HOOK'S TOP 50 COUNTDOWN

18 - 16

The growing top 50 unethical acts from the Clinton administration collected and organized by our friend ~Hook~ who can sometimes be found at Mike Reagan's webforums. As Hook creates his growing list, each & every countdown will be posted as we receive them!

#18 of the top 50 unethical acts of the Clinton Administration:
In April 1996 Vice president Al Gore attended a fund raiser at a Buddhist temple in California. The fund raiser was organized by John Huang (unethical act #7) and run by Charlie Trie (unethical act #19). The fundraiser appears to have broken campaign finance laws, including the fact that it is improper to hold a political fundraiser at an institution recognized by the IRS as a religious organization. Also, a statement from a participant at the Gore fundraiser has claimed thousands of dollars in small bills were handed out in return for personal checks to the DNC.

When first confronted with the evidence of violation of Federal campaign finance laws, Al Gore said he thought the illegal fundraiser was a "community outreach" event. Gore had stuck with this story through October, even as evidence emerged that everyone else at the event, including DNC chairman Don Fowler, knew that it was a fundraiser. Gore's office was finally confronted with documents released by the DNC that show Gore's office knew well in advance that the purpose of the illegal event was to ``extend appreciation for participant support and inspire political and fund-raising efforts.'' These words were in a memo sent by the DNC to Gore's office three days before the fundraiser.

Confronted with evidence that Gore lied about his knowledge, Gore's spokesman acknowledged to the AP that Gore "knew it was a finance-related event...in retrospect if he [Gore] had the opportunity now to not say `community outreach' and to use a different term of art like political outreach or something like that, which could not be juxtaposed to fund-raising, he probably would have done it." Huh? A different term of art like political outreach? Gore's spokesman essentially said that Gore would have a used a better lie rather than one he originally used to excuse his participation in the illegal fundraiser. Why did Gore wait nearly three months to correct his first lie about his knowledge of the illegal fundraiser?

Would the Vice President of the United States ever have "corrected" himself if he hadn't been confronted with documents proving his lie? The illegal fundraiser in the Buddhist temple had been set up by John Huang, the point man for the Clinton/Gore campaign funny foreign money laundering operation. One woman who attended the fundraiser said she gave a $5,000 check after she was handed $5,000 in cash by an unnamed Democratic activist. Other attendees gave money amounts that seemed high considering their meager income as Buddhist monks and nuns. Besides being an illegal use of church property, the temple fundraiser, which raised $140,000, seemed also to be an illegal money laundering operation for the Clinton/Gore campaign. Janet Reno, despite this and other evidence of high-level wrongdoing, has yet to appoint an independent counsel. If you are suprised by this fact, you must begin again at unethical act #50.

#17 of the top 50 unethical acts of the Clinton Administration:
Arthur A.Coia, general president of the Laborers' Union of North America (LUNA), has contributed nearly $400,000 to the Democratic National Committee (thereby making the party's ``top ten'' list with plenty of room to spare), given in excess of $3 million to various Democratic politicians since 1993, loaned $100,000 to theClinton inaugural committee, and sent one seriously expensive hand-made golf club to the President. Why the gifts? In 1994, the Justice Department drafted a 212-page complaint charging the union with racketeering and heavy ties to organized crime, and threatened to take the union under government control. But a closed-door meeting between Coia and the Justice Department resulted in a one-sided agreement leaving Coia in charge and with complete control of LUNA's reforms- not to be reviewed until 1998. Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's crime subcommittee, plans to hold hearings on this sweetheart deal in the fall. Another FOB-SOB.

#16 of the top 50 unethical acts of the Clinton Administration:
President Clinton stunned veterans' organizations and members of Congress from both parties in May of 1996 by claiming to be engaged in a kind of active-duty military service. Attorney Robert S. Bennett, in a May 15 petition to the Supreme Court, claimed that the President was entitled to protection from civil litigation under the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940, as if he were an active-duty member of the US armed forces. The petition was intended to stall a sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Corbin Jones, who claims that the President, when he was governor of Arkansas, made sexual advances toward her in a Little Rock hotel room.
The fact that President John F. Kennedy attempted to use the 1940 Act to put off litigation over a traffic accident may have prompted the Clinton defense team to use the same tactic, a decision White House officials now call politically inept. It did not work for President Kennedy, and it didn't work for President Clinton. Apparently, Mr. Clinton's attorneys failed to note that the judge denied President Kennedy's motion without even writing an opinion, as the Washington Times pointed out.