@giujohn,
Seriously? Travelgate? Whitewater? You're tarring Clinton over the McDougal's chicanery? And how many times was she tried for these baseless charges? How did she personally screw any of the little people?
Where's your link?
Whitewater controversy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_controversy
The Whitewater scandal (also known as the Whitewater controversy, or simply Whitewater) began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.
A March 1992, New York Times article published during the U.S. presidential campaign reported that the Clintons, then governor and first lady of Arkansas, had invested and lost money in the Whitewater Development Corporation.[1] The article stimulated the interest of L. Jean Lewis, a Resolution Trust Corporation investigator who was looking into the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, owned by Jim and Susan McDougal. Lewis looked for connections between the savings and loan company and the Clintons, and on September 2, 1992, she submitted a criminal referral to the FBI naming Bill and Hillary Clinton as witnesses in the Madison Guaranty case. Little Rock U.S. Attorney Charles A. Banks and the FBI determined that the referral lacked merit, but Lewis continued to pursue the case. From 1992 to 1994, Lewis issued several additional referrals against the Clintons, and repeatedly called the U.S. Attorney's Office in Little Rock and the Justice Department regarding the case.[2] Her referrals eventually became public knowledge, and she testified before the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1995.
David Hale, the source of criminal allegations against the Clintons, claimed in November 1993, that Bill Clinton had pressured him into providing an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the Clintons' partner in the Whitewater land deal.[3] Clinton supporters regarded Hale's allegations as questionable, as Hale had not mentioned Clinton in reference to this loan during the original FBI investigation of Madison Guaranty in 1989; only after coming under indictment in 1993, did Hale make allegations against the Clintons.[4] A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project. Jim Guy Tucker, Bill Clinton's successor as governor, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years of probation for his role in the matter.[5] Susan McDougal served 18 months in prison for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions relating to Whitewater.
The Clintons themselves were never prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal,[6] and Susan McDougal was granted a pardon by President Clinton before he left office.
"a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s." How many failed "business ventures" has tRump been involved with? Hell the Clinton administration kept tRump from failing and bringing down CitiBank by guaranteeing $1 billion dollars of tRumps worthless paper just to keep CitiBank from failing behind a tRump default.
Because you don't know:
Origins of Whitewater Development Corporation
The Clintons lived in this 980 square feet (91 m2) house in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock from 1977 to 1979 while he was Arkansas Attorney General.[8] The couple's modest circumstances led them to seek outside investment income.
Bill Clinton had known Arkansas businessman and political figure Jim McDougal since 1968, and had made a previous small real estate investment with him in 1977.[9]
The Clintons were seeking ways of supplementing their income: Bill Clinton's salary was $26,500 as Arkansas Attorney General (which would rise to $35,000 if his campaign for Governor of Arkansas succeeded) and Hillary Clinton's salary was $24,500 as a Rose Law Firm associate[10][11] for a combined income in 1978 of $51,173,[12] equivalent to $186,000 in 2015. It was around this time that Hillary Clinton also began trading cattle futures.[9]
In spring of 1978, McDougal proposed that the Clintons join him and his wife, Susan, in buying 230 acres (0.93 km2) of undeveloped land along the south bank of the White River near Flippin, Arkansas, in the Ozark Mountains. The goal was to subdivide the site into lots for vacation homes, intended for the many people coming south from Chicago and Detroit who were interested in low property taxes, fishing, rafting, and mountain scenery. The plan was to hold the property for a few years and then sell the lots at a profit.[9]
The four borrowed $203,000 to buy land, and subsequently transferred ownership of the land to the newly created Whitewater Development Corporation, in which all four participants had equal shares.[9] Susan McDougal chose the name "Whitewater Estates" and their sales pitch was, "One weekend here and you'll never want to live anywhere else."[11][13][14] The business was incorporated on June 18, 1979.
Failure of Whitewater Development Corporation
By the time the Whitewater lots were surveyed and available for sale at the end of 1979, interest rates had climbed to near 20 percent. Prospective buyers could no longer afford to buy vacation homes. Rather than take a loss on the venture, the four decided to build a model home and wait for better economic conditions.[9]
The White River, near Flippin, Arkansas, and the intended site of the Whitewater Development Corporation's vacation homes.
