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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Donations Went Unreported Late Release Of Relevant Records On Trie Angers Sen. Thompson

Los Angeles Times

President Clinton’s legal defense fund kept secret until after last November’s election about $380,000 in suspicious donations it received in a plain, manila envelope from Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, a longtime Clinton friend from Little Rock, Ark.

Although the donations were rejected, the defense fund changed its accounting methods so the money would not show up on a public report, the fund’s director acknowledged Wednesday under questioning by a congressional committee investigating campaign finance abuses.

The witness, Michael H. Cardozo, also told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that he alerted first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior White House officials to Trie’s deliveries - including one batch of donations in a brown shopping bag.

Nonetheless, even after questions were raised about the Trie-related donations, he was allowed to enter the White House at least three times and the Democratic National Committee still accepted about $400,000 he brought into the party’s coffers.

The committee is examining Trie’s donations to the legal trust fund because the one-time Little Rock restaurateur is a central figure in its investigation of whether political contributions from overseas were illegally funneled into the 1996 election campaign.

“You smelled a rat when you met Charlie Trie,” Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, told Cardozo, but the White House “didn’t have the the same … antenna that you had.”

But Cardozo said he and other fund trustees were not “driven by political considerations” to keep the donations secret. Instead, they were worried about offending Asian Americans, who made the bulk of the contributions.

Cardozo was Wednesday’s only witness, but after he wrapped up his testimony committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., angrily announced that the panel would be issuing a subpoena, perhaps as early as today, to the White House for a raft of documents it has sought for months.

Thompson was angered because the White House released information late Tuesday - after the committee had spent the day focused on the activities of Trie and his business associate Ng Lap Seng - showing that Ng had visited the White House 10 times.