[Congressional Record: March 29, 2001 (Senate)]
[Page S3154-S3174]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr29mr01-116]
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STATEMENTS OF INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
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By Mr. SPECTER (for himself, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Hatch, Mr. Kohl, Mr.
Biden, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Grassley, and Mrs.
Clinton):
S. 645. A bill to require individuals who lobby the President on
pardon issues to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 and
to require the President to report any gifts, pledges, or commitments
of a gift to a trust fund established for purposes of establishing a
Presidential library for that President after his or her term has
expired; to the Committee on Governmental Affairs.
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, this legislation follows consideration by
the Judiciary Committee of the pardons issued by former President
Clinton on January 20, the last day of his administration, and seeks to
reform and correct a couple of major gaps which are present in existing
procedures in two respects; stated succinctly, to require that
lobbyists, such as Jack Quinn, be required to register and that
contributions to Presidential libraries be subject to public
disclosure.
I offer this legislation on behalf of myself, Senators Leahy, Hatch,
Kohl, Biden, Feinstein, Sessions, Grassley, and Clinton.
The public record is filled with the details as to what happened with
the notorious pardon of Marc Rich, who was a fugitive for some 17
years, where a pardon was granted at the very last minute without the
pardon attorney at the Department of Justice being informed of the
situation until 1 a.m. on January 20.
When the pardon attorney called the White House to try to get some
information about Marc Rich and Pincus Green, he was told that they
were ``traveling abroad.''
When the pardon attorney testified at the Judiciary Committee hearing
under my questioning, and testified that they were ``traveling
abroad,'' he about broke up the hearing room, for that characterization
to be made of someone who had been a fugitive for 17 years.
In granting the pardon, former President Clinton notified Ms. Beth
Dozoretz, who was very active in lobbying for the pardon, at 11 o'clock
on January 19, some 2 hours in advance of telling the pardon attorney,
and there had been extensive lobbying by Ms. Denise Rich, the former
wife of Marc Rich.
The legislation we are introducing will require that someone such as
Jack Quinn be registered as a lobbyist.
Without going into the details--and they are set forth in the
Judiciary Committee hearing--there were major efforts made to keep this
activity under the so-called radar screen so that nobody would know
about it.
This legislation would require someone in Jack Quinn's position to
register and be known publicly, and then with the kind of public
pressure which would be brought, I think it highly likely that a pardon
such as that granted to Marc Rich would never have been granted.
The second provision deals with contributions for pledges or
commitments to raise money for Presidential libraries. This legislation
provides that there should be public disclosure of those contributions,
pledges, or commitments to raise money, where those pledges or
commitments are made during the term of office.
A pledge to contribute money to a Presidential library has a great
many of the same characteristics as a campaign contribution. The
question is raised about whether or not there is favoritism or
influence sought from that kind of a monetary contribution. By having
the public disclosure, then it would be within public view.
That is the essence of the legislation.
Mr. President, the Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry into the
pardons and commutations issued by former President Clinton on January
20, 2001, has disclosed major gaps which can be addressed through
legislation. Today I am introducing a bill to address two of these
subjects.
My bill requires individuals who urge officials in the White House to
grant clemency to register as lobbyists. There is currently no
requirement for them to do so. This bill will also require the
disclosure of donations or pledges of $5,000 or more, or commitments to
raise $5,000 or more for presidential libraries while the President is
still in office. Such donations, pledges or commitments are not
currently subject to disclosure, creating a situation where individuals
could make large contributions to the President's library foundation in
the hope of influencing favorable action by the President.
The Senate investigation of the pardons matter has been forward-
looking from the beginning. The objective of the inquiry was to get the
facts out in the open. Once the facts were known, the question was
whether legislative remedies were appropriate.
This legislation does not deal with the President's power to grant
executive clemency since any changes in that power would require a
constitutional amendment.
Former President Jimmy Carter called the pardon of fugitive
commodities trader Marc Rich ``disgraceful,'' and Democratic
Representative Henry Waxman said that ``the failures in the pardon
process should embarrass every Democrat and every American.'' The
outrage over former President Clinton's last minute pardons is bi-
partisan, and I expect there will be bi-partisan support for this
legislation to fix the problems disclosed by the Senate Judiciary
Committee inquiry.
