Does it seem to you that Bill and Hillary are the gift that keeps on giving?

Hillary Rodham Clinton's Rose Law Firm billing records, found in the White House residence in January 1996 two years after they had been subpoenaed by government regulators, disappeared shortly after the first lady was warned that the firm's billing problems were "very serious" and the then-ongoing Whitewater investigation could result in criminal charges, newly obtained records show.

More than 1,100 pages of grand jury testimony, investigative reports, memos, charging documents, chronologies, narratives and draft indictments, previously undisclosed but now being "processed" at the Library of Congress, say Mrs. Clinton knew considerably more about the firm's billing problems and their potential ramifications than she publicly acknowledged at the time.

According to the documents, given to the Library of Congress by the estate of Sam Dash, former ethics adviser to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, Mrs. Clinton also knew that her former Rose partner Webster L. Hubbell was both the focus of the firm's billing concerns and a federal conflict-of-interest investigation, in which he was suspected of lying in a sworn statement to regulators about the firm's representation of a failed Arkansas savings and loan.

While Mrs. Clinton told the public at the time that Mr. Hubbell's March 14, 1994, resignation as associate attorney general involved an "internal billing dispute" with his Rose partners that "likely would be resolved," three months earlier she had been advised by another Rose partner, Allen Bird, that the "billing problems were very serious," according to the newly disclosed records.

A Clinton spokescritter calls it “a baseless accusation which was looked into over a decade ago in an investigation that took $71.5 million and eight years to determine there was no case” – but do the contemporaneous documents of what went on within the Special Prosecutor’s office lie? Could it be that the deal that kept Bill Clinton from facing criminal charges also shielded Hillary from charges – and set up this year’s bruising nomination fight?

Posted by: Greg at 09:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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