Clinton and Ray Close to a Deal

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Clinton and Ray Close to a Deal
Independent Counsel Robert Ray and Bill Clinton are talking about a last-second agreement in which the outgoing president admits wrongdoing and Ray shutters his investigation
BY MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, MARGARET CARLSON, AND MICHAEL DUFFY

Outgoing President Bill Clinton and Independent Counsel Robert Ray are close to finalizing a last-minute deal in which Clinton would admit to wrongdoing in the Monica Lewinsky affair in exchange for Ray shutting down the 7-year investigation of the Clinton White House, two well-informed sources said this morning.

The deal could be announced as early as this afternoon, but the officials were unclear about the exact timing as Washington is already in the midst of a 36-hour, non-stop celebration of the inauguration of George W. Bush.

The exact terms of the bargain are not fully known yet, two officials told TIME.com, but it appears that Clinton could acknowledge that he lied under oath in exchange for Ray bringing the controversial probe to a close. Ray is the third in a long line of independent counsels charged with investigating the Whitewater land deal, various misadventures of the Clinton White House and, beginning in 1997, the president's relationship with Lewinsky.

The advantages for both sides became apparent only in the last two weeks of Clinton's term. Ray, who had empanelled a new grand jury as late as last August, came to realize he would be unlikely to find a jury that would convict a former president of obstruction of justice or perjury in the matter of an extramarital affair. In Clinton's case, he preferred to leave office without the threat of further investigation or prosecution hanging over his head.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,95978,00.html
I'm having trouble with the link - got the story off of a drudge link...

Edited to fix link. - TBM

[Edited by TheBluesMan on 01-19-2001 at 01:19 PM]
 
Yep. Herr Klinton is again showing his leadership skills for the criminal mind of this country: "Do what you want, you can get away with anything".
:mad:
 
I would have bet on something like this. That sorry sOb will not be disbared ether. The least that should be done is to try him for treason.:mad: :mad: :mad:
 
It's all but over. He'll not be indicted. :(

Clinton Accepts 5-Year Law Suspension

Updated 1:26 PM ET January 19, 2001
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton has reached a deal with prosecutors to avoid indictment, requiring him to make a written acknowledgment he may have misled investigators in the Monica Lewinsky case and agree to a suspension of his law license, government sources said.

On his final day in office, Clinton was preparing the statement to be made Friday and agreed to accept a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license, the officials said.

The deal will spare the nation the prospect of seeing one of its former chief executives put on criminal trial. Clinton will have immunity from further prosecution under the deal with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, the sources said.

In his statement, Clinton will acknowledge he may have made misleading statements in his sworn testimony in the Lewinsky matter, the sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

White House press secretary Jake Siewert would not confirm the deal.

"The president has long said that he wanted to put this thing behind him," Siewert said. "We will have a statement at 2 p.m."

The deal effectively brings to an end the six-year Whitewater investigation that began with questions about the Clintons' Arkansas land deal but expanded to his conduct in the Oval Office.

Ray, who took over the investigation more than a year ago, had been using a grand jury to decide whether Clinton should be indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice after he leaves office on Saturday. A decision was expected soon.

Ray reached the deal with Clinton's attorney David Kendall, the sources said. "The deal is going to be announced within hours," said one of the sources.

The deal addresses the remaining legal issues from the president's affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern, which prompted his impeachment by the House in December 1998 and acquittal in a Senate trial the following February.

The Arkansas Supreme Court had begun proceedings to revoke Clinton's law license, but the president has now agreed to have the license suspended for five years.

In addition to impeachment, a federal judge fined Clinton for misleading testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit that helped spur the Lewinsky revelations.

In recent months, Clinton had defiantly and repeatedly suggested that he would fight any indictment by Ray.

"I don't believe that I should be charged," Clinton said in an interview with "60 Minutes II" in December. "If that's what they want, I'll be happy to stand and fight."

Last April, Clinton told a conference of newspaper editors that he would not ask his successor for a pardon. "I don't think it would be necessary. I won't be surprised by anything that happens, but I'm not interested in being pardoned."

