Ron Brown's Booty
York, Byron
Byron York Ron Brown's Booty The Commerce Secretary's splashy involvement with high-roller Nolanda Hill in spinning deals out of government connections is only the tip of the iceberg. He'll soon...
...While that may sound ominous for Brown, the result is that the Republicans are giving the administration exactly what it wants...
...And conflict-of-interest rules dictated that he had to sell many of his holdings...
...They never contemplated that I would be chairman of the committee with the power to pursue the investigation...
...Congressional investigators believe some of the money that Hill didn't repay the taxpayers ended up in Ron Brown's pocket...
...Congressional investigators don't know what, if anything, First International did in its first months of existence...
...Brown's first financial report, signed by him on January 1, ^ 1993, is as complex as one might expect, but it indicates Brown got most of his money from three main sources: his partnership at Patton Boggs, which brought him about $580,000 in 1992...
...According to congressional investigators, Hill had an unusual repayment plan: First, she didn't pay any interest or principal...
...When she arrived in the capital, Hill decided not to settle into an office at WFTY, in out-of-the-way suburban Rockville, Maryland...
...Hill has a relationship with a Texas bank from the mid-1980s," Weingarten says, "and the S&L goes under for a bunch of reasons having nothing to do with Ron Brown...
...Corridor paid about $22 million for both stations...
...B rown's current troubles began years ago in Texas...
...It paid off...
...The checks are numbered sequentially, 101, 102, and 103, and just one other check was written on the account, leading investigators to believe the limited partnership may have had virtually no purpose beyond giving Ron Brown money...
...But Weingarten points out that "there can be no supplementing income charge without identifying an official action to benefit 38 The American Spectator June 1995 Corridor that can be traced to this...
...Brown's financial statements indicate he made between $50,000 and $100,000 from Capital PEBSCO in 1992, plus another $40,000 for making other deals for the main company, PEBSCO.and $800,000...
...It's hard to play psychologist," says a congressional investigator, "but we've been told that power and prestige and status are really a big deal for her, and Brown was the gateway to that...
...Now Hill owned Brown's note, meaning Brown owed $87,000 to Nolanda Hill...
...She was...
...Brown now owed the $87,000 to the FDIC...
...Secretary of Commerce received more than $400,000 from Hill's companies in the past year and a half, without investing any money or apparently performing any services...
...Not only would giving the case to an independent counsel narrow the focus of the Brown investigation, it would also shield Brown from the immediate political consequences of his actions...
...The guest list was small, the top dogs of the corporate world: the CEO of Ford was there, and so were the heads of General Electric, Salomon Brothers, and Archer Daniels Midland...
...T wenty-four hundred one Pennsylvania Avenue is one of those glossy, glitzy real-estate developments that popped up in Washington over the last decade...
...The check's purpose is listed as "partnership distribution...
...his post at the Democratic National Committee, which paid him $89,000...
...WFTY filled its programming schedule with old sitcoms, dramas, and movies—the standard fare of such stations...
...The American Spectator June 1995 35 and 50 percent was bulls--t, and I never knew which was which...
...Brown, who as commerce secretary would become the spokesman for American business, was a failure at selling anything other than his connections...
...The entire time we were in the minority, they were nil, none from Brown directly," Clinger says...
...The American Spectator June 1995 39...
...What happened next, according to experts, was quite unusual...
...Why would you stay in it...
...There will be another independent counsel...
...How Hill managed to borrow so much when the price of the stations was just $22 million remains a mystery...
...It is entirely possible that he did not, or, if he did, that the violations were relatively minor...
...And why she was taking care of his credit line at the bank...
...And the counsel could call witnesses to testify...
...Look at the major points raised by Brown's critics: One, that Brown received $412,955.07 from a company in which he invested nothing and for which he did no work...
...After selling it for a profit, they divorced, and in 1976 Hill married her third husband, a lawyer named Billy Hill...
...Rather than quiet the investigation, Brown's claim that he had sold his interest in First International just heightened the investigators' curiosity...
