Anyone for RICO?
Anyone for RICO? Once again, as a public service, we consult with our lawyers at Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short to determine which laws the Clinton crowd has broken now. 0 xcept for a...
...601 prohibits collecting political contributions by threatening to withhold a government benefit...
...Section 4q.ie also makes it a crime for a person to "solicit, accept, or receive" such a contribution...
...Is it possible that the administration or Democratic Party officials could face indictment as racketeers...
...President Clinton may be familiar with this case, as he was governor of a neighboring state at the time...
...pf prohibits contributions made in the name of another person, and also criminalizes the knowing acceptance of such a contribution...
...Sort of makes you wonder whether Vice President Gore really believed that those Buddhist monks and other adherents to lives of poverty came up with all those small bills on their own...
...9.18 U.S.C...
...In February 1994, our ace law firm, Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short, inventoried the growing catalogue of federal criminal laws potentially implicated by the conduct of the Clintons and their dearest friends and closest allies...
...7.18 U.S.C...
...Just what did Bill Clinton and Indonesian billionaire James Riady discuss during all those "social visits" in the Oval Office...
...In one federal prosecution, a federal appeals court held that individuals acting through "The Office of Governor of the State of Tennessee" could be charged with a RICO violation...
...0 xcept for a few F notorious incidents in the past, it A had not previous11 ly been thought necessary for journalists in Washington to keep criminal lawyers on retainer to help explain White House political maneuvers...
...Among them is the requirement that the "enterprise" had engaged in "a pattern of racketeering activity...
...1956 prohibits financial transactions designed to avoid reporting requirements such as those found in the federal election laws...
...Nonetheless, there have been so many new potential crimes suggested by our president's recent activities, and those of his hand-picked agents, that we felt compelled to ask our lawyers to update our charts...
...Or spoke with him on the phone when he was in his office...
...before an Arkansas jury convicted Bill Clinton's successor, Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, of assorted federal crimes...
...The "pattern" requirement can be satisfied by "at least two acts of racketeering activity...
...607 makes it a crime for "any person" to solicit or receive a campaign contribution "in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties" by an officer or employee of the United States...
...Huang's employers...
...The RICO statute is very broad, and extends to "patterns of racketeering activity" engaged in by "enterprises...
...Huang, working for the Riady family in Asia, the Department of Commerce, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton White House, all seemingly at the same time, collecting staggering amounts from foreign corporations, and persons with no addresses or phone numbers, certainly brings new dimensions to the independent counsel's deliberations...
...Livingstone ought to be easy compared with identifying all of Mr...
...201 makes it a crime for a public official to seek or demand, directly or indirectly, anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of any act...
...04 43...
...And the specter of Mr...
...Who visited Mr...
...We could see it coming long ago...
...The courts have already recognized that an "enterprise" for criminal RICO purposes can be a judge's chambers or a state legislator's unofficial political machine...
...In light of all these new potential charges, especially the appearance of RICO, comparing Clinton to Nixon may underestimate the scope of the administration's problems...
...Racketeering activity" in turn is defined to include violations of a host of criminal laws...
...The twenty-five statutes on that lengthy carte du jour carried cumulative penalties of decades in prison (a bridge well into the twenty-first century) and millions of dollars in fines...
...Now that the president, his wife, friends, and assorted staff have hired half the law firms in Washington to represent them before prosecutors and grand juries, to defend sexual harassment suits, or to explain lapsed memories, falsified diaries, and disappearing documents, the remainder of Washington's abundant legal community has been snapped up by the media to aid in unraveling or deciphering the Clintons' extraordinarily intricate and marvelously diverse legal twists and turns...
...8.18 U.S.C...
...4.18 U.S.C...
...It's not as remote as one might think...
...Was this their way of staying poor...
...and long before names like Marceca, Livingstone, Riady, and Lippo became part of America's cultural vocabulary...
...Was there any discussion of what might happen if contributions were not forthcoming...
...As the evidence unfolds and the indictments start rolling in, the appropriate comparison for Bill Clinton may well turn out to be to Don Corleone...
...1510 criminalizes interference with a criminal investigation...
...an, 18 U.S.C...
...3.18 U.S.C...
