Thread by @karolcummins

‼️The Real Whitewater Shocker

The 2002 independent counsel's report concedes there was no Clinton scandal, but details another one -- the role the first Bush adm played— especially the role then AG William Barr played (& Mueller)

March 22, 2002

H/T @SalT25a

While the aim of the IC report was clearly to defend the integrity of the investigation that produced it, tucked away toward the end is information that points to an opposite conclusion.

#OctoberSurprise

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

Critics of the Starr and Ray inv’ns have long held that the Whitewater probe was partisan from the start, born in dirty tricks & manipulation that began with the first Bush adm.

The 2002 OIC itself is presenting facts that substantiate those claims.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

In the late summer of 1992 a referral file from the Resolution Trust Corp. came before US Attorney Charles A. Banks & local FBI officials in Little Rock, Ark.

It was a potential case of check kiting against Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal & Lisa Aunspaugh.

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It also mentioned Bill and Hillary Clinton as possible WITNESSES in the case.

📌And as all the players in the drama realized, that made all the difference in the world.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

The IC report reveals how political appointees at the highest level of the first Bush administration actually intervened in the normal process of the investigation, not to slow it down but to speed it up --

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📌And with the pretty obvious intention of getting the matter before the public prior to Election Day, 1992 to dirty up Bill Clinton. #OctoberSuprise.

📌Sound familiar?

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

📌From the start, Banks, a former Republican candidate for Congress whom the first President Bush had recently nominated to the federal bench, had misgivings about the quality of the potential case, and he was suspicious about its timing.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

📌At around the same time, though, people at the highest levels of the Bush administration found out about the Whitewater referral and started in motion a series of actions intended to speed up the handling of it.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

📌On Sept. 17, 1992, Edie Holiday, the WH secretary contacted then AG Barr & asked if he "would be aware of a pending matter in Justice about a presidential candidate or a family member of a presidential candidate."

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📌At around the same time, then-WH C. Boyden Gray also apparently took action.

📌He inquired about the status of the referral with the head of the Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC), the agency from which the referral to the U.S. attorney originated.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

(Then) Washington was replete with rules prohibiting or discouraging contact that might create the appearance of a conflict of interest.

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🔑And most cover inappropriate contact between the political side of the executive branch and the law enforcement side of the executive branch, for obvious reasons.

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During a later phase in the Whitewater investigation, the general counsel at the Treasury gave White House lawyers a heads up about a possible upcoming indictment of Jim McDougal and possibly President Clinton,

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📌Which was being reported in an internal RTC newsletter called the "early bird report." That incident was enough to get several WH officials hauled before a federal grand jury & led to the eventual resignations of White House counsel Bernie Nussbaum

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

And Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman.

📌The series of incidents noted in the IC’s Whitewater report are considerably more serious:

POLITICAL APPOINTEES TRYING TO USE THRIR INFLUENCE OVER THE EXCUTIVE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES FOR POLITICAL GAIN.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

📌”It doesn't pass the smell test," says one legal source close to the former president. "How did anybody at the WH even know about it?

📌It suggests to us clearly that they (Barr & co) were using the DOJ & an investigation to influence the election."
salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

📌How did Edie Holiday find out about the referral? Or C. Boyden Gray?

📌Why did they try to intervene as they did?

📌What other officials were involved?

📌On all of these questions the (OIC) report is silent.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

🔑What is clear is that Barr went on to get in touch with Ira Raphaelson, the Justice Department's special counsel for financial institution fraud, and asked him to find out whether such a referral existed.

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📌When Raphaelson didn't uncover one at first, Barr asked him to try again.

📌From here, the story takes a turn that is either comic or Kafkaesque.

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📌📌Though Barr had no apparent reason to believe that the budding case against the McDougals was being handled inappropriately, he instructed his subordinates at the Department of Justice and the FBI to commence a series of contacts

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With local officials in Little Rock

Barr, the report explains, told a subordinate that "he did not want action on it artificially sped up or slowed down -- it was to be dealt with on its merits & in the normal course." RIIIIGHT.... This is Barr’s tell.

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📌In the succeeding pages of the report, statements such as these are coupled with actions that clearly belie them.

Everything in this case should be handled like every other case, Washington seemed to be telling the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

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🔑But after reading the OIC's recounting, it is virtually impossible to conclude that Barr and his colleagues at Justice were concerned with anything except the possibility that the potential case might not be moving as quickly as it could.

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On Oct. 7, 1992, Banks informed his superiors in Washington that based on his review of the referral he was not inclined to open an investigation or move toward issuing indictments.

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📌Justice and FBI officials then met and responded to Banks' message by ordering him to commence an investigation and report back to them on Oct. 16.

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Banks had little doubt about the origins of the sudden urgency to move ahead with the case. "All of a sudden, we had this FBI pressure that something had to be done by October 16th," he later told the OIC.
#OctoberSuprise
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📌But Banks and other law enforcement officials in Little Rock held their ground.

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📌Officials in the Bush Justice Department apparently realized that it wouldn't do to order local officials to fast-track the case, but they nudged them as much as they could.

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Banks believed he was being angled into issuing subpoenas in the case before the November election, and later testified that he would have resigned before doing so.

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🔑There are many passages in the OIC report that beg the question of whether more questions would have been asked if the OIC were interested in scrutinizing the behavior of former Bush adm officials rather than people tied to the Clinton adm.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

🔑Why did the independent counsel choose to investigate possible foot-dragging on the part of U.S. Attorney Banks (who is completely vindicated in the report), when Banks had no reason to help Bill Clinton,

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🔑And ignore the possibility that inappropriate pressure tactics were employed by Attorney General Barr, when Barr had a vested interest in seeing Clinton lose in November?

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

Kenneth W. Starr

washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…

📌Another tantalizing tidbit in the report is the central role that FBI director Robert Mueller, then assistant attorney general for the criminal division, played in Barr's fishing expedition.

salon.com/2002/03/22/whi…

From the facts contained in the report, it's not clear that Mueller was doing anything more than overseeing the execution of decisions made by others or overseeing meetings of Justice Department and FBI officials in Washington.

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Muelker was clearly in the center of the drama and in the position to see almost everything that was going on.

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🔑It would be fascinating to look more deeply into what communications took place between the Bush White House, the Justice Department and officials at the RTC in those desperate weeks and months before the first Bush presidency became history,

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And the scandal-plagued Clinton presidency, which was hunted by scandal-mongers, as we know now, well before he took office.

But for that we will need a real investigation.

Not the one that Kenneth Starr submitted in 2002.

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#Passportgate

Fun fact in 1992 Barr as then AG hired Joe diGenova (now Firtash’s attorney) to head up a special investigation into allegations Bush adm officials used gov’t resources & personnel to dig up dirt on the then presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

Barr appointed DiGenova as special prosecutor to probe whether senior officials in the GHWB WH instigated, encouraged or acquiesced in attempts to use gov’t records & workers to influence the outcome of 1992 presidential election
washingtonpost.com/archive/opinio…

*1992 PassPortGate

GWHB Adm File Search to dig up dirt on WJC In 1992 Race Wasn't Illegal

Says then AG Bill Barr’s Special Prosecutor Joe diGenova now Firtash’s attorney.

nytimes.com/1995/12/01/us/…

Now review Bill Barr’s interview refuting the IG report through the above lens.
@EricHolder @NBCPolitics @msnbc @maddow @MaddowBlog