The Castle Grande transactions were crimes’
Hillary Clinton ‘destroyed’ her personal records
A case of ‘possible obstruction’ of justice
Sources say redacted portions of memoranda contain a draft indictment of Mrs. Clinton
Never-before-published
prosecution memos from April 1998 say Clinton’s ‘sworn statements to
the RTC, the FDIC, the Senate and the House of Representatives and to
OIC … reflected and embodied materially inaccurate stories’
A
4/10/98 OIC memo uses terms ‘crime(s),’ ‘criminal,’ ‘fraudulent,’
‘misrepresented,’ ‘inaccurate,’ ‘deceive,’ ‘mislead,’ ‘misstatement,’
and ‘concealed’ 27 times in 20 pages to describe actions by Clinton and
Whitewater associates
(Washington, DC) January 28, 2016 –
Judicial Watch today released 246 pages of previously undisclosed
Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) internal memos revealing extensive
details about the investigation of Hillary Rodham Clinton for possible
criminal charges involving her activities in the Whitewater/Castle
Grande fraudulent land transaction scandal. The memos are “statements
of the case” against Hillary Clinton and Webster Lee “Webb” Hubbell,
Hillary Clinton’s former law partner and former Associate Attorney
General in the Clinton Justice Department. Ultimately, the memos show
that prosecutors declined to prosecute Clinton because of the difficulty
of persuading a jury to convict a public figure as widely known as
Clinton. (Links to the full set of documents are below.)
Although some details of the documents
have been previously reported, Judicial Watch is today publicly
releasing the independent counsel prosecution memos for the first time.
The prosecution memos—portions of which were heavily redacted—were
obtained by Judicial Watch from the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request.
An April 10, 1998, memo summarizes “the crimes under consideration”
What, then are the crimes under
consideration? Between January 1994 and February 1996 both Hillary
Clinton and [Webster] Hubbell made numerous sworn statements to the RTC,
the FDIC, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and to the OIC.
Each of these reflected and embodied materially inaccurate stories
relating to: how RLF [Clinton and Hubbell’s Rose Law Firm] came to be
retained by MGSL [the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan]; Hillary
Clinton’s role in the IDC/Castle Grande venture; Hillary Clinton’s role
in representing MGSL; Hillary Clinton’s role in representing MGSL before
state agencies’; Hubbell’s representations to the RTC [Resolution Trust
Corporation] and FDIC regarding Hillary Clinton’s role in the
IDC/Castle Grande venture; and the removal of records from the RLF. The
question, generally, is not whether the statements are inaccurate, but
whether they are willfully so.
The records released today by Judicial
Watch were prepared for an “All OIC Attorneys” meeting on April 27,
1998, at which a final decision about whether to indict Clinton and
Hubbell was the subject of a lengthy debate. The records explore in
detail the role Clinton played in the fraudulent Castle Grande
transaction, the role of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, and the
subsequent lengthy cover-up as the Clintons sought and won the White
House.
Clinton, according to prosecutors,
drafted an option agreement that concealed from federal bank examiners a
fraudulent $300,000 cross-loan in the Castle Grande transaction. Her
concealment of her role in this fraudulent transaction, including the
hiding of her Rose Law Firm billing records concerning her legal work
for Madison, were the subject of an OIC obstruction of justice probe.
The 1998 memoranda include substantial
evidence depicting Clinton and her former Rose Law Firm
partners—Hubbell, and Vincent Foster, both of whom went on to senior
positions in the Bill Clinton presidency—as complicit in activities
that “facilitated crimes.”
Page 18 of the OIC documents notes that Clinton “destroyed” her personal records of her work for Madison Guaranty. Page 39 of the documents notes:
Section II contains a chronological
background and contextual summary of the investigation so that the facts
relating to possible obstruction can be placed in the context of the
ongoing investigation by OIC.
The evidence in the new documents covers:
- Castle Grande. “The Castle Grande transactions were crimes.” The statement is followed by an explicit six-paragraph dissection of the land-flipping scheme.
- Madison Guaranty S&L. Clinton minimized the role she played in seeking state regulatory assistance for the corrupt savings and loan, headed by key Clinton financial and political supporter James McDougal. At the time, Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
- Vincent Foster and the Missing Rose Law Firm Billing Records. The Rose records were a key piece of evidence in the probe. They were missing for years. After Foster’s July 1993 suicide, the OIC documents note, where the billing records went “is an open question…. Several pieces of evidence support the inference that personal documents which Hillary Clinton did not want disclosed were located in Foster’s office at the time of his death and then removed.”
