Republicans investigating campaign fundraising tried Wednesday to tie President Clinton to an allegedly illegal Teamsters financing scheme, but were forced to back down and apologize when confronted with conflicting evidence.
“If you’ve got to eat any crow, or even half a crow, it is better to do it when it is warm than when it gets cold,” said Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Governmental Affairs.
The GOP gaffe overshadowed long-awaited sparring between Republicans and Harold Ickes, a former top Clinton aide with intimate knowledge of Clinton’s 1996 campaign, and the opening of the House’s much-delayed campaign-finance investigation.
Thompson had suggested that Clinton and two top Democratic Party officials met with Teamsters Union consultant Martin Davis at the White House while Davis was plotting an illegal cash swap between the union and Democratic Party.
Davis is one of three associates of Teamsters President Ron Carey who pleaded guilty recently to fraud charges involving Carey’s disputed re-election. The three allegedly planned to ask the Democratic National Committee to line up donors for Carey’s cash-short 1996 campaign in return for large union donations to the Democrats.
Documents released by New York prosecutors suggested involvement in the scheme by two unnamed party officials. Thompson confirmed Wednesday that they are Terrence McAuliffe, the Clinton campaign finance director, and Laura Hartigan, another top fundraiser and daughter of former Illinois Lt. Gov. Neil Hartigan.
McAuliffe and Hartigan, who routinely attended such White House events, deny any wrongdoing and have been questioned by the prosecutors and Senate investigators. Still, the intimation that their dealings with Davis were improper provided the basis for Wednesday’s Republican allegations.
Thompson produced White House records indicating that Davis, Hartigan and McAuliffe each entered the executive mansion shortly after noon on June 17, 1996. According to the subpoenaed records, their meeting was in the residence area and the “visitee” was “POTUS,” shorthand for the President of the United States.
The union gave the Democrats $235,000 within a week of Davis, Hartigan and McAuliffe’s joint White House appearance, records showed.
The implication of Thompson’s disclosure was clear: The trio met with Clinton and perhaps discussed the scheme. But an hour later, the Democrats disclosed a DNC memo for Clinton that the GOP somehow missed.
It revealed that half an hour after Davis, Hartigan and McAuliffe arrived at the White House, they attended a luncheon for Clinton supporters. White House aides said Clinton met with schedulers from noon to 1 p.m. that day, got to the luncheon late and left to meet with the President of Haiti, ruling out a private meeting with the three.
Thompson was forced to concede that there did not appear to have been any Clinton meeting and said he had not intended to connect the president to a criminal conspiracy.
“I should have taken a little more time to explore some of these avenues before I left that implication,” he said.
Meanwhile, there was the GOP faceoff with Ickes, Clinton’s irascible former deputy chief of staff and keeper of many secrets. Ickes, 58, was droll, cutting, belligerent and generally frustrating to the committee’s Republicans, keeping them off stride with qualifiers like, “I don’t specifically recall.”
He jousted with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). “I hate to interrupt you,” Ickes said during her questioning. “I doubt that,” she snapped back.
Ickes, who exited the White House after Clinton spurned him last November for the chief of staff’s position, refused to concede any fundraising improprieties by the president.
“Boy, you are tremendous!” said Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) with a mix of resignation, suspicion and grudging admiration.
The day’s top tussle came late, with most spectators, media and senators gone, and pitted Ickes against Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla).
To the chagrin of his own lawyer, Ickes exhibited thinly veiled rage over an earlier suggestion by Nickles that he was involved in obstruction of justice.
When Nickles asked one question, Ickes responded icily, “I’ve answered that.” Nickles tried the same one again. Same answer. Two more times. Nothing changed.
And when Nickles asked if Democratic contributors had gotten rides on Air Force One, Ickes voiced dripped with sarcasm and he shot back, “We basically invited people we didn’t like, Senator.
“Harold, Harold,” whispered attorney Robert Bennett, who sat behind Ickes, clearly wanting him to ease up.
Ickes didn’t. When Nickles noted how controversial fundraiser John Huang visited the White House more than 100 times, Ickes stopped him short. “So what?”
When Nickles persisted with Huang, intimating Clinton wrongdoing for letting him in, Ickes’ response was, “Cheap shot.”
In the House, a panel headed by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) began its hearings on fundraising abuses amid taunts from Democrats on the 44-member panel.
They accused Burton of rigging his investigation to inflict maximum embarrassment to Democrats and help Republicans keep their majority in Congress in next year’s elections.
“This committee remains dead set on conducting a frivolous partisan folly,” said Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who said the committee has issued 534 subpoenas and other requests for information from Democrats and only 10 aimed at Republicans.
“We are committed to thorough and fair hearings,” Burton said. “While the excesses of the White House and the Democratic National Committee may have propelled this investigation, the committee also is examining matters relating to the Republican National Committee.”
He said the Government Reform Committee hearings would look at foreign contributions to U.S. campaigns and may offer evidence of questionable fundraising tactics dating back to the 1992 election.
Burton said Nora and Gene Lum, a California couple who pleaded guilty earlier this year to fundraising violations, may be offered immunity to testify about a $50,000 contribution they say they helped deliver from an unidentified foreigner to Clinton’s 1992 campaign in exchange for Clinton’s endorsement of a foreign politician.
A campaign aide signed then-Gov. Clinton’s name to a letter supporting the candidacy of the foreign politician, “who is now the leader of an Asian nation,” according to a letter to the committee from the couple’s lawyer.
“It appears that the seeds of today’s scandals may have been planted as early as 1991,” Burton said.
