So he gets to visit the White House. Might even dished out some cash. Getting interesting the corruption.
Abramoffs Getting Hotter
- Thread starter djv
- Start date
Yea right up there with selling nights in the Lincoln Bedroom to get closer to the President of the United States. Talk about corruption :scared
SPARTA
SPARTA
you are making to much sense, that is not what djv likes to hear.
i also like how this abermoff scandal is just a repulican scandal, give me a break. Rebs and dems have both given back $ related to Abermoff.
SPARTA
you are making to much sense, that is not what djv likes to hear.
i also like how this abermoff scandal is just a repulican scandal, give me a break. Rebs and dems have both given back $ related to Abermoff.
and there are STILL indictments coming down from Clinton admin-bad timing on Hilliary's part on most corrupt admin--
Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.
The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.
Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.
His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.
Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.
After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.
Some Republicans long contended that efforts to close down Mr. Barrett's operation were motivated by an effort to suppress information about the Cisneros investigation that could reflect badly on Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But to Democrats and other critics of independent counsels, Mr. Barrett's inquiry has stood as a prime example what went wrong with an important post-Watergate law. That legislation allowed prosecutors, outside the Justice Department's traditional criminal justice bureaucracy, and armed with virtually unlimited time and money, to pursue their subjects into areas few federal prosecutors were likely to venture.
The final report, scheduled to be made public on Thursday, discusses in detail why the office remained in operation for so long: an intense behind-the-scenes clash between senior Justice Department officials and Mr. Barrett, who was trying to explore possible obstruction of justice within the Justice Department and the I.R.S.
A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known. On Wednesday, Mr. Barrett declined to discuss the report, saying he would not talk about it until it was officially made public.
The report reveals little new about the accusations that led to Mr. Barrett's appointment - that Mr. Cisneros misled investigators about payments to a former mistress. Those issues were the subject of news accounts during the 1990's.
But it was not widely known that Mr. Barrett believed that Mr. Cisneros's handling of the payments to the former mistress might have violated tax laws or that he suspected Justice Department and I.R.S. officials of criminal obstruction to help Mr. Cisneros avoid scrutiny. The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday that Mr. Barrett would issue a report alleging a Clinton administration cover-up of Mr. Cisneros's tax problems.
The report included statements, in appendices, from former Justice Department and I.R.S. officials sharply disputing Mr. Barrett's assertions. In addition, Barry S. Simon, a lawyer for Mr. Cisneros, said in a letter dated Nov. 8, 2005, and included in the report, "Materials that are now being publicly released are simply an effort to 'try' the case that" Mr. Barrett's office could not win in court.
Mr. Barrett's 746-page report said that the tax and obstruction phase of the inquiry ended without a definitive conclusion, but it declared: "These agencies' treatment of possible charges against Cisneros was at best questionable and at worst represented serious wrongdoing. There seems to be no question that Cisneros was given special consideration and more limited scrutiny because of who he was - an important political appointee."
Justice Department officials who disputed Mr. Barrett's findings portrayed his investigation as deeply misguided and said the tax case against Mr. Cisneros had little merit. They suggested that the prosecutor had turned his disappointment in his inability to prove the obstruction allegations into unprovable theories.
Robert S. Litt, one of the Justice Department officials involved, wrote in a comment letter on May 31, 2005, that he was allowed to read only edited parts of the report but that he concluded that the report was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."
Mr. Litt defended his evaluation of Mr. Cisneros's tax case, asserting that every Justice Department lawyer who had reviewed the case agreed with the conclusion. He said in his letter that Mr. Barrett's accusations of obstruction were "a scurrilous falsehood."
In his effort to explain his time-consuming inquiry, Mr. Barrett asserted that he was slowed by reluctant witnesses and impeded by Justice Department officials. He suggested that those officials had grown resistant to referring issues to outside prosecutors because of the number of cabinet officers already being investigated by special prosecutors at the request of Ms. Reno.
In the case of Mr. Cisneros, Ms. Reno agreed to expand the scope of Mr. Barrett's inquiry to possible tax violations but limited the investigation to a single tax-reporting year, a move that the report suggests effectively killed the investigation.
Mr. Barrett concluded that "in the end enough high-ranking officials with enough power were able to blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination of Cisneros' possible tax offenses in the face of what seemed to many to be obvious grounds for such an inquiry."