Following the land purchase, Jim McDougal asked the Clintons for additional funds for interest payments on the loan and other expenses; the Clintons later claimed to have no knowledge of how these contributions were used.[9][15] When Bill Clinton failed to win re-election in 1980, Jim McDougal lost his job as the governor's economic aide and decided to go into banking.[11] He acquired the Bank of Kingston in 1980 and the Woodruff Savings & Loan in 1982,[16] renaming them the Madison Bank & Trust and the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, respectively.[13]
In spring 1985, McDougal held a fundraiser at Madison Guaranty's office in Little Rock that paid off Clinton's 1984 gubernatorial campaign debt of $50,000. McDougal raised $35,000; $12,000 of that was in Madison Guaranty cashier's checks.[17][18]
In 1985, Jim McDougal invested in a local construction project called Castle Grande. The 1,000 acres (4 km²), located south of Little Rock,[13] were priced at about $1.75 million, more than McDougal could afford on his own. According to current law, McDougal could borrow only $600,000 from his own savings and loan, Madison Guaranty. Therefore, McDougal involved others to raise the additional funds. Among these was Seth Ward, an employee of the bank, who helped funnel the additional $1.15 million required. To avoid potential investigations, the money was moved back and forth among several other investors and intermediaries. Hillary Clinton, then an attorney at Rose Law Firm (which is based in Little Rock) provided legal services to Castle Grande.
In 1986, federal regulators realized that all of the necessary funds for this real estate venture had come from Madison Guaranty; regulators called Castle Grande a sham. In July of that year, McDougal resigned from Madison Guaranty. Seth Ward fell under investigation, along with the lawyer who helped him draft the agreement. Castle Grande earned $2 million in commissions and fees for McDougal's business associates, as well as an unknown amount in legal fees for Rose Law Firm, but in 1989, it collapsed, at a cost to the government of $4 million.[19] This in turn helped trigger the 1989 collapse of Madison Guaranty, which federal regulators then had to take over.[19] Taking place in the midst of the nationwide savings and loan crisis, the failure of Madison Guaranty cost the United States $73 million.[20]
The Clintons lost between $37,000 and $69,000 on their Whitewater investment; this was less than the McDougals lost.[21] The reasons for the unequal capital contributions by the Clintons and McDougals are unknown but the President's critics cited the discrepancy as evidence that then-Governor Clinton was to contribute to the project in other ways.[15]
The White House and the President's supporters claimed that they were exonerated by the Pillsbury Report. This was a $3 million study done for the Resolution Trust Corporation by the Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro law firm at the time that Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan was dissolved. The report concluded that James McDougal, who had set up the deal, was the managing partner, and Bill Clinton was a passive investor in the venture; the Associated Press characterized it as "generally support[ing] the Clintons' description of their involvement in Whitewater."[22][23] However, Charles Patterson, the attorney who supervised the report, "refused ... to call it a vindication" of the Clintons, stating in testimony before the Senate Whitewater Committee that "it was not our purpose to vindicate, castigate, exculpate."[23]
Bill Clinton's first run for president
During Bill Clinton's first bid for the presidency in 1992, he was asked by New York Times reporters about the failure of the Whitewater development.[24] The subsequent New York Times article, by reporter Jeff Gerth, appeared on March 8, 1992.[1]
Removal of documents
Within hours of the death of Vince Foster in July 1993, chief White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum removed documents, some of them concerning the Whitewater Development Corporation, from Foster's office and gave them to Maggie Williams, Chief of Staff to the First Lady. According to the New York Times, Williams placed the documents in a safe in the White House for five days before turning them over to their personal lawyer.[25]
Subpoena of the presidential couple
Hillary Rodham Clinton worked on the third floor of Rose Law Firm.[26] Her billing records from the mid-1980s would become the subject of intrigue during the Whitewater controversy.
