Why Ron Brown Won't Go Down
York, Byron
"Why Ron Brown Won't Go Down" Sure enough, the appointment of an independent counsel has undercut House oversight chairman William Clinger's determination to get to the bottom of a very dirty barrel...
...ITEM 2: THE WASHINGTON POST REPORTS THE INTERNAL Revenue Service is investigating whether First International, the company Brown owned with partner Nolanda Hill, cheated on its tax returns...
...Trying to move things along, Clinger met with Pearson in early February...
...Has the secretary been reprimanded—or asked to resign...
...He told Reno that if she called for a counsel, he would back off his own investigation...
...We have no deadline," he declares...
...And I think he should not be getting off scot free...
...It raises questions about the people in this administration...
...In February 1995 Reno began a 9o-day investigation to determine whether she would call for a counsel...
...There's nobody beating down the door to get him out...
...Clinger, who had originally hoped to see some results by February, now says he hopes to see action from Pearson by summertime...
...ITEM 3: THE Los ANGELES TIMES REPORTS BROWN has over-spent his Commerce Department travel budget by millions of dollars...
...Still, it would likely make for a lot of intimidatingly negative press coverage...
...In May, to no one's surprise, she announced her decision to seek a counsel...
...He said he has hired six attorneys and is also using experts from the FBI, the IRS, and the FDIC...
...if she refused, he would go ahead with a full-scale investigation and public hearings...
...Unlike Espy, who chose to bail out shortly after allegations of corruption became public—after all, his small-time sins were easily explained in the press—Brown weathered initial inquiries into his complex business dealings...
...Clinger declines to say, but if he should decide to take some action in the months before the election, he would face three big problems...
...First, it would not be easy for Congress to launch a full-scale investigation of Brown's business dealings...
...The precise number is difficult to establish, the paper says, because Brown spends money not only from his own budget—he also raids the budgets of other parts of the department to pay for trips for himself and his staff...
...And Clinger is including Brown in a wider investigation of travel abuses by several cabinet departments...
...When the Republicans took over, however, Clinger found himself with new powers, and Brown had new troubles...
...My being physically present at every moment," he says, "is not essential...
...In a recent interview, Pearson defended his handling of the investigation...
...they couldn't indict anybody...
...So Clinger has decided to stay away from Pearson's turf for the moment...
...It would take many more to launch a probe of Ron Brown...
...If that happens, Republicans worry that significant questions about corruption in the Clinton cabinet might be submerged during the campaign...
...The total adds up to far more than Brown's Republican predecessor spent—costs that at the time were repeatedly called excessive by Democrats in Congress...
...The answer lies in one of the ironies of Washington scandals...
...At one point early last year, Brown was the subject of several separate investigations by the Commerce Department Inspector General, the FDIC, the Justice Department, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...With Brown on record as having accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and business associates, investigators would naturally want to check to see if he paid all taxes due on that money...
...If there is serious wrongdoing it needs to be part of the picture before people vote," Clinger says...
...It's a perfectly honorable thing to do for political reasons, if one believes—as Clinger and others do—that the facts of the Brown case should be made public before voters decide whether to re-elect the man who appointed him...
...It is on the surface a baffling turn of events...
...All that, the lawyer says, was Hill's job—and she cannot be found...
...34 April 1996 • The American Spectator...
...The former president of that company, Dynamic Energy Resources Inc., says the payments, made in April 1994, were intended "to gain influence with the Department of Commerce...
...All other investigations of Brown stopped in their tracks...
...Brown's lawyer tells the Post that Brown knew nothing about the day-to-day running of the business, despite the fact that he accepted a $5oo,000 payout when he left First International...
...These days, Ron Brown seems strangely unaffected by the scandals around him...
...Even when a news story emerges from the probe, there are seldom any follow-up revelations...
...But it's not happening...
...For example, Brown routinely dips into National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funds to pay the travel expenses of his impressive force of bodyguards, thus insuring that those figures don't appear on Brown's own travel budget...
...Does Secretary Brown still have the president's confidence...
...But Pearson himself, like Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater investigation, is not devoting himself full time to the Brown probe...
...Not only is he not beleaguered by the allegations, he has actually raised his already high profile as the administration's spokesman on Matters of American trade...
...Press coverage would The American Spectator • April 199 6 intensify, and Brown would find himself under growing political pressure to defend himself or leave office...
...But the Intemal Revenue Service is forbidden by law from giving out private tax information to almost anybody other than law enforcement authorities—and that includes congressional investigators...
...But he will not close the door to the possibility of a new investigation...
...Clinger says he wanted to make sure that the counsel was moving as quickly as possible on all questions about Brown's business dealings, including the Dynamic Energy Resources payments to Brown's son...
...Unless Clinger and the Republican leadership do something about it, however, that's what will happen...
...Who is aligned against him...
...At least in the short term, Brown has actually benefited from the appointment of an independent counsel in his case...
...33 0 BYRON YORK is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...Second, even if there were more of them, House investigators wouldn't have the power of an independent counsel...
...On Capitol Hill, Republican members of Congress would call for Brown's head —and begin their own investigations into his behavior...