...Hill also borrowed $10 million from Sandia Savings and Loan in Albuquerque, and $1 million from Bluebonnet Savings and Loan...
...Brown gave her entrée into the capital elite...
...Hill valued his judgment and acumen...
...Beyond that, according to Brown himself, Hill benefited from Brown's considerable business expertise...
...On February 9, he invested between $198,000 and $495,000...
...Nolanda Hill, a woman from a modest background who once hoped to hit it big in a singing group with her two sisters, got a job at a small TV station in Dallas...
...attractive, seemingly prosperous, and full of money-making ideas...
...First International received at least $12,000 a month from Corridor Broadcasting, Hill's company that was at the time raking in cash from the TV stations and failing to pay any of its debts, including the nearly $40 million note to the taxpayers...
...The company manages large retirement funds for various local governments around the country...
...The station had agreements with a variety of program providers—Columbia, Viacom, 20th Century Fox, and others...
...On those grounds, Commerce Department ethics officials gave him permission to keep his stake in First International...
...As part of the transaction, they decided to include the three [$45,000] payouts as part of the terms," says Reid Weingarten...
...Weingarten says Brown viewed Hill as "an extremely competent, professional, honorable businesswoman...
...A hearing is a real constitutional exercise of responsibility," says Eastland...
...No one can point to any illegality or impropriety in the operations of the stations," he says...
...The later debt payments were also part of the terms...
...There's no doubt that Nolanda Hill had a drive to make it...
...Then, in November 1993, the Washington Post published a front-page story headlined "Despite Debt, TV Firm Gave To Democrats: Station Operator Is Associate Of Commerce Chief Brown...
...That is precisely the issue that would come out in hearings...
...Hill's lawyer, George Terwilliger, calls the allegations "specious...
...He points out that highly publicized hearings tend to bring new information to light...
...Former colleagues' memories of Hill suggest another side...
...And there are questions about the purchase of a house Brown owns and rents to a close friend...
...Whatever its profit-making potential, First International was a good deal for Ron Brown: he didn't have to invest any money to own part of the company...
...Then she and Billy Hill divorced, and Nolanda Hill moved to Washington...
...Employees soon suspected Hill intended to starve the station and take all of its profits for Corridor...
...Critics have alleged that the money constitutes an illegal supplement to Brown's federal salary...
...Instead, she set up shop for Corridor Broadcasting in a tony downtown building...
...According to congressional investigators, Nolanda Hill persuaded a friend of hers to approach the FDIC and purchase just one loan—Ron Brown's...
...Of course, what investigators didn't know at the time was that Brown had put no money into an investment he now valued between $500,000 and $1,000,000...
...Hill created First International Communications Inc...
...It's what colleagues up here [in Congress] have been indicted for...
...She paid off a $13,073.95 personal loan at Crestar Bank...
...She valued my judgment, she valued my insight...
...Again, this was at the time she was in default on nearly $40 million in loans...
...And the public may never know the full extent of the corruption...
...Also, on January 29, he sold an investment property in Washington for between $250,000 and $500,000...
...A Commerce Department spokeswoman said Brown made the decision because of "unfair press attention directed at Nolanda Hill because of her ongoing professional association with Secretary Brown...
...Ron Brown is simply next in line...
...Three, that Brown lied on his financial disclosure statements...
...rather they are required to list assets and liabilities within broad categories, like $15,000-$50,000 or $100,000-$250,000...
...Employees soon suspected Nolanda Hill intended to starve the station and take all of its profits for Corridor...
...Sunbelt—where, incidentally, Hill's husband Billy served on the board—loaned Hill $21 million...
...R on Brown, meanwhile, was undergoing financial turmoil as a result of his being chosen to be commerce secretary...
...I wouldn't be sitting before you today if I didn't support President-elect Clinton's approach," he said...
...I just think it's real interesting that if a guy is getting ready to divest a company, and the reason he's divesting is because of the public attention that's been brought to it, that he would choose this way of divesting, by having her pay off loans," says one investigator...
