The truly-absurd Whitewater investigation finally came to an official end yesterday.
The seven-year, $70 million Whitewater investigation that toppled an Arkansas governor and dogged Bill Clinton for most of his presidency officially drew to a close Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the last remaining appeal.
Former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker had asked the high court to let him withdraw a guilty plea in a tax-conspiracy case that he said was based on an outdated law. Tucker was accused of crookedly scheming to reduce his tax liability on the sale of a cable television system.
“It has been drawn out a long time,” said W. Hickman Ewing, who was a chief deputy to Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr.
That’s a profound understatement. Yesterday’s rejected appeal wasn’t even connected to the Arkansas land development deal; the cable television case was just another angle to the investigation that was tacked on by prosecutors.
And now that the probe is officially done, I thought I’d add, for the last time, Joe Conason’s helpful summary of exactly what this investigation was about, as a reminder for those of us who have tried to block the fiasco out of our minds.
It is likely by now that most Americans have forgotten what, exactly, Kenneth Starr and his persistent assistants were attempting to prove. The Whitewater allegations were vague and constantly shifting, as each headlined accusation quietly evaporated. The few clear and pertinent questions about the defunct development deal were answered with finality at least seven years ago.
Did the Clintons abuse their political authority to help their real-estate partner James McDougal keep afloat Madison Guaranty, his insolvent savings and loan, as the original Times article suggested? No. The investigation quickly revealed that then-Governor Clinton ordered his appointees to treat McDougal no differently than anyone else. Did the Clintons profit illicitly from McDougal’s manipulations? No. Investigators learned within a year after the probe began that the president and first lady were swindled by McDougal and had lost about $40,000. Did Bill Clinton play any part in obtaining an illegal loan from the crooked businessman David Hale? No. The only testimony to that effect came from Hale and McDougal, both sources that the OIC knew were bereft of credibility.
There was never, in short, a plausible case that the Clintons had committed a single illegal act, or that they even had the slightest idea what McDougal had done. The footnotes to the final report show that the OIC failed to uncover any significant information about Whitewater beyond what the lawyers at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro had found when they completed an exhaustive and exculpatory report on the land deal “and related matters” in late 1995.
It was a presidential “scandal” lacking in any seriousness, substance, or merit. The ridiculousness is now officially over, but it shouldn’t have started in the first place.