As a result of the exposé in the New York Times, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the failed Whitewater deal. Media pressure continued to build, and on April 22, 1994, Hillary Clinton gave an unusual press conference under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the State Dining Room of the White House, to address questions on both Whitewater and the cattle futures controversy; it was broadcast live on several networks. In it, she claimed that the Clintons had a passive role in the Whitewater venture and had committed no wrongdoing, but admitted that her explanations had been vague. She said that she no longer opposed appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the matter. Afterwards, she won media praise for the manner in which she conducted herself during the press conference;[15] Time called her "open, candid, but above all unflappable...the real message was her attitude and her poise. The confiding tone and relaxed body language...immediately drew approving reviews".[27] By that time there was growing backlash from Democrats and other members of the political left against the press' investigations of Whitewater. The New York Times was criticized by Gene Lyons of Harper's Magazine, who felt its reporters were exaggerating the significance and possible impropriety of what they were uncovering.[28]
At Clinton's request, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed a special prosecutor, Robert B. Fiske, to investigate the legality of the Whitewater transactions in 1994. Two allegations surfaced: 1) that Clinton had exerted pressure on an Arkansas businessman, David Hale, to make a loan that would benefit him and the owners of Madison Guaranty; and 2) that an Arkansas bank had concealed transactions involving Clinton's gubernatorial campaign in 1990. In May 1994, Fiske issued a grand jury subpoena to the President and his wife for all documents relating to Madison Guaranty, with a deadline of 30 days. They were reported as missing by the Clintons. Almost two years later, the subpoenaed billing records of the Rose Law Firm were discovered in the Clintons' private residence in the White House by a staffer.
The Kenneth Starr investigation
In August 1994, Kenneth Starr was appointed by a three-judge panel to continue the Whitewater investigation, replacing Robert B. Fiske, who had been specially appointed by the attorney general, prior to the re-enactment of the Independent Counsel law. Fiske was replaced because he had been chosen and appointed by Janet Reno, Clinton's attorney general, creating a conflict of interest.
David Hale, the key witness against President Clinton in Starr's Whitewater investigation, alleged in November 1992 that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured him to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater deal.[3]
Hale's defense strategy, as proposed by attorney Randy Coleman, was to present himself as the victim of high-powered politicians who forced him to give away all of the money.[29] This self-caricature was undermined by testimony from November 1989, wherein FBI agents investigating the failure of Madison Guaranty had questioned Hale about his dealings with Jim and Susan McDougal, including the $300,000 loan. According to the agents' official memorandum of that interview, Hale described in some detail his dealings with Jim Guy Tucker (then an attorney in private practice, later Bill Clinton's lieutenant governor), both McDougals, and several others, but never mentioned Governor Bill Clinton. Nor did Clinton's name come up when Hale testified at Mcdougall's[which?] 1990 trial, which ended in an acquittal.
Clinton denied that he pressured Hale to approve the loan to Susan McDougal. By this time, Hale had already pleaded guilty to two felonies and secured a reduction in his sentence in exchange for his testimony against Bill Clinton. Charges were made by Clinton supporters that Hale had received numerous cash payments from representatives of the so-called Arkansas Project, a $2.4 million campaign established to assist in Hale's defense strategy, and to investigate Clinton and his associates between 1993 and 1997.[3] These charges were the topic of a separate investigation by former Department of Justice investigator, Michael E. Shaheen, Jr.[30] Shaheen filed his report in July 1999 to Starr, who stated that the allegations that Hale had been paid in hopes of influencing his testimony were "unsubstantiated or, in some cases, untrue". Furthermore, no charges were brought against Hale or the Arkansas Project outlet, The American Spectator.[31] Writers from Salon complained that the full, 168-page, report had not been made public, a complaint still being reiterated by Salon as of 2001.[32]
State prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Hale in early July 1996, charging that Hale had misrepresented the solvency of his insurance company, National Savings Life, to the state insurance commission. The prosecutors also alleged in court papers that Hale had made those misrepresentations to conceal the fact that he had looted the insurance company. Hale said that any infraction was a technicality and that no one had lost any money.[33] In March 1999, Hale was convicted of the first charge, with the jury recommending a 21-day jail sentence.[33]
Starr drafted an impeachment referral to the House of Representatives in the fall of 1997, alleging that there was "substantial and credible evidence" that Bill Clinton had committed perjury regarding Hale's allegations.