...Investigators believe it was during this time that Hill met Patton Boggs's most famous partner, Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and lobbyist for such clients as Haiti's Baby Doc Duvalier...
...Weingarten says he does not know whether Brown was aware of Hill's debts when he went into business with her, but contends that Brown had "no legal, ethical, or moral responsibility" as far as Hill's debt was concerned...
...Brown might answer that Ms...
...and three, she came from the wrong side of the tracks...
...It was then that the investment-rich, cash-poor secretary of commerce began receiving checks from his partner Nolanda Hill...
...For that reason, congressional investigators believe they are far from knowing the complete story of Brown's financial involvements...
...Hill, at one time the owner of two small East Coast TV stations, borrowed nearly $40 million from corrupt savings-and-loans officials in the 1980s, never made any payments, and, when the S&Ls failed, left the American taxpayers to pick up the tab...
...Can you please tell the committee what you did to earn the money...
...We had nothing," says another former WFTY executive...
...It would seem that Brown was set...
...He also reported an investment account valued at between $100,000 and $250,000, a retirement account in that same range, and a variety of bank accounts totaling somewhere between $74,000 and $255,000 (executive-branch financial statements do not require officials to give precise estimates of their worth...
...The loans are almost always sold in large bundles...
...But Hill constantly demanded that station staffers cut expenses...
...Then, on January 27, he sold his interest in Capital PEBSCO for between $500,000 and $1,000,000...
...I felt that 50 percent of what she told me was true "We had nothing," says another former WFTY executive...
...And Nolanda Hill of little Corridor Broadcasting...
...Even with a quick and friendly confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Brown was required to file financial disclosure reports that led to several questions about his business involvements...
...36 The American Spectator June 1995 $90,000 and $140,000...
...But beginning in 1991, according to a variety of press reports, Hill and Brown embarked on a series of inept and pathetically unsuccessful business ventures...
...But despite his assets, investigators believe Brown wasn't very financially comfortable in early 1993...
...Despite his report that he sold his part in First International, Brown continued to receive money from Hill, this time in the form of payment on his many debts...
...According to investigators, Hill charged nearly everything to the heavily indebted Corridor Broadcasting...
...She did well, moved up, and, after a failed first marriage, eventually married the general manager...
...He'll soon be the target of a special prosecutor—but that may be the worst way to investigate the Brown scandal...
...He refused to answer, having nothing to fear from a minority party with no power in Congress or the executive branch...
...Clinger says he will call hearings only if the attorney general decides not to recommend an independent counsel...
...Lawyers for both Brown and Hill say all the money, regardless of its timing, was payment for Brown's share in the company...
...Facing a mounting litigation problem, in 1990 she went to the law firm across the street from her Corridor Broadcasting office—Patton, Boggs & Blow...
...Brown could claim exoneration on one of the main points raised by his critics...
...It was a small affair, limited to the department heads of WFIT-TV--and Ron Brown...
...The executives say Corridor took about $35,000 a week from the stations, in the form of a "management fee" or "corporate allocation...
...If it was a difficult process for Brown, it was a great boon for reporters and congressional investigators, giving them a first close look at how a storied Washington dealmaker made his money—and their first hint of Brown's relationship with Nolanda Hill...
...In an effort to minimize taxpayer losses, the FDIC usually sells loans to businesspeople who then try to collect them...
...They tried to buy bad wine from Hungary to convert into alcohol fuel...
...Two, that Brown went into business with and accepted money from a woman who stiffed the taxpayers for nearly $40 million...
...But curiously, he reported no income from the company...
...And they used Brown's extensive African contacts in an attempt to set up a $20 million oil deal in Angola...
...Through her Boston lawyer, she paid off a $146,112.56 mortgage Brown owed on property at a West Virginia ski resort...
...She and her business associate Ken White sported matching Harley Davidson motorcycles...
...And they will almost certainly cost him the job he worked for years to attain...
