Burton turns attention toward federal judge in campaign finance probe

April 19, 2000
Web posted at: 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of the House Government Reform Committee on Tuesday invited the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington to testify about why she bypassed the court's normal rotation on a number of occasions and assigned cases related to the Clinton Administration to judges appointed by the president.

In a letter to Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, panel Chairman Dan Burton (R-Indiana), asked for an explanation as to why the normal, random assignment process was not used in cases involving former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, Democratic fund-raisers Charlie Trie and Maria Hsia, and other defendants.

The cases were brought by the U.S. Department of Justice's Campaign Financing Task Force and one-time Independent Counsel Ken Starr.

"The committee wants to assure you that it intends to focus solely on the administrative process of the case assignments, and will not make any queries which go to the substance of these or any other cases before the (court)," Burton said in his letter requesting testimony from Judge Johnson.

The committee's hearing on the judicial assignments is scheduled for the morning of May 17.

"There have been several questions raised in the news media about the manner in which cases involving (the 1996) Clinton-Gore campaign fund-raisers were assigned," Burton said in a statement. "We would like to give Judge Johnson an opportunity to clear the record once and for all."

An investigation by a Republican-appointed judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has already cleared Judge Johnson of any impropriety. The judge has explained that the cases were assigned to judges whose schedules were light enough to expeditiously hear the high-profile cases.

A second court-ordered investigation is now underway.

Judge Johnson's office declined late Tuesday to comment about the letter, or whether she would testify before the committee.

Burton's Government Reform Committee has been pursuing its investigations of the fund-raising practices of the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign of 1996 since just after that election.

Among the fund-raising questions considered by the committee were whether agents of foreign governments -- specifically the People's Republic of China -- were able to exert undue influence on the 1996 presidential campaign by finding a myriad of ways to funnel contribution monies to the Democratic Party.

The probe is one of may undertaken by the panel since the Republican Party gained control of the House in 1994.

Other inquiries have included looks into the White House Security Office's acquisition of some 900 FBI files of many prominent Washington operatives, including key Republicans; the investigation into the firings of several White House Travel Office employees; and the recent dissection of a White House computer problem that may have resulted in perhaps hundreds of subpoenaed e-mail messages from being transferred to those seeking to have a look at them.

Hsia was convicted in March of campaign law violations in connection with a 1996 Democratic fund-raising event at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California. Vice President Al Gore, the presumptive nominee for the party's 2000 presidential nomination, appeared at the event.

Trie pleaded guilty in May of 1999 to one felony charge of causing the Democratic National Committee's treasurer to submit a report to the Federal Election Commission that gave false names for donors. He also pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of making political contributions in the names of others.

He was sentenced last November to three years probation, was fined $5,000 and was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

As part of a plea bargain, Trie agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department's ongoing campaign fund-raising investigation and has helped Burton's committee with its inquiry.

Hubbell, who was formerly the No. 3 official in the Justice Department, forged an agreement with Starr last June in which he pleaded guilty for concealing his legal work on the infamous Arkansas Whitewater land deal, and of a tax evasion misdemeanor.

He served 16 months in jail in 1994 after pleading guilty to stealing $400,000 from the Rose Law firm in Arkansas -- where he and Mrs. Clinton worked together in the 1980s.

CNN Producer Ted Barrett contributed to this report.