More Tough Decisions Lie Ahead For Reno Justice Department Task Force Works To Indict Fund-Raisers
The political fund-raising controversy still holds peril for key players. Attorney General Janet Reno must make a second decision this month on whether to seek an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton while her task force plans to begin indicting fund-raisers.
In addition, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt awaits a decision from Reno, due by Feb. 11, in an Indian casino case that senior officials called the most difficult to resolve without requesting appointment of an independent counsel.
In that matter, Babbitt’s sworn testimony to the Senate is directly contradicted by a lawyer, who was a close friend.
While Republicans continued to boil over Reno’s rejection of an outside prosecutor for telephone fund raising by Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, the 120 lawyers and FBI agents on the Justice Department task force plowed ahead Wednesday on a broad front.
They were using grand juries here and in Los Angeles, according to sources. Investigators were examining a host of questionable financial transactions, a coterie of fund raisers, possible foreign payments and Democratic party fund-raising practices. Reno warned that the telephone decision exonerated no one from this broader investigation.
Officials anticipate indicting two Democratic fund-raisers this month or next on charges of concealing the identity of the real donors, hoping to pressure them or others into providing evidence against others.
Two Democratic fund-raisers, former Little Rock restaurateur and longtime Clinton friend Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie and immigration consultant Maria Hsia, have been linked in congressional testimony to schemes to launder contributions through straw donors.
Others under investigation include: former Commerce Department aide and Democratic party fund-raiser John Huang, who has ties to Indonesia’s Lippo group; West Coast entrepreneur Johnny Chung; Thai business consultant Pauline Kanchanalak and Indonesian entrepreneur Ted Sioeng.
Trie, Huang, Kanchanalak and Chung all showed up with Clinton on White House videotapes; Hsia and Huang arranged a Buddhist temple fund-raiser that Gore attended.
The most immediate deadline is Dec. 15 when Reno must answer a request by House Judiciary Committee Republicans that she seek an independent counsel to investigate the role of Clinton, Babbitt, White House aide Bruce Lindsey and former deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes in the casino ruling.
In July 1995, the Interior Department denied three Wisconsin Chippewa tribes a casino license, which had been recommended by Bureau of Indian Affairs. Republicans charged the turnaround was engineered by Clinton and his aides because tribes opposing the casino donated $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee.