As we noted earlier, Hillary Clinton's sudden deep concern with Barack Obama' acquaintance with former radical Weatherman Bill Ayers in Chicago has raised anew questions about Hillary's involvement with and ties to her husband's grant of clemency in 2001 to two convicted Weathermen, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans.
On a conference call this morning, her press secretary Howard Wolfson was asked what she thought about her husband commuting the sentences of those two. He said he didn't know, and he didn't think she had ever been asked. He was wrong.
In 2001, Newsday asked Wolfson himself what Hillary -- New York's new senator at the time -- thought about the pardons of financier Marc Rich and Rosenberg, who had been convicted on explosives charges and linked to the 1981 Brinks robbery in which a couple of NY cops were killed.
Mary Jo White, the US Attorney at the time, was furious about both pardons, as were many in law enforcement. And New York's other senator was more vocal. Sen. Chuck Schumer told the NY Times on Jan. 21 that he was "surprised" by the commutation "with the families of the officers killed still grieving. This is a clear injustice."
Hillary? "She thinks that it was a pardon made by the president," was the only comment Wolfson would offer -- no judgment on the merits, no expression of disapproval. (Story after the jump.)
So, to summarize: The Clinton campaign thinks there are unanswered questions about Obama and Ayers. Then, maybe there are also a few about why the senator who was supposed to be representing New Yorkers was unwilling to speak out about commuting the 58 year sentence of a woman who had been linked to a crime in which New York cops were killed, while her fellow senator and the chief federal prosecutor spoke out.
Is she soft on 1960s radical terror? If questions about Ayers and Obama are fair game because the Republicans might use them, then -- shouldn't she be called on to defend or denounce all of her husband's pardons now, because the Republicans might use them?
Newsday story on pardons, Jan 24, 2001.
The wealthy former wife of pardoned billionaire financier Marc Rich yesterday acknowledged that she sought President Bill Clinton's intervention in the case but continued to deny that her fund-raising for Democrats and Hillary Rodham Clinton was tied to the pardon.
Contradicting denials Monday to Newsday and other newspapers that she played any role in the pardon, Denise Rich, through a spokesman, released a letter she wrote to President Clinton on behalf of her fugitive husband in December-less than two months after she had given $45,000 to a soft-money committee controlled by Hillary Clinton.
"I am writing as a friend and an admirer of yours," Rich wrote in the two-page letter dated Dec. 6. She went on to ask for "mercy" for her husband, who fled the country after being charged in a massive tax-evasion case in the 1980s and was living in exile in Switzerland until Clinton pardoned him Saturday.
But the spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said Denise Rich, a songwriter, "adamantly denies" any connection between her political activities and the pardon. She gave more than $300,000 to Democratic candidates and committees in 1999 and 2000, and hosted fund raisers for Hillary Clinton.
"Denise Rich is happy for her children that her ex-husband has been pardoned," Rubenstein said in a statement. "Of course, she supported his application. She will have no further comment at this time."
The Rich pardon, included in a list of dozens handed out by Bill Clinton during his final hours in office, was one of several that have raised a furor in the law-enforcement community. It has been denounced by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan at the time Rich was charged.
Bill Clinton has called the Rich case "unusual" but has not explained his reasoning in pardoning a fugitive. Sen. Clinton continued yesterday to try to keep her distance from the controversy, with a spokesman insisting that she had no involvement in the decision to pardon Rich and deflecting questions about her opinion on it.
"She thinks that it was a pardon made by the president," said spokesman Howard Wolfson. Wolfson provided the same response to questions about her view of the pardon of former Weather Underground radical Susan Rosenberg, serving a 58-year weapons-possession sentence and long suspected by law-enforcement officials of involvement in the 1981 Brink's truck robbery in which two New York police officers were killed. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has criticized that pardon.
Sen. Clinton did acknowledge yesterday that she sat in on a December White House meeting with supporters of clemency for four Rockland County Hasidic men convicted of diverting millions of dollars in government funds who received sentence reductions from the president. Her role in the meeting was first disclosed in yesterday's New York Daily News.
She received strong support during the election in New Square, where the funds were diverted to community projects, according to the town's mayor. Sen. Clinton, speaking to reporters in the Capitol, said it was a surprise to her that the subject of clemency came up in the meeting, and she had no input into the decision.
"I did not play any role whatsoever," she said. "I had no opinion about it."
This story was supplemented with wire-service reports
Comments (1)
Obama & Hillary Soprano are two side of the same coin. That is why McCain is doing so well.
The voters see McCain as a REAL CHANGE FOR THE "BETTER".
McCain we carry Nassau & Suffolk by 10 points or more.