...Secretary, this check for $45,000 that you received on April 15, 1993...
...I don't want to do anything," Clinger says, "that would jeopardize a potential criminal indictment or trial...
...But the sequence and style of the payments raised several eyebrowsamong congressional investigators...
...During the transition, he asked to be allowed to keep some business interests on the grounds that they involved insignificant amounts of money or would not interfere with his role as commerce secretary...
...Weingarten points out that it was Nolanda Hill, not Ron Brown, who had trouble with S&L debts...
...In total, he invested at least $1,033,000 and as much as $2,345,000 in his first few months in office...
...The attorney general will do the smart thing...
...Her company car was a bright red 25th Anniversary Limited Edition Corvette (Hill became the butt of jokes in the officewhen she ran into a curb and blew a tire on the way back from the dealership...
...Sources say Hill simply refused to pay for shows like "Perry Mason," "The Morton Downey, Jr...
...In February, at a White House event honoring the Houston Rockets basketball team, a reporter asked the president, "Does Ron Brown still have your support...
...Both Representative Clinger in the House and North Carolina Republican Lauch Faircloth in the Senate have urged Attorney General Janet Reno to recommend a counsel...
...Brown would have to resign, not to defend himself against legal charges he could downplay as "technical," but because the voting public would see him as a crook...
...Questions about his relationship with Hill have already cost Brown the chance to direct President Clinton's 1996 campaign...
...The independent counsel statute is a black holeof irresponsibility," says Terry Eastland, author of Ethics, Politics and the Independent Counsel and a frequent contributor to these pages...
...And Clinton is pointedly avoiding giving Brown any specific support against the allegations...
...I always thought Nolanda was one of the smartest people I've ever known," says a former WFTY executive...
...Rebuilt cameras, leased equipment, nothing . . . What happened to the money...
...She served on some advisory boards, as well as the committee that selected the site of the 1992 con-vention...
...And I started looking at that and I said, 'Boy, it must be nice to be so damn rich that you can invest in stuff that you're not getting anything from.' People don't do that...
...But curiously, he reported no income from the company...
...They became friends," says Reid Weingarten, Brown's lawyer...
...She also was able to display Brown's impressive presence at business functions, such as a 1992 Christmas party held at her apartment...
...And, in Ron Brown's case, they would give the American people a clear picture of the type of business ventures favored by the commerce secretary...
...and a company called Capital PEBSCO31 which paid him somewhere between about Brown listed First International as his largest single asset, valuing it at between $500,000 and $1,000,000...
...It's an easy choice: recommend a counsel and keep the case out of the press and confined to narrow legal issues, or say no to a counsel and endure highly publicized hearings that expose Brown's business dealings...
...On January 21, 1993, he cashed in Patton Boggs-related retirement accounts for between $150,000 and $350,000...
...In 1990 National Bank of Washington, like the S&Ls that financed Hill, failed and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation...
...On this issue, Weingarten has conceded there might be "technical" questions about Brown's financial disclosure, and it is quite likely that an independent counsel could find Brown violated the law...
...Brown formed Capital PEBSCO and was able to convince city officials to give him half the city's retirement fund business...
...Brown's dealings with Hill are now the centerpiece of several investigations—by Congress, the Justice Department, and the FDIC...
...It was essentially a partnership with a larger, Ohio-based company called PEBSCO, or Public Employees Benefit Services Corporation...
...After Brown friend Sharon Pratt Kelly was elected mayor of DC, Capital PEBSCO got the whole contract, even though another company reportedly made a lower bid for the work...
...Certainly access within the Democratic Party...
...Both Congress and the executive can wash their hands of the matter by handing it off to an independent counsel...
...They bought two small stations, WFTY in Washington and WUNI, a Spanish-language station in Massachusetts...
...At his confirmation hearings, he told senators that he supported President Clinton's pledge to create the highest ethical standards of any administration...
...They tried to import Beatles posters from Poland...
...Brown had other debts, and in June, July, and August of 1994 Hill took care of some of them, too...