Theodore B. Olson, who with several associates, launched the plan that later became known as the "Arkansas Project", wrote several essays for The American Spectator, accusing Clinton and many of his associates of wrongdoing. The first of those pieces appeared in February 1994, alleging a wide variety of criminal offenses by the Clintons and others, including Webster Hubbell. These allegations led to the discovery that Hubbell, a friend and former Rose Law Firm partner of Hillary Clinton, had committed multiple frauds, mostly against his own firm. Hillary Clinton, instead of being complicit in Hubbell's crimes, had been among his victims. In December 1994, one week after Hubbell pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion, Associate White House Counsel, Jane C. Sherburne, created a "Task List" which included a reference to monitoring Hubbell's cooperation with Starr. Hubbell was later recorded in prison saying "I need to roll over one more time" regarding the Rose Law firm lawsuit. In his next court appearance, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination (see United States v. Hubbell).
In February 1997, Starr announced he would leave the investigation to pursue a position at the Pepperdine University School of Law. However, he "flip flopped" in the face of "intense criticism", and new evidence of sexual misconduct.[34]
By April 1998, diverted to some degree by the burgeoning Lewinsky scandal, Starr's investigations in Arkansas were winding down, with his Little Rock grand jury about to expire.[19] Hubbell, Jim Guy Tucker, and Susan McDougal had all refused to cooperate with Starr.[19] Tucker and McDougal were later pardoned by President Clinton. When the Arkansas grand jury did conclude its work in May 1998, after 30 months in panel, it came up with only a contempt indictment against Susan McDougal.[30] Although she refused to testify under oath regarding the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater, Susan McDougal did make the case in the media that the Clintons had been truthful in their account of the loan, and had cast doubt on her former husband's motives for cooperating with Starr. She also claimed that James McDougal felt abandoned by Clinton, and told her "he was going to pay back the Clintons". She said to the press, again not under oath, that her husband had told her that Republican activist and Little Rock lawyer, Sheffield Nelson, was willing to "pay him some money" for talking to the New York Times about Bill Clinton, and in 1992, he told her that one of Clinton's political enemies was paying him to tell the New York Times about Whitewater.
From the beginning, Susan McDougal charged that Starr offered her "global immunity" from other charges if she would cooperate with the Whitewater investigation. McDougal told the jury that refusing to answer questions about the Clintons and Whitewater wasn't easy for her, or her family. "It's been a long road, a very long road...and it was not an easy decision to make", McDougal told the court. McDougal refused to answer any questions while under oath, leading to her being imprisoned by the judge for civil contempt of court for the maximum 18 months, including eight months in isolation. Starr's subsequent indictment of McDougal for criminal contempt of court charges resulted in a jury hung 7-5, in favor of acquittal. President Clinton later pardoned her, shortly before leaving office.
In September 1998, Independent Counsel Starr released the Starr Report, concerning offenses alleged to have been committed by President Clinton, as part of the Lewinsky scandal. The report mentioned Whitewater only in passing; Clinton friend and advisor, Vernon Jordan, had tried to help Webster Hubbell financially with "no-show" consulting contracts while he was under pressure to cooperate with the Whitewater investigations.[30] Indeed, it was on this basis that Starr took on the Lewinsky investigation, under the umbrella of the Whitewater Independent Counsel mandate.[30]
There was much acrimony from the most fervent critics of the Clintons, after the release of the Starr report on the Foster matter and after Starr's departure and return to the case. The death of Foster had been the source of many conspiracy theories. Christopher Ruddy, a reporter for Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, helped fuel much of this speculation with claims that Starr had not pursued this line of inquiry far enough.[35]
You think its funny because tRump ripped off a paint contractor for $27,000 and lost a $300,000 judgement as merely the cost full tank of private airliner.
The total value of "Whitewater" was less than that and no contractors or middle class folks got beat out of any of their personal wealth.
A GOP Congress and Keneth Starr after MONTHS of hot air got no traction.
Nice try and thank-you for playing. You're going to have to do better than that. It is funny - you have to reach for something that happened more than twenty years ago that resulted in no sanctions whatsoever to counter charges against tRump that have cost him MILLIONS in judgements with one that happened just a week ago.
