Whitewater Investigation Part 1 Current and former federal regulators testified about the involvement of the Rose Law Firm in the dealings of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association and the Castle Grande land purchase.
What, then are the crimes under consideration? Between January 1994 and February 1996 both Hillary Clinton and [Webster] Hubbell made numerous sworn statements to the RTC, the FDIC, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and to the OIC. Each of these reflected and embodied materially inaccurate stories relating to: how RLF [Clinton and Hubbell’s Rose Law Firm] came to be retained by MGSL [the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan]; Hillary Clinton’s role in the IDC/Castle Grande venture; Hillary Clinton’s role in representing MGSL; Hillary Clinton’s role in representing MGSL before state agencies’; Hubbell’s representations to the RTC [Resolution Trust Corporation] and FDIC regarding Hillary Clinton’s role in the IDC/Castle Grande venture; and the removal of records from the RLF. The question, generally, is not whether the statements are inaccurate, but whether they are willfully so.
The records released today by Judicial Watch were prepared for an “All OIC Attorneys” meeting on April 27, 1998, at which a final decision about whether to indict Clinton and Hubbell was the subject of a lengthy debate. The records explore in detail the role Clinton played in the fraudulent Castle Grande transaction, the role of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, and the subsequent lengthy cover-up as the Clintons sought and won the White House.
Clinton, according to prosecutors, drafted an option agreement that concealed from federal bank examiners a fraudulent $300,000 cross-loan in the Castle Grande transaction. Her concealment of her role in this fraudulent transaction, including the hiding of her Rose Law Firm billing records concerning her legal work for Madison, were the subject of an OIC obstruction of justice probe.
The 1998 memoranda include substantial evidence depicting Clinton and her former Rose Law Firm partners—Hubbell, and Vincent Foster, both of whom went on to senior positions in the Bill Clinton presidency—as complicit in activities that “facilitated crimes.”
Page 18 of the OIC documents notes that Clinton “destroyed” her personal records of her work for Madison Guaranty. Page 39 of the documents notes:
Section II contains a chronological background and contextual summary of the investigation so that the facts relating to possible obstruction can be placed in the context of the ongoing investigation by OIC.
The evidence in the new documents covers:
- Castle Grande. “The Castle Grande transactions were crimes.” The statement is followed by an explicit six-paragraph dissection of the land-flipping scheme.
- Madison Guaranty S&L. Clinton minimized the role she played in seeking state regulatory assistance for the corrupt savings and loan, headed by key Clinton financial and political supporter James McDougal. At the time, Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
- Vincent Foster and the Missing Rose Law Firm Billing Records. The Rose records were a key piece of evidence in the probe. They were missing for years. After Foster’s July 1993 suicide, the OIC documents note, where the billing records went “is an open question…. Several pieces of evidence support the inference that personal documents which Hillary Clinton did not want disclosed were located in Foster’s office at the time of his death and then removed.”
- Removal of Records from Vincent Foster’s Office. “ [O]n the afternoon of July 21st Bernard Nussbaum, then White House Counsel, initially agreed to allow two career DOJ employees to review the documents in Foster’s office for evidence that might shed light on the cause of his death. That evening and the next morning Nussbaum, Hillary Clinton, Susan Thomases, and Maggie Williams (Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff) exchanged 10 separate phones calls … That morning, according to the DOJ employees, Nussbaum changed his mind and refused to allow the DOJ prosecutors to review the documents; instead, he reviewed them himself and segregated several as ‘personal’ to the Clintons.”
- Hiding the Billing Records. “On the evening of July 22nd, Thomas Castleton … assisted Williams [Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton chief of staff] in carrying a box of personal documents up to … a closet in Hillary Clinton’s office. The closet is approximately 30 feet from the table in the Book Room, where the billing records were found 2 years later…. There is a circumstantial case that the records were left on the table by Hillary Clinton. She is the only individual in the White House who had a significant interest in them and she is one of only 3 people known to have had them in her possession since their creation in February 1992.”
- Buying the Silence of a Co-Conspirator? Hubbell, criticized by the OIC for his lack of cooperation with the probe, received several “jobs” from Clinton supporters for which he apparently did little or no work. During a taped conversation in prison, Hubbell appears to acknowledge that he withheld information from the OIC. Several of Hubbell’s job-providers fell most strongly within the hush money allegation. The OIC notes eight of them on page 197.