...One of Billy Hill's clients was savings-and-loan executive Thomas Gaubert (now serving a prison sentence for fraud), and in 1985 the three of them went in together to form a company called Corridor Broadcasting...
...On financial disclosure statements, Brown called First International "a company that provides international and domestic consulting and investment services...
...An independent counsel might agree—at least as far as legality is concerned—allowing Brown to claim another victory...
...They are both serious offenses that could conceivably put him in jail...
...That's what caught our eye in the first place," says one congressional investigator...
...Clinger calls this the "most serious" charge against Brown...
...Brown has not fully answered any of Clinger's questions...
...But things worked differently in Brown's case...
...Show," and hundreds of other syndicated programs and movies...
...She was the only guest who did not represent a major American company...
...Not only would giving the case to an independent counsel narrow the focus of the Brown investigation, it would also shield Brown from the immediate political consequences of his actions...
...Brown's next financial report indicates that his early days at the Commerce Department were a period of busy financial activity that left him swimming in cash...
...With his business options limited by his new position, Brown poured the money into mutual funds...
...But an indictment on those two very inside-the-Beltway crimes would completely miss the moral dimension that is so clear in the Brown case: he hooked up with a slick operator throwing around millions in S&L money, and he took hundreds of thousands of dollars without doing anything to earn it...
...In January of 1994, Hill forgave the debt...
...That's what caught our eye in the first place," says one congressional investigator...
...And on May 24, he invested between $400,000 Brown founded this company in 1984...
...On top of that, Brown began collecting his $148,400 salary as secretary of commerce...
...In financial statements released much later, Brown reported that he sold his interest in First International a few weeks after the article appeared...
...For a short time Hill, the television expert in the group, ran the stations from Texas...
...Rebuilt cameras, leased equipment, nothing . . . What happened to the money...
...At least in the short term, doing just that has allowed the Clinton administration to quickly extinguish furor over the Whitewater, Mike Espy, and Henry Cisneros cases...
...There are questions about Brown's role in Kellee Communications, a company that has won lucrative public telephone contracts...
...Second, the loan was reissued each year, increased by the amount she hadn't paid the year before...
...But Brown claimed he sold his interest in First International on December 15, 1993, which would mean he received the three $45,000 checks well before he says he sold out, and the rest well after...
...Hill's lawyer refuses to discuss details of First International's finances...
...He could easily live on his salary and investments while in office and then cash in for the really big money upon leaving the Clinton administration...
...The FDIC is investigating whether Hill committed bank fraud to get the loans...
...Investigators do not know details on the specific nature of the relationship that followed (a spokesman for the firm says Hill was never Brown's client), but it was not long before Hill and Brown decided to go into business together...
...An independent counsel, they point out, would have the power to subpoena, for example, Brown's tax returns, which would likely yield valuable new information...
...He refuses to discuss details of her expenditures, but denies Hill did anything wrong...
...If you really look closely at his financial statements, he's got a lot of money tied up in a lot of things that he says are bringing in no income...
...He had given up his big-paycheck jobs and kept the companies that he said did not produce any income...
...She didn't pay anybody except herself," says a former station executive...
...B rown had not divested his interest in First International...
...Incidentally, the Post article also caught the attention of Republicans in Congress, who started asking Brown for information about his business connections...
...But one especially prosperous—and prominent—visitor to 2401 Pennsylvania wasn't drawn by the food or the amenities...
...We've seen photocopies of credit card receipts where she bought cosmetics and clothes for her son and would turn the whole bill in to the company," says a congressional investigator...
...When Brown's years of work for the Democratic Party paid off in the 1992 election, he was in a position to give Nolanda Hill the ultimate Washington access...
...But there are those who believe an independent counsel could be precisely the wrong way to deal with the Brown case...
...The first such payment known to investigators happened in January 1994 when, after an excruciatingly complex series of maneuvers, Hill forgave Brown a debt of $87,000...