...How much was it worth to open up the Vietnam market...
...None of this, however, has kept the Clintons and their everchanging retinue of government-paid apologists from chanting the bewildering mantra that no one has ever charged that their conduct implicated any criminal laws...
...Amazingly, it appeared as if Hillary had memorized the allegations against Nixon during her stint (with Bernie Nussbaum) on the House Judiciary Committee Watergate impeachment staff, had taught the script to her husband, and that together they and a cast of Arkansas cronies had decided to revive the Watergate extravaganza as Whitewater twenty years later, much like those shows constantly being warmed over on Broadway...
...That list specifically includes 18 U.S.C...
...How many people believe that those contributors really lived at that monastery in Southern California...
...How much for a trip on a Commerce Department mission with the Secretary...
...The line worked well in 1992 and has demonstrated remarkable staying power in the face of an avalanche of contrary evidence...
...prohibits false statements in connection with any matter within the jurisdiction of a federal agency...
...In theory, the White House, the Democratic National Committee, or the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign could be defined as RICO "enterprises...
...600 makes it a crime to promise a contract, appointment, or other government benefit to anyone in return for political activity...
...Why wouldn't the DNC tell the Vice President he was flying to a fund-raiser...
...219 makes it a crime for an officer or employee of the United States to act as an agent of a foreign principal...
...5. 18 U.S.C...
...Pardon, anyone...
...But why change a good thing...
...441e makes it unlawful for "a foreign national directly or through any other person [to make a political contribution in a federal election...
...The media loyalists who cover the White House voted for Clinton in overwhelming numbers and will swallow virtually any excuse or dodge he chooses to adopt, however fantastic...
...All of this new activity has 42 January 1997 • The American Spectator been flavored, of course, by the sweet scent of pardons dangling before potential accusers like so many ripe peaches...
...Although the Clinton practice of artful and surreptitious fundraising, and of contributions raised from persons who had neither the money, motive, nor desire to contribute, was imported from Arkansas, our most recent election seems to have seen the practice transformed into a new art form...
...The American Spectator • January 1997 Strangely enough, according to reports filed by the Democratic National Committee with the Federal Election Commission, thirty-one contributors (whose contributions totaled more than $225,000) have as their home address the business address of the Committee itself...
...Thompson, then a private attorney, represented the young woman who blew the whistle on the Tennessee pardon scam...
...Did the Commerce Department promise favorable trade actions in return for campaign donations...
...If Independent Counsel Starr is interested, he might ask Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson about the case...
...Do you really think that all those poor people suddenly found enough of their own money to get on the list with Barbra Streisand...
...Huang in the Commerce Department...
...In April 1996, our legal eagles produced a chart comparing the Nixon impeachment articles with actual Clinton deeds...
...Was there a schedule of prices: so much for a policy interpretation, a little more for a new treaty...
...2.2 U.S.C...
...Here then is our list of "top ten" criminal laws potentially implicated by the Clintons' fundraising activities: 1. 2 U.S.C...
...A nd now, a big, bad new criminal statute may be at issue: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, affectionately known to prosecutors as RICO...
...As readers will recall, that list could have provided a syllabus for an advanced course in criminal law, including obstruction of justice, subornation of perjury, falsification of tax returns, and criminal conspiracy...
...10.18 U.S.C...
...6.18 U.S.C...
...And that was before billing files began turning up in White House bedrooms and secret FBI files began beaming themselves to dirty tricks experts in the White House...
...Initially conceived as a tool in the fight against organized crime—John Gotti was convicted under RICO for running the Gambino crime family—RICO has since been applied in a host of contexts...
...Would it make him too excited...
...The Clintons have changed all that...
...Discovering who hired Mr...
...Although there must have been a few cringes even at the networks when our president found parallels between himself and falsely accused Olympics hero Richard Jewell...
...1956—all of which appear on our list above...
...before Susan McDougal opted for a contempt of court sentence rather than cooperate with prosecutors...
...How many political contributions were linked to such visits or calls...
...Perhaps coincidentally, the underlying "predicate" offenses charged in that case were corrupt acts in the granting of pardons...
...1510, and 18 U.S.C...
...The racketeering statute contains several requirements, of course...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