The pardons of Marc Rich and Pincus Green have sparked the most
public
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outrage, and rightly so. The actions of Hugh Rodham, who took more than
$400,000 for his limited work on the clemency requests for Almon Glenn
Braswell and Carlos Vignali, Jr., and Roger Clinton, who is reportedly
under investigation for trying to peddle access to the White House in
relation to pardons, are similarly outrageous. There are undoubtedly
others who made money from the pardons process, or at least tried to do
so. But let us at least identify them as what they are--lobbyists. When
you get paid money, in some of these cases, lots of money, to argue for
a pardon because you know the President of the United States, or
someone like a relative who is close to the President, what you are
doing is lobbying. Shining sunlight on the activities of these pardon
lobbyists will further the cause of good government.
In a February 18, 2001 op-ed in the New York Times, former President
Clinton said that he had decided to grant Rich and Green clemency for a
number of legal and foreign policy reasons, but it's hard to see how
the facts of the case add up to a pardon. Rich fled to Switzerland in
1983, shortly before he was indicted on 65 counts of racketeering, tax
evasion, mail fraud, wire fraud, violation of Department of Energy
regulations, and trading with the enemy. Then he tried to renounce his
citizenship. Although he could afford the best lawyers in the business,
Rich refused to return to the United States to plead his case in court.
At the time of his pardon, he was still listed on the Justice
Department's list of top international fugitives. Over the course of
seventeen years and three administrations, Rich repeatedly tried to get
the Justice Department to offer him a deal on favorable terms. When
that failed, he orchestrated a plan last year to get a grant of
executive clemency to wipe out the charges against him so he would
never even have to stand trial. In the end, Mr. Rich got his pardon,
but the way he got it shows the need for requiring pardon lobbyists to
register.
In late 2000, after failing to get the Southern District of New York
to make a deal that didn't involve any jail time for Rich and Green,
the Rich legal team began seriously pursuing a pardon strategy. There
is some disagreement on the timing of the decision to seek a pardon,
but the important point is that, once the decision was made to take the
case to the White House, the Rich legal team wanted to keep their
activities out of public view so the Southern District of New York, or
someone else who would oppose the pardon, wouldn't weigh in and scotch
the deal.
There is some evidence that the Rich legal team was considering
seeking a pardon as early as March, 1999. A log from the law firm of
Arnold and Porter cites a March 12, 1999, memorandum from Carol Fischer
to Robert Fink, one of Mr. Rich's lawyers. The document is titled
``Legal Research re: Pardon Power.'' Clearly there was some
consideration of seeking a pardon, or there wouldn't have been a need
to do research on the pardon power.
On February 10, 2000, Robert Fink wrote an e-mail to Avner Azulay,
who works for Mr. Rich in Israel. Fink told Azulay that the latest
efforts to make a deal with the Southern District of New York had
failed because the Department of Justice would not negotiate unless Mr.
Rich returned to the United States to face the charges. Azulay replied
the same day, saying that ``The present impasse leaves us with only one
other option: the unconventional approach which has not yet been tried
and which I have been proposing all along.''
There is also a March 20, 2000 e-mail from Azulay to Fink. In this e-
mail, Azulay tells Fink that ``We are reverting to the idea discussed
with Abe which is to send DR [Denise Rich] on a ``personal'' mission to
NO1. [undoubtedly President Clinton] with a well prepared script.''
Mr. Quinn has testified that the idea of a pardon did not receive
serious consideration until late in the year, but these e-mails raise
questions about that assertion. Under ordinary circumstances, it would
be of no interest when the Rich team made a decision to seek a pardon,
but it is important in this case because there are other e-mails
showing that they tried very hard to keep their efforts secret. For
example, in a December 26, 2000 e-mail, Fink told Quinn that ``Frankly,
I think we benefit from not having the existence of the petition known,
and do not want to contact people who are unlikely to really make a
difference but who could create press or other exposure.''
Later, in a January 9, 2001, e-mail, Quinn told Fink, ``I think we've
benefitted from being under the press radar. Podesta said as much.''
How did they benefit? They benefitted by not having the U.S. Attorney
from the Southern District of New York weigh in with the White House,
by not having the kind of scrutiny from the press that the case has had
since January. Does anyone seriously believe that former President
Clinton would have granted this pardon if the story had broken, with
all the details out in the open, in early January instead of after the
pardon was already a done deal? Of course not. Jack Quinn counted on
being under the radar, and it worked.
