Believe me, I had no intention of writing about this for the third consecutive day, but the right’s use of Clinton to downplay the prosecutor purge scandal has adapted. Some are still foolishly complaining about Clinton having hired new U.S. Attorneys upon taking office, but the more sophisticated far-right Bush supporters have decided to narrow their focus onto one federal prosecutor in particular.
For example, during an online chat yesterday, a reader confronted the WaPo’s Dan Froomkin with this charge: “Please be honest to your readers. Clinton fired the Whitewater investigator and replaced the person with one of his law students, who dropped the case.” (Froomkin responded, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”)
Similarly, in our comments section yesterday, a reader argued, “You’d have to be an idiot to buy this explanation that what Clinton did is somehow different. Clinton replaced a prosecutor involved in his OWN whitewater case with a friend of his.”
Where’s all of this coming from? The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons’ Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint “Friend of Bill” Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to “politicizing” Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons.
Well, at least we know the source of the foolishness. Unfortunately for the right, once again, they’re wrong.
Media Matters sets the record straight.
[T]he Journal left out a key fact about the U.S. attorney whom Casey replaced: Charles A. Banks had himself resisted investigating the Whitewater matter, reportedly in defiance of pressure from George H.W. Bush administration officials in search of a pre-election issue with which to tar challenger Clinton. Moreover, as Media Matters for America has noted, the extensive independent counsel investigation into Whitewater — launched several years after Clinton took office — ultimately led the independent counsel to close the probe without charging the Clintons with any wrongdoing.
Mollie Dickenson explained in an article for Salon five years ago that Banks refused to pursue the Whitewater matter, citing his belief that “no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses,” including the Clintons.
On Oct. 8 [1992], [Attorney General William] Barr convened a joint FBI-Justice Department panel to examine the referral [naming the Clintons as witnesses in the Whitewater case]. But the panel concluded that the referral “failed to cite evidence of any federal criminal offense.” The panel’s comment about the referral ranged from “junky” and “half-baked” to that its allegations were “reckless, irresponsible” and “odd.”
Nevertheless, Barr put a preliminary investigation into motion and ordered Banks to review it again and to report back by Oct. 16, two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
But, in fact, Banks had already concluded, and the FBI in Little Rock had agreed, that “no action should be taken on the referral at that time.” Banks had already prosecuted Jim McDougal in 1990 for alleged bank crimes, and McDougal had been acquitted. Banks said further that he believed “no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses,” most notably the Clintons.
The WSJ’s editorial board (and the activists who parrot the editorial the Journal published) actually have it backwards — this isn’t an example of Clinton politicizing a U.S. Attorney’s office, this is actually an example of H.W. Bush pressuring a prosecutor to file politically-motivated charges.
As Conason noted in his upcoming March 19 New York Observer column, Banks was a Republican appointee who had been “recently selected” by Bush “as a potential nominee for the federal bench.” According to Conason, after Banks determined in early October 1992 that the Clinton referral “lacked merit” and dismissed the original request for an investigation, “officials in the Bush White House and the Justice Department heard whispers about” it, and Attorney General William Barr then “ordered” Banks “to act” on the referral and launch an investigation into the Clintons’ connections to Whitewater in late October 1992, “no later than two weeks before Election Day.”
I realize it’s reflexive to respond to every possible Bush-related controversy with either “Clinton” and/or “9/11,” but can conservatives please come up with something half-way legitimate?