NewsMax.com
Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001

The Washington Post has reported that:

The last-minute, behind-the-scenes campaign to influence the outgoing president, in the last few hours of his presidency, was carried out by the politically influential Washington, D.C., firms of Quinn Gillespie & Associates and Arnold & Porter.

Jack Quinn, co-founder of Quinn Gillespie & Associates, was a Clinton White House counsel, chief of staff to Vice President Gore, and a fund-raiser for both.

Arnold & Porter has represented the Clinton legal defense fund since its creation in 1998.

Their successful efforts were on behalf of Marc Rich, 65, now a citizen of Spain.

He was charged by federal prosecutors with using sham oil transactions to escape more than $48 million in taxes owed to the United States government.

Rich and his partner Pincus Green were also indicted for illegally buying more than $200 million worth of oil from Iran after President Jimmy Carter banned trade with Tehran during the hostage crisis.

Clinton cleared both men of all charges, even though Rich escaped trial by fleeing to Switzerland shortly after his indictment.

These unusual circumstances in Rich's case have raised speculation that Clinton may have granted the pardon for Rich out of consideration of political contributions and influence rather than on its merits:

• Typically, pardons have been for persons convicted of crimes or who are serving, or have served, sentences. Rich did not even show up in court, having fled the country.

• Pardon applications are argued to the U.S. pardon attorney at the Justice Department. Rich's lawyers took his appeal directly to the president.

• Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, a New York songwriter, on Dec. 6 sent a passionate letter to Clinton, urging him to grant her former husband a pardon because he had done so much for charity.

• Shortly before Clinton issued the pardon, she met with him privately.

• She is well-known as a Democratic fund-raiser who has donated more than $1 million to Democrats and helped raise as much as another $250,000 for the party. She also gave $10,000 to the president's legal defense fund.

All that has current and past federal prosecutors steaming.

New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who dropped out of his Senate race against Clinton's wife, Hillary, was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who brought the case against Rich.

He was also at one time the Justice Department's pardon attorney.

Giuliani said he found it "very, very hard to understand. [Rich] ran away and flouted American law. Now all of a sudden he gets a pardon."

U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee, said that prosecutors were "totally unaware that pardons for Marc Rich and Pincus Green were even under consideration."

Speaking in defense of Rich, a New York lawyer, Robert Fink, said other companies engaged in the same kind of activity as Rich but were never charged.

"We basically told the president this case never should have been brought," Fink said.

He said that since Rich went into exile he has given more than $200 million to charitable causes, much of it in Israel.

One of the letters of support that Rich's attorneys presented to the president was from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Clinton said he had studied the Rich case at length, that "Quinn made a strong case and I would suggest he was right on the merits."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Pardongate
Clinton Scandals