This legislation will make it harder for the Jack Quinn's of the
future to stay under the radar. When pardon lobbyists are required to
register, they won't be able to hide their actions until it is too late
for anyone to act. If Jack Quinn had been required to register as a
lobbyist when he started urging officials at the White House to grant
clemency to Rich and Green, the chances are good that this story would
have had a different ending.
This legislation would also cover the activities of Hugh Rodham, who
made more than $400,000 working to get clemency for Almon Glenn
Braswell and Carlos Vignali, Jr. Mr. Braswell is the subject of an
ongoing investigation related to allegations of tax evasion, and
clearly should not have been granted a pardon. Mr. Vignali was one of
the top members of a drug smuggling organization that shipped more than
800 pounds of cocaine from the Los Angeles area to Minnesota. He was
not a likely candidate to have his sentence commuted, and the Pardon
Attorney reportedly recommended that the request be denied. Several of
the members of the drug ring who had smaller roles that Vignali did are
still sitting in jail.
But Carlos Vignali got a pardon. Hugh Rodham's role should have been
subject to public disclosure since he had close family ties to the
White House, reportedly lived at the White House for the last several
weeks of the Clinton Administration and had documents shipped to
himself there.
Roger Clinton was also reportedly involved in several attempts to get
paid for getting pardons for his friends. This matter, like several
others, is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York. It remains to be seen what she will
find, but we don't have to wait for the end of her investigation to
know that if an individual trades on his access to the White House to
make money, that's lobbying, and he or she should be required to
register as a lobbyist.
The second part of this bill requires the public disclosure of
donations or pledges of $5,000 or more, or commitments to raise $5,000
or more for presidential libraries while the president is still in
office. There are presently no requirements to make such donations
public, and the Clinton library foundation has resisted efforts to
review it's donor list.
Presidential libraries are a relatively new phenomenon, with only ten
of them in existence. Under current law, presidential libraries are
built with private funds, then turned over to the National Archivist
for operation. Amendments to the Presidential Libraries Act have
mandated the establishment of an endowment to cover some of the costs
of operating the library. These goals are usually met through the
establishment of a charitable organization, a 501(c)(3) corporation.
Former Presidents Carter and Bush did not raise any money for their
libraries while they were in office because they were concentrating on
getting re-elected. Because both of these Presidents lost their re-
election bids, they never faced a situation of having to raise money
for a library while they were still in office.
Former Presidents Reagan and Clinton, as two term Presidents, began
raising money for their libraries during their second terms. Officials
from the Reagan library have said that the library fund received
several large contributions from corporate donors while
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former President Reagan was still in office, but the big corporate
donations tailed off rapidly when the President left office.
It is not necessary to suggest that there was any wrongdoing on the
part of former President Reagan or of former President Clinton to
realize that a donor could make a large donations to a presidential
library in the hope of receiving a favorable action from the President
in exchange for the donation. The fact that these donations can be made
without public disclosure makes them a matter of even greater concern.
The Rich case highlights the need for public disclosure of donations
while the President is still in office. Denise Rich, Marc Rich's former
wife, was deeply involved in trying to get a pardon for Rich. She also
gave at least $450,000 to former President Clinton's library
foundation. Beth Dozoretz, former finance chair of the Democratic
National Committee who pledged to raise $1 million for the Clinton
library, also worked on the Rich pardon.
Ms. Dozoretz's involvement in the Rich case is remarkable in that the
former President spent far more time talking to her about it than he
did talking to the prosecutors in the Southern district of New York.
Ms. Dozoretz had at least three conversations with former President
Clinton about the Rich pardon, including one at 11 p.m. on January 19,
2001, the night before the pardon was actually issued.
Ms. Dozoretz had been scheduled to meet with my staff, but she
changed attorneys and declined to be interviewed. But we found out that
she had called the President on the night of January 19, at about 11
P.M. to thank him for granting the pardon for Marc Rich. If Ms.