Mr. Barrett said I.R.S. officials in Washington took over a district-level inquiry in Texas into Mr. Cisneros's taxes and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to go ahead with a criminal investigation. But in a 1997 memorandum protesting the decision, an I.R.S. investigator in Texas said there was evidence that Mr. Cisneros had diverted substantial parts of his speaking fees in the early 1990's to the former mistress, without the knowledge of co-workers.
But other I.R.S. and Justice Department officials said that a fairly complete listing of Mr. Cisneros's income from various sources was available to his accountants, whom he relied on to prepare his tax returns. That would have made it impossible to sustain a prosecution, they said.
The prolonged investigation and the Barrett report have been the subjects of intense partisan battles. Democrats have asserted that the investigation was kept alive in hopes of developing and propagating accusations about the Clinton administration, while Republicans have said that supporters of Mr. Clinton and Senator Clinton were eager to suppress Mr. Barrett's inquiries. Mrs. Clinton, a potential presidential contender in 2008, is up for re-election this year.
Initially, the panel of three judges that oversees the lingering issues involving the independent counsel law agreed in October to the public release of Mr. Barrett's report but said the section with accusations about Clinton officials must be deleted.
But after Congressional Republicans attached a rider to a Department of Housing and Urban Development spending bill requiring publication of the full report, the judicial panel in November ordered a full disclosure.
Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.
The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.
Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.
His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.
Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.
After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.
Some Republicans long contended that efforts to close down Mr. Barrett's operation were motivated by an effort to suppress information about the Cisneros investigation that could reflect badly on Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But to Democrats and other critics of independent counsels, Mr. Barrett's inquiry has stood as a prime example what went wrong with an important post-Watergate law. That legislation allowed prosecutors, outside the Justice Department's traditional criminal justice bureaucracy, and armed with virtually unlimited time and money, to pursue their subjects into areas few federal prosecutors were likely to venture.
The final report, scheduled to be made public on Thursday, discusses in detail why the office remained in operation for so long: an intense behind-the-scenes clash between senior Justice Department officials and Mr. Barrett, who was trying to explore possible obstruction of justice within the Justice Department and the I.R.S.
A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known. On Wednesday, Mr. Barrett declined to discuss the report, saying he would not talk about it until it was officially made public.
The report reveals little new about the accusations that led to Mr. Barrett's appointment - that Mr. Cisneros misled investigators about payments to a former mistress. Those issues were the subject of news accounts during the 1990's.
But it was not widely known that Mr. Barrett believed that Mr. Cisneros's handling of the payments to the former mistress might have violated tax laws or that he suspected Justice Department and I.R.S. officials of criminal obstruction to help Mr. Cisneros avoid scrutiny. The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday that Mr. Barrett would issue a report alleging a Clinton administration cover-up of Mr. Cisneros's tax problems.
The report included statements, in appendices, from former Justice Department and I.R.S. officials sharply disputing Mr. Barrett's assertions. In addition, Barry S. Simon, a lawyer for Mr. Cisneros, said in a letter dated Nov. 8, 2005, and included in the report, "Materials that are now being publicly released are simply an effort to 'try' the case that" Mr. Barrett's office could not win in court.
Mr. Barrett's 746-page report said that the tax and obstruction phase of the inquiry ended without a definitive conclusion, but it declared: "These agencies' treatment of possible charges against Cisneros was at best questionable and at worst represented serious wrongdoing. There seems to be no question that Cisneros was given special consideration and more limited scrutiny because of who he was - an important political appointee."
Justice Department officials who disputed Mr. Barrett's findings portrayed his investigation as deeply misguided and said the tax case against Mr. Cisneros had little merit. They suggested that the prosecutor had turned his disappointment in his inability to prove the obstruction allegations into unprovable theories.
Robert S. Litt, one of the Justice Department officials involved, wrote in a comment letter on May 31, 2005, that he was allowed to read only edited parts of the report but that he concluded that the report was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."
Mr. Litt defended his evaluation of Mr. Cisneros's tax case, asserting that every Justice Department lawyer who had reviewed the case agreed with the conclusion. He said in his letter that Mr. Barrett's accusations of obstruction were "a scurrilous falsehood."
In his effort to explain his time-consuming inquiry, Mr. Barrett asserted that he was slowed by reluctant witnesses and impeded by Justice Department officials. He suggested that those officials had grown resistant to referring issues to outside prosecutors because of the number of cabinet officers already being investigated by special prosecutors at the request of Ms. Reno.
In the case of Mr. Cisneros, Ms. Reno agreed to expand the scope of Mr. Barrett's inquiry to possible tax violations but limited the investigation to a single tax-reporting year, a move that the report suggests effectively killed the investigation.
