Whitewater Trials and Impeachment of a President: 1994-99 - The Whitewater Trials, The Impeachment, Regulators In, Mcdougal Out, Suicide, Special Counsel, Hearings - Anonymous Phone Calls, McDougal Indicted Again
rutherford woman month sentence
By October 1997, the Paula Jones case was getting funding from the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending civil liberties. That month, Rutherford received three anonymous phone calls from a woman who said President Clinton might have had an affair with a woman named Monica Lewinsky. The Rutherford lawyers realized that such a person could be a valuable witness for Jones regarding Clinton's character and behavior.
McDougal Indicted Again
In April 1998 Susan McDougal completed her 18-month sentence for civil contempt of court and started to serve her two-year sentence for fraud. And once more she refused to testify before the Starr grand jury. On May 4, 1998, she was indicted on two charges of criminal contempt and one of obstruction of justice.
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Defendants: Webster L. Hubbell, James B. McDougal, Susan McDougal, and Jim Guy Tucker Crimes Charged: McDougals and Tucker: Bank fraud and conspiracy; Susan McDougal: Mail fraud, making false financial statements and entries, civil contempt of court, criminal contempt of court, and obstruction of justice; Hubbell: Tax evasion, mail fraud, and perjury Chief Defense Lawyers: McDougals: Mark J. Gerag…
Defendant: William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States Crimes Charged: High crimes and misdemeanors: Perjury and obstruction of justice (i.e., suborning a witness to lie) Chief Defense Lawyers: Gregory Craig, David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Charles Ruff Chief Prosecutors: Members of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House
of Representatives: Henry Hyde (R-lllinois), chairman; and…
In 1984, federal regulators questioning Madison Guaranty's financial stability and lending practices found insider lending, speculative land deals, and
sizable commissions paid to the McDougals and others. That year, the voters returned Clinton to the governor's mansion. And in 1985, to help the governor pay off a $50,000 campaign debt, James McDougal hosted a fund-raiser at Madison…
Clinton took office as president of the United States. Over the next two and one-half years: Clinton's deputy counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide after filing three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns; the White House agreed to release Whitewater documents to the Justice Department; Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert B. Fiske, Jr., as special counsel to exami…
An article in the January 1994 issue of The American Spectator—a conservative magazine backed by a strongly anti-Clinton billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife—reported that on May 8, 1991, an Arkansas state trooper on duty at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock had arranged, at Governor Clinton's request, for him to meet a woman named Paula. The state policeman had escorted her to…
While the Paula Jones lawsuit was threading its way through the appeals courts in 1995 and 1996, a number of allegations and suspicions began to surface concerning Webster Hubbell, who President Clinton had once described as his closest friend. News reports asserted that the long-missing Rose Law Firm billing records had somehow made their way from Arkansas to the basement of
the Hubbell home in …
As their trial began on March 4, 1996, Governor Tucker and the Mc-Dougals were charged with scheming to obtain $3 million in illegal loans through David Hale's small-business investment company. Hale himself testified that pressure from then governor Bill Clinton to help the Democratic "political family" in Arkansas had prompted his fraudulent loan of $300,000 to Susan McDouga…
On August 20, 1996, Susan McDougal was sentenced to two years in prison for obtaining the illegal loan. Within two weeks, however, after saying she didn't trust her prosecutors because "they always wanted something on the Clintons," she was jailed for civil contempt of court for refusing to testify before yet another grand jury. For seven months, she languished 23 hours a day …
Shortly thereafter, on November 24, attorneys for Paula Jones subpoenaed a Pentagon employee named Linda Tripp, and two weeks later they named Monica Lewinsky as a potential witness and served her with a subpoena. A Pentagon public affairs staffer since April, the 24-year-old Lewinsky had been transferred there from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs (where she had worked since November…
Just before McDougal's indictment, on April 30, Webster Hubbell—out of prison after serving 16 months of his three-year sentence and in home confinement since January 7, 1997—faced a new barrage of fraud and tax evasion charges by Kenneth Starr. In a 10-count indictment of Hubbell; his wife, Suzanna; his lawyer, Charles C. Owen; and his accountant, Michael C. Schaufele, the in…
On September 9, 1998, Starr's 453-page report was turned over to the House of Representatives. It accused Clinton of "abundant and calculating" lies about his relationship with Lewinsky. The document used explicit language and graphic descriptions from the Tripp-Lewinsky recorded phone conversations to describe sexual escapades in and near the Oval Office. It cited nine instan…
In November, with the appeal pending on the "fishing expedition" ruling against him, Starr obtained a third indictment against Webster Hubbell. This time, citing 15 counts of fraud and perjury, Starr alleged that the lawyer had lied to Congress and to federal banking regulators about a complex real estate deal called Castle Grande and the role he and Mrs. Clinton had played in it. Ac…
On November 13, 1998, the Clinton legal team reached a settlement with Paula Corbin Jones: the president would pay her $850,000 but would not admit wrongdoing or apologize. Clinton made the payment on January 13, 1999, taking $375,000 out of his and Hillary Rodham Clinton's blind trust, and $475,000 from a personal liability insurance policy. Jones then had to deal with paying her attorneys…
Finally, on December 11 and 12, 1998, the committee approved four articles of impeachment. In brief, they stated: Article I. Clinton lied to the Starr grand jury on August 17, 1998, concerning his relationship with Lewinsky, his earlier testimony in the Jones suit, false statements he permitted his lawyer to make during the Jones case, and his "corrupt efforts" to influence Lewinsky&…
The world watched on television as Henry Hyde and the 12 other House "managers" of the prosecution opened the trial in the Senate chamber on Thursday, January 7, 1999. U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, attired in a judge's robe of his own design that observers likened to a Gilbert-and-Sullivan operetta costume, presided. Hyde read the two articles of impeachment. The manag…
White House Council Charles Ruff opened for the defense on Tuesday, January 19. "We are not here to defend William Clinton the man," he said. "He, like all of us, will find his judges elsewhere. We are here to defend William Clinton, the president of the United States, for whom you are the only judges."
Ruff said that in their "rush to judgement" the mana…
On Capitol Hill, after two more days and 16 hours of questions from both Republicans and Democrats, the Senate closed its doors to the public and went into debate. Meanwhile, the House managers interviewed Monica Lewinsky for two hours but, according to her lawyer, learned nothing that was not already on the record. On Wednesday, January 27, after considering 15 potential witnesses and deciding no…
As her latest trial began on March 9, 1999, Susan McDougal's attorney Mark Geragos told jurors that independent counsel Starr's prosecutors had told her she could avoid jail by providing damaging information about the Clintons, saying, "You know who we want. You know what we want." Tracing bank records, FBI agent Mike Patkus told jurors that a 1982 loan of $27,600 to Cl…
The Castle Grande real estate deal made the headlines again on June 30, 1999, when Webster Hubbell as part of a plea bargain pleaded guilty to felony charges under the first of a 15-count indictment. The plea bargain dismissed the other 14 charges. It also kept Hubbell from returning to jail and, as part of the deal, Starr agreed not to press criminal charges against Hubbell's wife, his acc…
Bennett, William J. The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Beschloss, Michael R. and Bill Clinton. The Impeachment and Trial of President Clinton: The Official Transcripts, from the House Judiciary Committee Hearings to the Senate Trial. New York: Random House, 1999. Cohen, Daniel. The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton…
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