Klayman Report No Bedtime Story

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 9, 1998 | by Timothy W. Maier

Judicial Watch has been compiling a document of Clinton-administration injustice that is proving to be nearly as juicy -- if not as salacious -- as the Kenneth Starr report.

A few months ago two FBI agents paid a visit to the Washington office of Larry Klayman, the former Justice Department prosecutor who now heads Judicial Watch, a conservative legal-ethics watchdog group. They weren't after Klayman, but rather were seeking evidence he had gathered in his lawsuits against the Clinton administration concerning illegal fund-raising. But Klayman is no patsy. He has been down this road before, with congressional investigators claiming to be interested in the volumes of documents collected by Judicial Watch about the alleged sale of seats on Commerce Department trade trips and its collection of potential blackmail materials concerning Filegate and IRS abuses.

"I was skeptical but polite to the agents," Klayman tells Insight. "They told me they were going to subpoena some of the corporate people who went on the trade trips."

Klayman would like that. Hauling in such corporate giants as Bernard Schwartz, the chief executive officer of Loral Space & Communications who was the biggest Democratic donor, undoubtedly would shed more light on whether Commerce trade trips were sold for campaign donations, which Klayman suspects. Klayman already has the deposition of the late commerce secretary Ron Brown's assistant Nolanda Hill, saying this and more -- not only that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton devised the ticket-to-ride scheme for campaign contributors, but that it was she who moved Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang into a key Commerce post in charge of large Asian contracts.

Recently Klayman phoned one of the FBI agents who had called on him for help and asked if the Justice Department followed through with the promised subpoenas. The former federal prosecutor says the agent told him he could not discuss it.

Klayman pressed. "Can you tell me at least this," he pleaded. "Are you happy with what's happening?"

The agent paused and then replied, "Let's put it this way: I am thinking of resigning. You know how politics and the justice system work."

To Klayman, this hardly was news. As Insight reported earlier this year, FBI Director Louis Freeh is among those who have entertained thoughts of stepping down because of frustration about politics within the Justice Department that has prevented him from probing the campaign-finance mess. Freeh has held off while he waits to learn whether Attorney General Janet Reno's 90-day inquiry into the fund-raising roles of both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore will trigger the independent-counsel statute.

Nonetheless, Klayman remains optimistic, especially since Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr has introduced Judicial Watch's interim report, "Crimes and Other Offenses Committed by President Bill Clinton Warranting His Impeachment and Removal From Elected Office," into the official record of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearings.

The 145-page Klayman document, plus some 4,000 pages of supporting evidence and documentation, deals with Chinagate, Taxgate, Filegate and Trustgate, a reference to suspected illegal use of Clinton's legal-defense fund. The evidence is based on Judicial Watch's 20 ongoing civil lawsuits involving the Clinton administration, including Huang's exclusive deposition concerning the raising of some $2 million for Democratic campaigns -- much of it returned because of its dishonest origins.

"No longer can Democrats and other apologists claim that the Clinton scandals only concern sex," Klayman announced after his report was accepted by the Judiciary Committee. "A review of the Judicial Watch report, which is endorsed by the House Judiciary Committee and complements the Starr report in setting the parameters for the impeachment inquiry, establishes that Clinton must answer for his conduct concerning the invasion of privacy rights of American citizens; the sale of seats and likely breaches of national security on trade missions; the misuse of the IRS to retaliate against perceived adversaries; and the illegal solicitation and receipt of monies into his legal-defense funds, which in the case of Charlie Trie resulted in more than $600,000 in Chinese cash being laundered at a time that the White House was passing national-security information to Trie."

More recently Klayman has sought criminal indictments against former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta in connection with the Chinagate scandal. Klayman claims they tried to conceal documents suggesting that seats on Commerce Department trade missions were for sale for $50,000 contributions to the Democratic Party. Hill swore to that fact in her deposition taken by Judicial Watch. A federal judge since has granted Klayman permission to demonstrate a motion to show cause that would require Panetta and Podesta to explain their roles in the alleged trade-mission coverup scheme.