Hillary - Why Did Bill Pardon Mark Rich?

[marble falls]

86. From wikipedia:

U.S. indictment and controversial pardon
2001 The Controversial Pardon of International Fugitive Marc Rich

In 1983 Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted on 65 criminal counts, including income tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the oil embargo (at a time when Iranian revolutionaries were still holding American citizens hostage).[17][7] The charges would have led to a sentence of more than 300 years in prison had Rich been convicted on all counts.[17] The indictment was filed by then-U.S. Federal Prosecutor (and future mayor of New York City) Rudolph Giuliani. At the time it was the biggest tax evasion case in U.S. history.[18]

Hearing of the plans for the indictment, Rich fled[9] to Switzerland and, always insisting that he was not guilty, never returned to the U.S. to answer the charges.[Notes 1] Rich's companies eventually pled guilty to 35 counts of tax evasion and paid $90 million in fines,[7] although Rich himself remained on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most-Wanted Fugitives List for many years,[20] narrowly evading capture in Britain, Germany, Finland, and Jamaica.[21] Fearing arrest, he did not even return to the United States to attend his daughter's funeral in 1996.[22]

On January 20, 2001, hours before leaving office, U.S. President Bill Clinton granted Rich a highly controversial presidential pardon. Several of Clinton's strongest supporters distanced themselves from the decision.[23] Former President Jimmy Carter, a fellow Democrat, said, "I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in his pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion, that was disgraceful."[24] Clinton himself later expressed regret for issuing the pardon, saying that "it wasn't worth the damage to my reputation."[9]

Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought, as Denise Rich had given more than $1 million[25] to Clinton's political party (the Democratic Party), including more than $100,000 to the Senate campaign of the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and $450,000 to the Clinton Library foundation during Clinton's time in office.[21] Clinton explained his decision by noting that similar cases were settled in civil, not criminal court.

Clinton also cited clemency pleas he had received from Israeli government officials, including then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Rich had made substantial donations to Israeli charitable foundations over the years, and many senior Israeli officials, such as Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert, argued on his behalf behind the scenes.[26] Speculation about another rationale for Rich's pardon involved his alleged involvement with the Israeli intelligence community.[27][28] Rich reluctantly acknowledged in interviews with his biographer, Daniel Ammann, that he had assisted the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service,[4][13] a claim that Ammann said was confirmed by a former Israeli intelligence officer.[12] According to Ammann, Rich had helped finance the Mossad's operations and had supplied Israel with strategic amounts of Iranian oil through a secret oil pipeline.[4] The aide to Rich who had persuaded Denise Rich to personally ask President Clinton to review Rich's pardon request was a former chief of the Mossad, Avner Azulay.[22][29] Another former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, had also urged Clinton to pardon Rich,[30] whom he said had routinely allowed intelligence agents to use his offices around the world.[17]

Federal Prosecutor Mary Jo White was appointed to investigate Clinton's last-minute pardon of Rich.[31] She stepped down before the investigation was finished and was replaced by James Comey, who was critical of Clinton's pardons and of then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's pardon recommendation.[32] Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously been Clinton's White House Counsel and chief of staff to Clinton's Vice President, Al Gore, and had had a close relationship with Holder.[22] According to Quinn, Holder had advised that standard procedures be bypassed and the pardon petition be submitted directly to the White House.[33][Notes 2] Congressional investigations were also launched. Clinton's top advisors, Chief of Staff John Podesta, White House Counsel Beth Nolan, and advisor Bruce Lindsey, testified that nearly all of the White House staff advising the president on the pardon request had urged Clinton to not grant Rich a pardon.[29] Federal investigators ultimately found no evidence of criminal activity.[30]

As a condition of the pardon, it was made clear that Rich would drop all procedural defenses against any civil actions brought against him by the United States upon his return there. That condition was consistent with the position that his alleged wrongdoing warranted only civil penalties, not criminal punishment. Rich never returned to the United States.[9]

In a February 18, 2001 op-ed essay in The New York Times, Clinton (by then out of office) explained why he had pardoned Rich, noting that U.S. tax professors Bernard Wolfman of the Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center had concluded that no crime had been committed, and that Rich's companies' tax-reporting position had been reasonable.[19] In the same essay, Clinton listed Lewis "Scooter" Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who supported a pardon for Rich. (Libby himself later received a presidential commutation for his involvement in the Plame affair.) During Congressional hearings after Rich's pardon, Libby, who had represented Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000, denied that Rich had violated the tax laws but criticized him for trading with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages.[35]