...For financing, Hill went to Sunbelt Savings and Loan in Dallas, where president Edwin T. McBirney III was becoming famous for spending millions of his depositors' dollars on parties, planes, prostitutes, and ill-advised loans to his friends...
...There are questions about Harmon International, a company Brown founded whose activities are a mystery to investigators...
...It eventually reached $26 million...
...Her ex-husband knew an attorney there named Joe Reeder, who handled some of the programming lawsuits (Reeder now serves the Clinton administration as undersecretary of the army...
...Investigators do not know whether Brown received any money from First International in its first few years of existence...
...On January 20, 1993, his first day in office, he invested between $75,000 and $250,000...
...Together they bought 34 The American Spectator June 1995 another small station...
...Then, on October 15, 1993, Brown received another $45,000 check from the same company (the precise relationship between First International Communications and First International Communications Limited Partnership is not known, although, they shared the same address, which was also the address of Corridor Broadcasting...
...In the case of First International, all they have to work with are public documents, like Brown's financial disclosure statements, and information leaked to them by a variety of Hill's former business associates...
...And they would wonder why Hill was paying off the mortgage on the secretary's ski retreat...
...But that doesn't mean it didn't make money...
...Brown originally borrowed the money in 1989 to become a part-owner of a local radio station, WKYS-FM (After Brown bought in, the station gave his wife Alma a job...
...He's the best commerce secretary we've ever had," the president said...
...Until a few months ago, according to sources familiar with the building and its residents, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown stopped by at least once a week, leaving his government car and driver waiting outside while he called on his friend and business partner Nolanda Hill in her $4,500-a-month apartment...
...I don't think she paid a dime out of pocket to live...
...Complying with conflict of interest laws, he sold his stake in Patton Boggs for an estimated $800,000...
...The statement was disingenuous at best...
...Reid Weingarten said recently that Brown "had an unusual personal business relationship with Nolanda Hill, but if you look around Washington and you look at the relationships people have . . it doesn't look so unusual...
...Congressional investigators believe much of that money went to support Nolanda Hill's taste for luxury...
...They have little to worry about...
...The loan came from the National Bank of Washington, where Brown's law partner Thomas Boggs was on the board...
...eanwhile, at the same time she was drawing M $35,000 a week from the stations, Hill failed to pay the bills...
...Now, Clinger at least gets his letters answered, but solid information is still hard to come by...
...She also valued his high profile...
...she could talk a good line but could not be trusted in business...
...The general public might conclude that Ron Brown was deeply enmeshed in a deeply corrupt Washington culture...
...She had a real inferiority complex," her now-jailed former partner Thomas Gaubert told the New York Times, "because, one, she was a woman...
...That left him with anywhere between $1,450,000 and $2,150,000 in cash...
...Whether you agree or disagree [with the disclosure rules]," he says, "it's the law...
...He had some pretty heavy-duty portfolios as a result of his divestiture," says a congressional investigator, "but, frankly, I think what happened is he had a lot of money in long-term kinds of stuff, and he may not have had a whole lot of cash...
...Later Sunbelt, Sandia, and Bluebonnet all failed, leaving the taxpayers with Hill's nearly $40 million in loans...
...Her stations, like many low-overhead UHF independents nationwide, were highly profitable: "The stations were making tons of money," says a former WFTY executive...
...and made Brown her partner...
...Records indicate she donated more than $74,000 to the party between 1990 and 1992...
...a business might purchase, say, $100 million worth of notes...
...She valued my acumen," he told the Wall Street Journal in a rare comment on the case...
...She set up shop in the offices of Corridor Broadcasting, right across the street from Patton Boggs...
...Related to that, it seems clear that Brown has been at best reluctant to provide any information to lawmakers and thus might be vulnerable to a charge of withholding information from Congress...
...F first International is by no means the only scandal enveloping Brown...
...Hill must have seemed like a promising partner...
...The questions that have been raised about what happened before he became commerce secretary are being looked into in an appropriate fashion...
