Starr Says Acquittals Won’t Derail His Investigation Into Whitewater One Juror Called Evidence Against Arkansas Pair ‘Flimsy’

One day after a jury acquitted two Arkansas bankers in a Whitewater-related case, Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr said Friday he will push ahead with his investigation despite criticism from jurors who say the banking case should not have been filed.

In an interview, Starr said he will continue to pursue his broad investigation vigorously even though a jury returned four “not guilty” verdicts Thursday to charges that the bankers had misapplied bank funds to assist President Clinton’s career as governor.

“Our overall investigation has continued to move forward on a variety of fronts as this trial of the bankers unfolded,” Starr said.

“Although it was an integral part of our work, it was not at the core” of the independent counsel’s task, which is to determine whether Clinton or other leading government officials committed a crime.

Starr’s statement came as some jurors from the trial of bankers Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert M. Hill argued that they should not have been prosecuted.

Juror Mary Zinamon said it was “a waste of money” to prosecute the two men. “I would hate to see the government waste more money on Whitewater,” she said.

Juror Wesley Camp said he believed the power of the independent counsel’s office was virtually unlimited and that prosecutors were quick to “turn people’s lives upside down.”

Another juror, Leland Sullivan, said Starr’s office presented “flimsy” evidence during the trial. “If they’re going to spend my tax dollars, they need to get stronger evidence,” Sullivan said.

In responding to the criticism, Starr said, “Congress determines what provisions are in the U.S. criminal code. Prosecutors are duty-bound to go about their work when they find evidence of serious offenses, and they have the duty to present such matters to a grand jury.

“That happened in this case, and a grand jury returned an indictment leading to their trial. We have no apologies for that.”

In a six-week trial here, Branscum and Hill were acquitted of four felony charges and a mistrial was declared on seven other counts on which jurors could not agree. The bankers had been accused of illegally funneling donations to Clinton’s 1990 reelection campaign as Arkansas governor.

Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate associate prosecutor who served as Democratic counsel on the Senate Whitewater Committee, said in an interview that the case had no connection to the Clintons’ investment in the Whitewater land venture that was supposed to form the heart of Starr’s probe.

In addition, other lawyers said some of the charges brought against Branscum and Hill were unusual. In addition to misapplying funds, they were charged with failing to file required reports with the Internal Revenue Service covering $52,500 in cash withdrawals made by the Clinton campaign from its account at the Perry County bank owned by the two defendants.

Defense attorney Dan Guthrie said the Justice Department never prosecutes such cases of nonreporting unless the amounts are far greater and involve either money-laundering or major drug trafficking, the two offenses the law was designed to curtail.

Starr, who worked out of his Little Rock office this week, flew back to Washington Friday to review grand jury matters there. He indicated that he and W. Hickman Ewing Jr., a deputy who prosecuted the bankers, would take several days to determine whether Branscum and Hill should be retried on the deadlocked counts.

The continuing investigations in Washington include possible perjury before Congress by White House aides involved in the 1993 firing of presidential travel office employees and possible obstruction of justice if anyone deliberately concealed Whitewater-related billing records belonging to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The subpoenaed records mysteriously appeared in the White House living quarters last year.

In addition, Starr’s office recently started investigating possible wrongdoing by presidential aides who obtained hundreds of FBI files on past employees of Republican administrations. The White House has called this an innocent mistake in checking security clearances, and has denied wrongdoing as well in the travel office and billing records cases.