Hillary Clinton Denies Keeping Gifts

Hillary Clinton Denies Keeping Gifts

NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, Feb. 12, 2001

NEW YORK (UPI) – Sen. Hillary Clinton denied a report by former White House pollster Dick Morris that she kept gifts given to her during her eight years as first lady.

"There is a very specific system. You don't keep something; you don't disclose it," New York's junior senator told reporters Sunday after she attended three black churches in New York City. "It goes to the National Archives, and if it is below a certain value, you don't disclose it."

Her staff provided an accounting of at least 10 gifts mentioned in Morris' op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Post. "Hillary Clinton got many expensive and personal gifts during her eight years as first lady and never disclosed them, as required by law," Morris said.

"The first couple is required to file a public financial disclosure statement listing all gifts they got that year," he said. "The Clintons regularly filed these disclosures."

While the forms make no distinction between gifts for the president and those for the first lady or Chelsea, no dresses, bags, gowns, jewelry or other female clothing appear on any of the gift disclosures, Morris said.

"The choice is simple," Morris said. "Either you believe that Hillary did not receive any personal gifts or you believe that she did, but isn't telling."

Morris said three Judith Leiber bags valued at about $10,000 were given to Clinton as well as an eagle pin from former Kentucky first lady Phyllis George and a $500 gold bracelet given to Chelsea Clinton. He also mentioned five formal dresses given to the former first lady by the king of Morocco.

According to Clinton's New York press secretary, Peter Kauffmann, the gifts described by Morris were returned to the giver, received before the Clintons entered the White House, sent to the National Archives or listed on a disclosure form.

"It's really regrettable that the people writing and publishing the story didn't call to get the facts," Clinton said. "It is a very unfortunate commentary on the way that these things are handled."

"Only gifts valued at more than $250 that were kept by the Clintons need to be reported on disclosure forms," Kauffmann said. The Clintons have been under fire for taking almost $200,000 of gifts with them when they left the White House in January. Later, they announced they would pay for $86,000 worth of the gifts.

In addition, a Clinton spokesman said the White House curator approved all the items the couple took, but some of the donors were reported as saying they had intended their gifts of household furnishings to be for the White House and not personal gifts to the Clintons.

Stolen Property Returned

After Jim McDaniel of the National Park Service conducted an examination of the gifts in question, he said several of the gifts taken by the Clintons belonged to the White House. On Friday, 19 items, valued at about $30,000, were shipped by the Clintons from their Chappaqua, N.Y.,home back to Washington.

Tripp Speaks Out

Muddying the water further, Linda Tripp – who became a household name because of her role in the Monica Lewinsky scandal – said Friday on CNN's "Larry King Live" that she was told by Clinton White House officials not to report gifts given to the first family.

"The first week after the first inauguration, January of '93, I was asked to go to work directly for President Clinton in the Oval Office, primarily because I had worked for President Bush's chief of staff," Tripp said.

"Gifts were coming in from everywhere. And because I was brought in, because of my institutional memory and my knowledge of procedure, I'm filling out the gift unit form. I mean, I know exactly what the procedure is. And they didn't want any part of that."

Tripp said the Clinton officials told her to "take off your Bush hat; this is the Clinton White House."

Describing herself as a 20-year apolitical civil servant, Tripp said that during her year and a half with the Clintons many of the gifts did not make it to the gift unit and that she knew that on many occasions they instead went to the Clintons.

Tripp was later transferred to a Pentagon job and is now unemployed.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton
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