NewsMax.com
Tuesday, March 13, 2001

Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered a special prosecutorial task force to dig into the controversial pardons, vastly expanding the scope of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White’s ongoing probe of three of the former president’s grants of clemency in the waning hours of his administration.

Despite media speculations that the Bush administration wants to soft-pedal any probe of Pardongate, and his own refusal to appoint a special counsel to probe the pardons, Ashcroft’s unexpected widening of the investigation is so broad and all-encompassing it has been described by Justice Department lawyers as "unprecedented in its scope."

New York’s U.S. Attorney White "is going to be doing the investigation of all of these cases," a Justice Department official told the Los Angeles Times. "It is yet to be decided if she will refer some evidence to other jurisdictions for prosecution, if that develops. But for now she will be the point person."

The expansion of the Pardongate investigations came on the heels of Ashcroft’s appearance on Sunday talk shows when he downplayed the need for a special counsel to investigate the pardons, adding that he preferred to have the Justice Department do the job.

"When you talk about a special counsel, my own view is that we have tens of thousands of lawyers in the Department of Justice," Ashcroft told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Ashcroft said there had been too many independent counsels appointed by former Atorney General Janet Reno. He told Sunday talk shows that matters like the pardons controversy are best handled by career prosecutors.

"The people of the United States have a right to call on these professional prosecutors, who have given their lives and careers to prosecuting in a fair and judicious way," he said, adding that having the investigation handled by the Justice Department does not mean that the review is not a high priority.

"Frankly, I'm troubled about a variety of things in relation to the pardons. I think pardons ought to be used to correct problems in the justice system, not to reward friends or otherwise," he told Fox News Sunday.

White's office is currently investigating three cases within the jurisdiction of her New York office. They include the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, the commutations for four Hasidic Jews convicted of fraud, and the charge that the former president’s brother, Roger, got as much as $200,000 for promising to help a Texas man get a pardon.

Now, with Ashcroft’s orders for an expansion of the probe, White is empowered to go after all of the pardons and commutations, including the explosive sentence commutation of Los Angeles drug dealer Carlos Vignali.

That commutation also is under investigation because Clinton's brother-in-law Hugh Rodham was paid $200,000 by Vignali's father, Horacio Vignali, to help get his son released from prison after serving a mere six years of a 15-year sentence. Rodham said he later returned the money.

White's office, which would not discuss her newly expanded authority and would not comment, is considered likely to investigate the possibility that any of the pardons or commutations were handed out in return for money or other considerations.

Ashcroft’s move was appropriate, observers said, since White is already well into the matter.

"Anything to do with pardons, she's got," a staff member for the House Government Reform Committee, which has held hearings on the pardons, told the Los Angeles Times.

"There are two issues, a criminal issue and a government issue," he said. The committee, he added, is "looking at the government issue, the behavior of government officials in this thing and the use of government power that may have been abused."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Pardongate

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