- The Missing Draft Indictment. More than 60 pages of the OIC memoranda are completely censored, withheld by the National Archives. Multiple sources tell Judicial Watch that these pages include a full draft indictment of Clinton and Hubbell, as well as a detailed “order of Evidence” list.
The National Archives is withholding additional documents Judicial Watch believes to be critical to understanding Clinton’s full role in the Whitewater scandal. On March 9, 2015, Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request seeking all draft indictments of Clinton in the files of Hickman Ewing Jr., who served as deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater probe. In 1999, Ewing testified that he wrote a draft indictment of Clinton.
On March 19, 2015, the National Archives admitted locating records responsive to the Ewing material request, confirming that it found 38 pages of responsive records in a folder entitled “Draft Indictment,” and approximately 200 pages of responsive records in a folder entitled “Hilary Rodham Clinton/Webster L. Hubbell Draft Indictment.” Judicial Watch is suing in federal court to force the release of the draft indictment, which is being withheld by the National Archives to protect the privacy of Hillary Clinton.
  Ms. Clinton and her attorney have stated publicly that the billing records confirm that, as an attorney at the Rose Firm in the mid-80's, she was not significantly involved in the representation of Jim McDougal's savings and loan, Madison Guaranty. According to the Rose records, Hillary Clinton billed Madison for 60 hours of work over a 15 month period. Ms. Clinton's attorney argues that this represents a de minimus amount of work and includes billings for work performed by Rose Finn lawyers working for Hillary Clinton at the time. But Whitewater investigators believe that the billing records show significant representation. They argue that the records prove that Ms. Clinton was not only directly involved in the representation of Madison, but more specifically, in providing legal work on the fraudulent Castle Grande land deal. In particular, investigators zeroed in on the individual billings, including a dozen calls and meetings with Seth Ward, the individual whom regulators determined was a "straw man" in the Castle Grande deal. These contacts occurred during a period of time, including early 1986, that Ward was engaged in efforts to obtain sales commissions from McDougal that would later tip regulators to illegalities at Castle Grande.  Of particular interest to investigators has been Ms. Clinton's work on an option agreement drafted to provide Seth Ward with some $300,000 in commissions on the re-sale of his holdings at Castle Grande. Regulators determined that the option agreement was principally designed to further obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature of the underlying Castle Grande transactions. The records also identified what investigators believe was a significant phone call on April 7, 1986 between Ms. Clinton and then-Madison loan officer Don Denton. When questioned by investigators about the call, Denton remembered speaking with Ms. Clinton about efforts to provide Ward with his commissions. According to their conversation, Denton believes that Ms.Clinton was familiar with the nature of the transaction -- again, a transaction that investigators believe was intended to deceive financial regulators.  Who Had the Records? Investigators have examined the Rose billing records not only to determine the role Hillary Clinton may have played in the Castle Grande transactions, but more significantly to ascertain her role in their mysterious disappearance and subsquent reappearance. If someone had knowledge or possession of the billing records and knew that they were the subject of Federal investigative subpoenas, their failure to divulge or turn over the records could be the basis for criminal charges -- the obstruction of justice. The billing records found in Hillary Clinton's book room were a copy of an original version printed out from the Rose Firm computer in 1992, when the computer file itself was deleted. Webb Hubbell has testified that he recalls reviewing a copy of the billing records in response to press inquiries during the 1992 Presidential campaign. Hubbell says that he then passed the records on to Vince Foster who was, as far as Hubbell knows, the last person to have the records. Investigators believe the book room copy was indeed Vince Foster's. The copy contains notations, in red ink, that are Vince Foster's handwriting. These notations appear to be directed toward Hillary Clinton, including questions about some of the individual billings. Hillary Clinton's Fingerprints Among Those Found on Papers
Published: June 5, 1996
... A White House assistant who discovered them said she found them on a table in a library known as the Book Room, to which very few people other than the First Family have access.
Investigators believe this suggests that, at some point, this copy was passed from Vince Foster to Hillary Clinton for her review. In addition, investigators had the FBI conduct fingerprint analysis of the billing records. Of significance, the prints of Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton were found. The Senate Whitewater Committee concluded that Hillary Clinton was the person most likely to have put the billing records in her book room, or know how they got there. The Independent Counsel continues to investigate Ms. Clinton's involvement in handling the records. For her part, Hillary Clinton has said that she has no idea how the billing records came to be in her book room. |
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