Mr. Barrett concluded that "in the end enough high-ranking officials with enough power were able to blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination of Cisneros' possible tax offenses in the face of what seemed to many to be obvious grounds for such an inquiry."
Mr. Barrett said I.R.S. officials in Washington took over a district-level inquiry in Texas into Mr. Cisneros's taxes and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to go ahead with a criminal investigation. But in a 1997 memorandum protesting the decision, an I.R.S. investigator in Texas said there was evidence that Mr. Cisneros had diverted substantial parts of his speaking fees in the early 1990's to the former mistress, without the knowledge of co-workers.
But other I.R.S. and Justice Department officials said that a fairly complete listing of Mr. Cisneros's income from various sources was available to his accountants, whom he relied on to prepare his tax returns. That would have made it impossible to sustain a prosecution, they said.
The prolonged investigation and the Barrett report have been the subjects of intense partisan battles. Democrats have asserted that the investigation was kept alive in hopes of developing and propagating accusations about the Clinton administration, while Republicans have said that supporters of Mr. Clinton and Senator Clinton were eager to suppress Mr. Barrett's inquiries. Mrs. Clinton, a potential presidential contender in 2008, is up for re-election this year.
Initially, the panel of three judges that oversees the lingering issues involving the independent counsel law agreed in October to the public release of Mr. Barrett's report but said the section with accusations about Clinton officials must be deleted.
But after Congressional Republicans attached a rider to a Department of Housing and Urban Development spending bill requiring publication of the full report, the judicial panel in November ordered a full disclosure.
Wayne,
It's kind of funny how when somebody posts a story related to a Delay indictment, you hide in the sand and say, 'well, that's not a conviction', but when a Clinton official gets indicted you make sure to run here and post the article.
And if only the dems had all these 'special prosecutors' with unlimited time and funds like Barrett and Starr, well, I think the results would be more interesting than lying about a blow job or some tax offense by the former housing secretary.
After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.
The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.
It's kind of funny how when somebody posts a story related to a Delay indictment, you hide in the sand and say, 'well, that's not a conviction', but when a Clinton official gets indicted you make sure to run here and post the article.
And if only the dems had all these 'special prosecutors' with unlimited time and funds like Barrett and Starr, well, I think the results would be more interesting than lying about a blow job or some tax offense by the former housing secretary.
After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.
The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.
Is Abramoff in the White House photo album? McClellan today: ?I said if you have a specific issue of concern, then we?ll be glad to take a look into that.? Knight-Ridder has a specific issue: ?McClellan has ducked whether there are any pictures of Bush with Abramoff, saying only that he?d look into the question.?
Of course Bush never knew or personally met his largest fundraiser happens all the time, although we sure have alot of photo-ops with other pioneers that didn't raise nearly as much funds..
Of course Bush never knew or personally met his largest fundraiser happens all the time, although we sure have alot of photo-ops with other pioneers that didn't raise nearly as much funds..
Sparta said:
Sorry, but the argument that "Clinton was worse," is no excuse. Dubya campaigned on the promise that he would restore values and integrity and honor to the White House.
DTB,
How in the world did you come up with a post about Clinton in a thread started about Jack Abramoff? Did you post this in the wrong thread or did I miss something that is going to tie Clinton to good ole Pioneer Jack?
How in the world did you come up with a post about Clinton in a thread started about Jack Abramoff? Did you post this in the wrong thread or did I miss something that is going to tie Clinton to good ole Pioneer Jack?
I feel sorry for Scott McClellan, this guy has to trot out there each day and try to spin the Administration's lies then ends up looking like the boogie man when the shit hit the fan. I don't know what their paying this guy but he is definitly underpaid with the stress he must be under.
Matt If you remember I am no fan of delay and said I thought he'd go same route as Dashel --a long time ago.
On Abramoff--I have sneaking suspicion it might not be so favorable forDems before its over. Reid didn't appolagize to Rebs yeterday for his attack per Abramoff for no reason--and I doubt its because he refused to return money he got via that route-I smell something else coming down.
On Bill--this is small time stuff--and not concerned Bill gave him last minute pardon to keep him from spilling the beans--more concerned on ongoing investigation of last minute pardon of Rich--after all I believe NY is a 3 strike state and he's got 2 felonies in the kittie already
On Abramoff--I have sneaking suspicion it might not be so favorable forDems before its over. Reid didn't appolagize to Rebs yeterday for his attack per Abramoff for no reason--and I doubt its because he refused to return money he got via that route-I smell something else coming down.
