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Bush Won't Challenge Rich Pardon NewsMax.com WiresWASHINGTON (UPI) – President Bush said Monday that he has chosen not to seek ways to overturn the controversial pardon given to financier Marc Rich in the waning hours of the Clinton administration. Seated in the Oval Office, Bush said he considered the executive power to pardon to be "inviolate" and that he wanted to preserve the executive power not only for himself but for future presidents. "I didn't agree with the decision. I would not have made that decision myself, but the ability of the president to make decisions is an important part of the office," Bush said. Former President Bill Clinton's action stirred up bipartisan criticism from prosecutors and lawmakers who say the 66-year-old Swiss-based financier got the pardon because of his former wife's fund-raising efforts for Democratic coffers. Marc Rich did not return to the United States after his 1983 indictment on tax evasion, racketeering and wire-fraud charges stemming from a sanctions-busting oil deal with Iran. He later tried to renounce his American citizenship. He has never faced trial on the charges for which Clinton pardoned him on Jan. 20, just hours before leaving office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said early Monday that U.S. Department of Justice attorneys reviewed what a sitting president could do about executive actions of a past president. "Our lawyers were looking into the question of whether one president has any options in succeeding another president. And the president has now taken action, so nothing will proceed," Fleischer said. Even Lieberman Objects to Clinton's Action Republicans and Democrats have expressed outrage over the pardon of the billionaire businessman. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., on "Fox News Sunday" called for an investigation into what he termed a legal but questionable action. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said on "Meet the Press" that he found the pardon "troubling." Still no one has called for the erosion of a president's ability to pardon people in trouble with the law. Media reports stated Rich's ex-wife, Denise, donated $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and raised $4 million for Democratic causes at a fund raiser in 1998, shortly after the release of the Starr report that detailed Clinton's doomed relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinksy. Other reports said some Clinton aides were angry with former White House counsel Jack Quinn for not warning his ex-boss of the political fallout that pardoning Rich would bring. Quinn defended his action and his client on Sunday talk programs. He said Rich was pardoned on the merits of his case. Quinn pleaded Rich's case to Clinton on Jan. 19. "We were able to persuade the government – as, by the way, Republican and Democratic attorneys over a long number of years have tried to – that this was a matter which initially should have been treated as a civil matter, not a criminal matter," Quinn said Sunday. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani launched in 1982 an investigation into Rich Green and Marc Rich & Co. for illegally buying more than $200 million worth of oil from Iran after President Jimmy Carter banned trade with that nation during the hostage crisis. The case centered on allegations that Rich's companies inflated the price they paid for the oil and secretly kicked back the profits to co-conspirators. The money, prosecutors claim, was squirreled away into foreign accounts, with phony losses reported to reduce their taxes. Washington attorney Edward Bennett Williams then met with prosecutor Morris Weinberg Jr. on Rich's behalf, striking a deal where the businessman would pay a $100 million fine and serve no jail time. In return, prosecutors received assurances that Rich would not flee the country, according to the Post. Rich left the United States anyway in 1983 before answering the charges in court, and never returned. Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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