House panel meeting with Clinton attorney postponed

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A meeting scheduled for Friday between Clinton Foundation attorney David Kendall and investigators for the House Government Reform Committee has been postponed by the committee until Monday. No reason was given.

The purpose of the meeting was to review a list of donors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation. The committee is looking for links between donations to the foundation and pardons granted by former President Bill Clinton.

The action is the latest in the committee's continuing investigation into the Clinton pardons. It came after Thursday's daylong committee hearing, in which several former Clinton administration officials were questioned about the pardons.

At the hearing, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former White House Counsel Beth Nolan and former Deputy Counsel Bruce Lindsey were joined by Jack Quinn, another former White House counsel who served as attorney for billionaire financier Marc Rich, whose presidential pardon is the focus of the hearings by the House Government Operations and Reform Committee. "There was no wrongdoing," Podesta said.

Rich fled to Switzerland 17 years ago to avoid prosecution on racketeering, wire fraud, income tax evasion and illegal oil trading charges. His was one of 140 pardons that Clinton granted in his last hours in office on January 20.

Denise Rich, his ex-wife, has been a major contributor to Democratic campaigns and the Clinton presidential library foundation. Democratic fund-raiser Beth Dozoretz, who pledged to raise $1 million for the Clinton presidential library, also appeared before the committee but declined to answer questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incriminating answers. The House committee is looking into whether those actions had any impact on Clinton's granting of the pardon of Marc Rich.

Podesta, Nolan and Lindsey all said they recommended that the pardon be denied, but supported Clinton's decision-making process.

"I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits," Podesta said.

Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Indiana, asked why Nolan why she not more strongly express her objections on the night before the pardon was granted.

Nolan testified that she had asked Rich attorney Jack Quinn, not the Justice Department, about allegations that arose of Marc Rich being involved in forbidden arms-dealing after he left the United States following his 1983 indictment for tax evasion and racketeering.

"This was a very, very serious thing. It should have sent up red flags all over the place," Burton said. "And to ask the defense attorney for his counsel on this and not ask the Justice Department when you're going to be pardoning one of the most wanted fugitives in the world ... just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't pass muster."

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New controversy emerges in Clinton pardons
February 21, 2001

Senate Judiciary Committee
House Government Reform Committee

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