Dozoretz knew of the Rich pardon in time to call the President at 11
P.M. on the evening of January 19, she found out about the decision at
least two hours before Pardon Attorney Roger Adams, the official who
was charged with actually writing up the pardon warrant. Mr. Adams
testified that he had not heard that Rich and Green were being
considered for clemency until almost 1 A.M. on the morning of January
20. Mr. Adams was told by the White House counsel's office that there
probably wouldn't be much information available on Rich and Green
because they had been ``living abroad'' for several years. That was a
strange way of saying they were fugitives, but Mr. Adams was later able
to figure that out himself. He had his staff research the Internet to
see what he could learn about these two men, and he learned that they
were on the Justice Department's list of most wanted international
fugitives. When he relayed his concerns to the White House, he was told
to prepare the pardon documents anyway.
Ms. Dozoretz has refused to say from whom she learned that the
President had decided to grant Rich's clemency request, but she
apparently knew before the official who was charged with overseeing the
pardon process. Ms. Dozoretz has asserted her privelege against self-
incrimination under the Fifth Amendment, so we have no way of knowing
exactly how she learned that the decision had already been made on
January 19.
But we do have other relevant information. First, Beth Dozoretz
pledged to raise $1 million for the Clinton library. Former President
Clinton spoke to Ms. Dozoretz on January 10, 2001, when she was with
Ms. Rich in Aspen. According to a January 10, 2001, e-mail from Robert
Fink to Jack Quinn, Ms. Dozoretz received a phone call from POTUS, the
President, on January 10. Mr. Fink went on to quote former President
Clinton as saying ``that he wants to do it and is doing all possible to
turn around the WH counsels.'' Ms. Dozoretz has denied saying that the
President was trying to turn around the WH [White House] counsels, but
she has not offered any explanation for what happened. It has been
asserted that the message was garbled, but that explanation is
inconsistent with the facts. All of former President Clinton's top
advisers in the White House--including his Chief of Staff, John
Podesta; his White House Counsel, Beth Nolan; and Bruce Lindsey, one of
his closest political advisers who held the title of Assistant to the
President--looked at the facts and recommended against a pardon. That
is consistent with the former President having to turn around his White
House counsels.
Former President Clinton was unable to turn around his counsels, but
in the end it didn't matter. He issued the pardons anyway, and created
a firestorm. When a President ignores the advice of his closest
advisors, there isn't much we can do since the power of executive
clemency is in the hands of the President alone. But the Congress can
and should ensure that bad judgement on the part of a President does
not undermine the public's confidence in government. The two provisions
in this legislation will help to restore public confidence in the
pardon process.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
S. 645
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. DISCLOSURE OF LOBBYING ACTIVITIES WITH RESPECT TO
PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS.
Section 3(8) of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (2
U.S.C. 1602(8)) is amended--
(1) in subparagraph (A)--
(A) in clause (iii), by striking ``or'' after the
semicolon;
(B) in clause (iv), by striking the period and inserting
``; or''; and
(C) by adding at the end the following:
``(v) the issuance of a grant of executive clemency in the
form of a pardon, commutation of sentence, reprieve, or
remission of fine.''; and
(2) in subparagraph (B)(xii), by striking ``made to'' and
inserting ``except as provided in subparagraph (A)(v), made
to''.
SEC. 2. AMENDMENT TO THE ETHICS IN GOVERNMENT ACT OF 1978.
Section 102(a) of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (5
U.S.C. App) is amended by adding at the end the following:
``(9) If the reporting individual is the President and is
currently serving as the President, the identity of the
source, a brief description, and the value of all gifts,
pledges, or commitments of a gift aggregating $5000 or more
for the establishment of a Presidential library for that
President after his or her term has expired received from any
source other than a relative of the President during the
preceding calendar year. Information required to be reported
under this paragraph shall be made publicly available in
accordance with this Act.''.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I rise today with the senior Senator from
Pennsylvania to introduce legislation aimed at making our government
more open and accountable to the American people. We are pleased to be
joined by six other members of the Judiciary Committee, Senators Hatch,
Kohl, Biden, Feinstein, Sessions, Grassley, and by the new junior
Senator from New York, Senator Clinton.
Our bill closes two loopholes in the laws governing what government
officials and those who lobby them must disclose. First, it amends the
Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to require the President to report any
gifts or pledges of $5,000 or more to a presidential library during the
President's term in office. Second, it adds to the list of individuals
who must register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 those who
lobby on behalf of a client for a grant of executive clemency.