...ROWN WON'T Go Down Sure enough, the appointment of an independent counsel has undercut House oversight chairman William Clinger's determination to get to the bottom of a very dirty barrel of corruption and slimy commerce...
...There have been some suggestions that we should beef up the staff," Clinger says, "but having talked withthe leadership, I don't think that is going to happen...
...It was not until July 1995 that a three-judge panel appointed Miami lawyer Daniel Pearson, and it was not until September that Pearson's office was fully staffed...
...It's a situation that frustrates Republicans like Clinger...
...And they would be...
...Not only is he not beleaguered by the allegations, he has actually raised his already high profile as the administration's spokesman on matters of American trade...
...In addition, he spends taxpayer money to take hundreds of political friends and Democratic party contributors along on trips around the globe...
...Several months of dead time followed Reno's announcement...
...The Senate Whitewater Committee, by comparison, employs a staff at least four times as large...
...And he is continuing his big-money travels (a five-nation tour of Africa kicked off in mid-February...
...And such a high-profile mission would require the approval of top Republicans...
...That means it is quite possible that Pearson's investigation could stretch through summer to fall and perhaps to November—or beyond...
...Reporters would pepper the White House press secretary with questions: Does the president approve of such practices...
...And they would have a tough time getting at some critical evidence— Brown's tax records, for instance...
...They couldn't present evidence to a grand jury...
...We're trying to do what we have to do as expeditiously as we can," he said...
...My concerns might go to ethical matters...
...Currently Clinger employs three investigators, all of whom are working full-time on Travelgate...
...Ron Brown seems strangely unaffected by the scandals around him...
...In response to the question of whether any of the money ended up in Ron Brown's pocket, Brown's lawyer says the following: "The occasions upon which Secretary Brown, like other parents, may have provided loans or gifts to his children to help them get started as young adults, and occasions upon which they may have sought to repay their father's support and good will, are private family matters...
...For his part, Pearson says it's impossible to predict when he'll finish...
...With little news coming out, Brown is allowed to remain in office as if nothing untoward were going on...
...Other than the much-reported fact that Brown was not chosen to lead the president's re-election campaign, Brown seems to have paid no political price for being the most scandal-plagued member of the Clinton cabinet...
...Mike Espy, for example, was run out of office for accepting a plane ride and a couple of Super Bowl tickets...
...Another issue, according to the paper, is whether a video on Brown's life that was shown at the 1992 Democratic convention was somehow illegally financed...
...0 ne might expect any of these stories to set off a now-familiar Washington routine...
...Here's how it happened...
...asks one Washington reporter, noting that there simply is no groundswell to force Brown from office...
...But in the meantime, Brown keeps going, relying on the good will and personal chits accumulated over years as an insider's insider in Washington...
...I would have preferred to see more speedy action...
...Finally, if Republicans did restart the congressional investigation, they would face the obvious and predictable criticism that they were doing so only for political reasons...
...Where's the constituency that says Ron Brown has to go...
...The nature of any investigation changes from day to day, depending on cooperation, the resistance of people, any number of things that can make it go faster or slower...
...Rather than conduct his own full-scale investigation, however, Clinger used his new influence to call on Attorney General Janet Reno to recommend an independent counsel in the case...
...Once an independent counsel was appointed, the investigation became a confidential matter...
...I divide my time," he says, noting that he has kept up his private law practice and spends about 25 percent of his time in Washington on the Brown case...
...And he continues his big-money travels...
...The plain truth facing Clinger and other good government types is that Brown, corrupt as he might be, has a lot of friends...
...William Clinger, chairman of the House committee, had been gathering evidence on Brown since 1993...
...After all, other high officials have lost their jobs for far less...
...But during the first two years of the Clinton administration, when the Democrats controlled Congress, the secretary simply ignored Clinger's questions, effectively stifling the inquiries...
...It has been frustrating," Clinger says...
...His statement seems to leave open the possibility that Congress might, in spite of the concerns listed above, investigate some aspect of Brown's activities—perhaps the statements he has made to Congress or the information he provided in his financial disclosure forms...
...Their inquiry is a criminal inquiry," Clinger says of the independent counsel...
...Yet Brown accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for investments he didn't make and work he didn't do, and stays in office...
...He is riding above the fray as a promoter of American business and trade," the chairman says with some resignation...
...by Byron York ITEM 1: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS THE INDEpendent counsel looking into Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown's business dealings has opened a criminal investigation of an Oklahoma company that paid $16o,000 to Brown's son Michael...
...What can Congress do about that...
...Among the issues under scrutiny was Brown's receipt of that $500,000 for unspecified services from a sometime business partner (Hill) to whom he had provided White House entree...
...Even then, critics say, Pearson was slow to bring the investigation up to speed...
...Thus the Brown story has not developed the steady drumbeat of coverage that characterizes a growing Washington scandal...
...In an additional show of good will, Brown hires the daughter of Dynamic Energy's owners...
...One issue under investigation is whether Hill used thousands of dollars of company money to support her extravagant lifestyle while failing to report the money as income...
Vol. 29 • April 1996 • No. 4