- Removal of Records from Vincent Foster’s Office. “ [O]n the afternoon of July 21st Bernard Nussbaum, then White House Counsel, initially agreed to allow two career DOJ employees to review the documents in Foster’s office for evidence that might shed light on the cause of his death. That evening and the next morning Nussbaum, Hillary Clinton, Susan Thomases, and Maggie Williams (Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff) exchanged 10 separate phones calls … That morning, according to the DOJ employees, Nussbaum changed his mind and refused to allow the DOJ prosecutors to review the documents; instead, he reviewed them himself and segregated several as ‘personal’ to the Clintons.”
- Hiding the Billing Records. “On the evening of July 22nd, Thomas Castleton … assisted Williams [Maggie Williams, Hillary Clinton chief of staff] in carrying a box of personal documents up to … a closet in Hillary Clinton’s office. The closet is approximately 30 feet from the table in the Book Room, where the billing records were found 2 years later…. There is a circumstantial case that the records were left on the table by Hillary Clinton. She is the only individual in the White House who had a significant interest in them and she is one of only 3 people known to have had them in her possession since their creation in February 1992.”
- Buying the Silence of a Co-Conspirator? Hubbell, criticized by the OIC for his lack of cooperation with the probe, received several “jobs” from Clinton supporters for which he apparently did little or no work. During a taped conversation in prison, Hubbell appears to acknowledge that he withheld information from the OIC. Several of Hubbell’s job-providers fell most strongly within the hush money allegation. The OIC notes eight of them on page 197.
- The Missing Draft Indictment. More than 60 pages of the OIC memoranda are completely censored, withheld by the National Archives. Multiple sources tell Judicial Watch that these pages include a full draft indictment of Clinton and Hubbell, as well as a detailed “order of Evidence” list.
The National Archives is withholding
additional documents Judicial Watch believes to be critical to
understanding Clinton’s full role in the Whitewater scandal.
On March 9, 2015, Judicial Watch
submitted a FOIA request seeking all draft indictments of Clinton in the
files of Hickman Ewing Jr., who served as deputy independent counsel in
the Whitewater probe. In 1999, Ewing testified that he wrote a draft
indictment of Clinton.
On March 19, 2015,
the National Archives admitted locating records responsive to the Ewing
material request, confirming that it found 38 pages of responsive
records in a folder entitled “Draft Indictment,” and approximately 200
pages of responsive records in a folder entitled “Hilary Rodham
Clinton/Webster L. Hubbell Draft Indictment.” Judicial Watch is suing
in federal court to force the release of the draft indictment, which is being withheld by the National Archives to protect the privacy of Hillary Clinton.
Ultimately, as an April 24, 1998,
memo suggests, prosecutors were persuaded that a jury would not convict
Clinton based upon circumstantial evidence. OIC attorney Paul
Rosenzweig wrote:
In a high profile case of this sort,
however, I think that some jurors are likely to put OIC to the full
measure of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and, in effect, insist that
circumstantial evidence is an inferior form of evidence on which they
cannot convict. Such a distinction would be “lawless” in a formal
sense, as contrary to their jury instructions – but we blink reality if
we do not expect this reaction to a primarily circumstantial high
profile case.
The prosecutor concluded:
Bottom line: We can anticipate the
following: 2% = Rule 29; 18% = Acquittal; 70% =Hung Jury; 10% =
Conviction. Not enough in my view.
“These new Hillary Clinton prosecution
memos are damning and dramatic,” said Judicial Watch President Tom
Fitton. “Hillary Clinton’s bank fraud, obstruction, lies, and other
fraud began in Arkansas, continued in the White House and actually
accelerated because the suicide of her friend Vincent Foster. The memos
suggest that if she weren’t First Lady, she would have been
successfully prosecuted in federal court. As we continue the court fight
to get the actual draft indictment of Hillary Clinton we first
uncovered in this investigation, Americans would do well to read these
memos. If you want to understand the deplorable ethics and corruption at
the Clinton State Department, these documents provide important
background.”
Links to the complete set of documents are available here:
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