paid informant to lie about a 65 year old man by the name of Loren Pogue. Pogue never bought drugs, never sold them, never smuggled them, never used them, never even saw them but federal prosecutors convicted him. The father of 15 children got 30 years.
Dale Brown was caught up in a FBI sting. Federal agents entrapped the low-level Space contractor after $millions of tax dollars were wasted trying to uncover corruption that simply wasn't there. Brown's charges were eventually dropped but not after he lost everything.
James Sterba went on trial for soliciting a minor over the internet. The witness against him was paid 2000 dollars by federal agents who then covered up that she used a false name that hid her long criminal record. For assisting, federal prosecutors dropped charges that she was involved in an international pornography ring. They also forgot to tell the court their star witness had pled guilty in the past to giving false testimony that convicted an innocent man.
In New York, under US Attorney Mary-Jo White's nose, an FBI agent and his organized crime informant were actually "bad fellas". Agent Lindley DeVecchio passed bureau files to his mob contact, Greg Scarpa, who used them to avoid arrest and punish his enemies. The pair fabricated evidence to win indictments, convictions and solicit guilty pleas from innocent suspects.
An appeals court ruled 23 February that the federal government embezzeled billions of dollars from American Indian land accounts. Justice department lawyers tried to argue the court did not have authority to force the government to open the books.
Clinton's pardons has put the Justice Department on notice, a sweet piece of revenge by an out-going president who was hounded by the very unethical prosecutors who he slapped on his way out the White House door. The president did what no average citizen could do, he gave unjust federal prosecutors a taste of their own medicine.