On Bill--this is small time stuff--and not concerned Bill gave him last minute pardon to keep him from spilling the beans--more concerned on ongoing investigation of last minute pardon of Rich--after all I believe NY is a 3 strike state and he's got 2 felonies in the kittie already
lol- Man, I was reading DTB's Clinton/corruption post and thinking; "How long will it take for Kosar to respond with some defense", being the fair/balanced guy that he is.
Lo and behold, scroll down and there it is! :clap: the next friggin' post!!
Man, some of us are getting too predictable.
Of course, MC always... always asking how Clinton comes up in a thread. as if politics only started once Gore stopped whining.
:joke:
Lo and behold, scroll down and there it is! :clap: the next friggin' post!!
Man, some of us are getting too predictable.
Of course, MC always... always asking how Clinton comes up in a thread.
as if politics only started once Gore stopped whining. :joke:
Nosigar said:
What was I 'defending?' I was just pointing out how to Wayne, Republican indictments don't mean anything unless there is a conviction but democrat indictments are worthy of a post, and a non-sequitur post at that.
I'll tell you one thing that *is* predictable though. That Clintons name will come up in almost every thread, regardless of the topic. He's not in office anymore, fellas, and 'Clinton did this or that' is not a defense of anything the current admin does.
Same situation, different day, same off point responses to deflect attention, never admitting wrongdoing. Such is life in the conservative wing.
The first response brings up Clinton. It's just laughable how people try to say it's the same as what Clinton did, and at the same time try to say what a crappy President and liar Clinton was. Do you all realize what a hollow, sad attempt at "equality" that is? You spend your time comparing Bush to Clinton, as if the bad stuff is then somehow ok. Stop and think about that.
The second response, different names, same theme, tries to gloss over the Abramoff situation as also being a democratic issue. Which is not only a deflection, it's just plain wrong. What Abramoff is being indicted for as I have read...if anyone cares to look at the facts...is for the money he donated to candidates HIMSELF. Not anyone he ever met in his life or his clients...just what he HIMSELF donated. And there is not one single democrat on that list. There are no other indictments...no democrats listed in the indictments. So, the actual scandal is A REPUBLICAN SCANDAL. No matter how you deflect, broad paintbrush talking points, and try to make it otherwise.
Then, another Clinton reference, along the lines of the first post. I guess to try to get Bush equal to Clinton's badness. What positivity to shoot for!
JC DunkDogs chimes in with the most crisp dead-on post I've seen here in ages. Not only is what these people are doing wrong - and against the law in many cases - this administration and many conservatives who are now being indicted campaigned on morality and restoring integrity being restored to our government and to the Oval Office.
The irony in the conservative behavior - and many of the posts here of conservative supporters - is truly stunning.
Oh, but wait...I think Clinton was ironic that one time...never mind...
The first response brings up Clinton. It's just laughable how people try to say it's the same as what Clinton did, and at the same time try to say what a crappy President and liar Clinton was. Do you all realize what a hollow, sad attempt at "equality" that is? You spend your time comparing Bush to Clinton, as if the bad stuff is then somehow ok. Stop and think about that.
The second response, different names, same theme, tries to gloss over the Abramoff situation as also being a democratic issue. Which is not only a deflection, it's just plain wrong. What Abramoff is being indicted for as I have read...if anyone cares to look at the facts...is for the money he donated to candidates HIMSELF. Not anyone he ever met in his life or his clients...just what he HIMSELF donated. And there is not one single democrat on that list. There are no other indictments...no democrats listed in the indictments. So, the actual scandal is A REPUBLICAN SCANDAL. No matter how you deflect, broad paintbrush talking points, and try to make it otherwise.
Then, another Clinton reference, along the lines of the first post. I guess to try to get Bush equal to Clinton's badness. What positivity to shoot for!
JC DunkDogs chimes in with the most crisp dead-on post I've seen here in ages. Not only is what these people are doing wrong - and against the law in many cases - this administration and many conservatives who are now being indicted campaigned on morality and restoring integrity being restored to our government and to the Oval Office.
The irony in the conservative behavior - and many of the posts here of conservative supporters - is truly stunning.
Oh, but wait...I think Clinton was ironic that one time...never mind...
One thing about it--theres enough corruption on both sides of fence for all of us to have a little fun
I just get sick of the sell out to the corporations. These guys are voted in to work for us. Some are just better at lining there pockets then others. I hope we throw a ton of them out in 06 election. We need new blood so dam bad.
