The notes of a senior aide say that at a November 1995 White House meeting where the distinction between “hard” and “soft” money was apparently discussed, Vice President Al Gore told the others present to “count me in” on making fundraising telephone calls that are the subject of a Justice Department review on whether to seek the appointment of an independent prosecutor.
Gore’s comment was recorded in handwritten notes by his deputy chief of staff, David Strauss, that appear on several pages of a White House memorandum that discussed the Democrats’ ambitious fundraising strategy for the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign.
The memorandum was turned over to the Justice Department by the White House about a month ago and has prompted prosecutors to begin the process of deciding whether to seek an outside counsel to investigate campaign-finance abuses.
The notes suggest that Gore may not have been candid in his public statements on the subject of the phone calls.
He has said that he did not realize that some of the large contributions he solicited in the fundraising calls for use only for general campaign purposes by the Democratic Party, such as registration drives, would be diverted to hard-money accounts which directly financed such Clinton-Gore re-election devices as television ads.
Strauss’ notes indicate that Gore may have known that there was a distinction between hard- and soft-money contributions because the subject appears to have been discussed at the Nov. 21, 1995, meeting attended by President Clinton, Gore and senior campaign officials.
The seemingly narrow question of whether Gore knew the distinction between hard and soft money is significant because Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has said that telephone solicitations for the re-election effort, or hard money, by the president or vice president were subject to federal campaign-finance laws and could be illegal.
Reno is expected to open preliminary investigations of Gore and onetime White House aide Harold Ickes. An official said she is “closer than ever before” to seeking an independent counsel.
Decisions by Reno to launch 90-day preliminary inquiries into each man under the independent counsel law could come as early as Friday.
