Clintons’ Former Partner Gets A Two-Year Prison Term

Susan McDougal, a one-time business partner of President and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday in a Whitewater-related fraud case, a decision one of her lawyers denounced as politically motivated.

McDougal was sentenced on four felony counts arising from an investigation that began with questions about the Clintons’ dealings with a federally insured savings and loan association owned by her husband.

The lawyer, Bobby McDaniel, told reporters after the sentencing that prosecutors had offered his client leniency if she would help them build a case against the Clintons.

McDaniel said McDougal had told prosecutors nothing because she had nothing to tell. She received one of the stiffest sentences imposed so far in the case.

“She is being used as a political pawn,” he said. “The entire objective of prosecuting Susan McDougal was not to go after Susan McDougal, but to try to get someone to say something against Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

Prosecutors have said they hoped fears of harsh sentences would encourage McDougal and her two co-defendants - her ex-husband James B. McDougal and former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker - to give them more information for their investigation.

But prosecutors were clearly dumbfounded on Monday when Howard sentenced Tucker only to probation and community service. Howard said he was imposing a lenient sentence because it would be cruel to imprison Tucker, who is on a waiting list for a liver transplant.

The case involves fraudulent loans involving McDougal’s savings and loan, which failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of more than $60 million. Prosecutors say some proceeds from a fraudulent loan paid expenses for the Whitewater real estate venture, in which the Clintons and the McDougals were partners in the 1980s.