...According to congressional investigators, First International did not profit from a single one of its business ventures...
...With the exception of arranging for Hill to have lunch at the White House, Brown's critics have not charged that he used his position as Secretary of Commerce to benefit Corridor Broadcasting...
...He has many business arrangements with friends...
...None of the deals succeeded...
...The counsel's investigation will focus narrowly on a single question: Did the commerce secretary violate any laws...
...You've got a half-million dollars in something that's bringing you no income...
...two, she had no education...
...So after an extensive—and expensive—investigation, Brown might be charged with lying on his disclosure statements and withholding information from Congress...
...Now Ron Brown owed $87,000 to Hill's friend...
...The spokeswoman offered no The American Spectator June 1995 37 details of the sale and did not say how much money Brown had received...
...The article outlined Nolanda Hill's debts and political contributions, but did not mention the three $45,000 checks...
...And he immediately put his cash into a variety of investments that would not pay off immediately...
...His statement raised suspicions among investigators, who noted that the two companies shared the same office, phone, and fax machines...
...She kept waving these huge debts in front of us and saying we had to buckle down," the executive says...
...Brown is under investigation because his questionable business dealings continued long after he became commerce secretary...
...Even though Weingarten says Brown would welcome hearings, a full-scale public congressional inquiry is a nightmare scenario for the Clinton administration...
...In addition to the $4,500-a-month apartment in Washington, she maintained another—at about $4,000 a month—in Boston...
...The viewers at home might conclude that it was a shady deal...
...Combining the three $45,000 checks, the $87,000 debt forgiveness, and the $190,955.07 in debt payments, Brown received $412,955.07 from Hill between April 1993 and August 1994...
...Weingarten says he is "not sure" whether Brown ever visited the office...
...The friend then gave Hill the note as a partial payment on a debt he owed her...
...H earings on Capitol Hill would be another matter...
...A stern-voiced lawmaker might ask, "Mr...
...Several companies ultimately sued Hill...
...Almost anybody would conclude that that is wrong, yet an independent counsel might decide that it violated no laws...
...She also paid off two of Brown's credit lines at Signet Bank, totaling $20,768.56...
...Brown has said he never knew there was any connection between First International and Corridor...
...In the summer of 1993, with her friend and partner now secretary of commerce, Hill received an invitation to a White House lunch for business leaders...
...W hat did Hill get in return for her investment in Ron Brown...
...But they do know that Brown's Democratic Party machine enjoyed Hill's generosity...
...Thus Hill's giving Brown $412,955.07, while clearly suspicious, might not actually be illegal, and an independent counsel might conceivably conclude that there is no evidence to prove that Brown broke any laws...
...During that time he has written Brown several letters asking for information and gotten little, if any, response...
...On April 15, 1993, Brown received a $45,000 check signed by Hill's business associate Ken White...
...At night, well-heeled couples crowd the hot new restaurant on the first floor...
...And, in a particularly fine twist, she paid $11,000 to cover the legal bills of Reid Weingarten, the attorney who is representing Brown against accusations he has been paid off by Hill...
...Half-commercial, half-residential, it features the polished marble floors, shiny fixtures, and faux luxury touches popular with high-rent tenants...
...When asked whether the company had any successful business ventures, he says only, "First International was a legitimate business concern with legitimate business interests and pursuits...
...the Byron York is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...Clinton seemed to jump to Brown's defense...
...When PEBSCO wanted a piece of the business in the District of Columbia, it went to Ron Brown...
...On April 2, between $360,000 and $800,000...
...Pennsylvania Republican William Clinger, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, has been investigating Brown's business dealings for two years...
...On July 21, 1993, Brown received another $45,000 check labeled "partnership distribution-2nd quarter" from something called First International Communications Limited Partnership...
...Brown listed First International as his largest single asset, valuing it at between $500,000 and $1,000,000...
...There are allegations he concealed his ownership of slum property in the Washington area, property that has provided him a big tax write-off...
Vol. 28 • June 1995 • No. 6