In recent days, however, even Republicans who had long criticized Clinton had urged there be no such trial.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Orrin Hatch of Utah, suggested that President-elect Bush pardon Clinton to "end a problem in America that needs to be ended."

Bush responded by saying, "I think it's time to get all of this business behind us" and let Clinton "move on and enjoy life and become an active participant in the American system." Regarding the possibility of a pardon, Bush has said, "The suggestion that I would pardon somebody who has never been indicted, that doesn't make any sense to me."

Behind the scenes, Kendall and Ray's office worked on a deal to avoid a grand jury indictment.

Ray had said the decision on a Clinton indictment was the last remaining business he had in the independent counsel probe that has spent more than $50 million since 1994.

President and Hillary Rodham Clinton were never formally accused of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater investigation, though their business deals were investigated and several of their associates convicted.

Their former Whitewater business partners, James and Susan McDougal, were convicted of fraud in a 1996 trial in which Clinton testified by videotape. Longtime Clinton friend Webster Hubbell, Mrs. Clinton's former law partner, also pleaded guilty to wrongdoing.

Ray's predecessor, Kenneth Starr, was asked by Attorney General Janet Reno to expand the investigation beyond Arkansas to the White House's improper gathering of FBI files, the firing of White House travel employees and ultimately the Lewinsky matter.

Clinton was forced to testify before a federal grand jury about his relationship with the intern and to make a dramatic national apology in August 1998 after months of denying an affair.

Weeks later, Starr sent a report to Congress saying there was evidence of impeachable offenses by Clinton.

The House, mostly along party lines, voted to impeach the president that December, but the Senate acquitted him a few months.
Click to expand...

I guess the FBI has a file on Mr. Ray, too. This is a crock!
 
From the Clinton News Network

:barf:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/19/clinton.lewinsky/index.html

Clinton to admit to misleading testimony, avoid charges in independent counsel probe
President agrees to law license suspension
January 19, 2001
Web posted at: 2:20 p.m. EST (1920 GMT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In exchange for an end to the Whitewater independent counsel probe, President Clinton publicly admitted Friday that he gave misleading testimony about his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a 1998 lawsuit.

Under the agreement with Independent Counsel Robert Ray, Clinton's law license will be suspended, but he will face no criminal charges once he leaves office.

"I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and am certain my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false," Clinton said in a written statement released Friday by the White House.

"The president has acknowledged making a mistake, one that he regrets, mostly because of the personal pain on his family," White House Press Secretary Jake Siewert told reporters Friday. He said Clinton "wanted to put this particular episode behind him and move on."

"I have apologized for my conduct and I have done my best to atone for it with my family, my administration and the American people," Clinton said. "I hope my actions today will help bring closure and finality to these matters."

The allegations are the same ones that led to Clinton's 1998 impeachment by the House of Representatives and later acquittal by the Senate. The news comes on the president's last full day in office and as Arkansas officials considered whether to lift Clinton's law license over the matter.

Clinton is to hand over the presidency to George W. Bush at noon Saturday.

According to sources close to the investigation, Clinton will admit he knowingly misled questioners in order to conceal his affair with Lewinsky, a former White House intern. In return, Ray will end the 7-year-old Whitewater probe that has shadowed most of Clinton's two terms.

His admission, which will take the form of a written statement, will deal with his sworn testimony in his January 1998 deposition in Paula Jones' sexual harrassment lawsuit -- but not his testimony to the grand jury investigating whether he lied during his deposition in that case.

Sources close to the investigation say the agreement will result in Clinton's law license to be suspended for five years, and he will pay a $25,000 fine to bar officials in Arkansas.

Ray has said he was considering criminal charges against Clinton once he left office -- a process that Ray's predecessor, Kenneth Starr, had avoided while Clinton was in the White House.

Sources said the deal was negotiated between Ray and David Kendall, the first family's private attorney. Clinton wanted to remove any legal cloud as he leaves office, and sources in both camps said Ray recognized the growing political consensus that his investigation be brought to a close as a new administration takes power in Washington.

The Whitewater investigation began with an inquiry into the financial affairs of Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now the junior senator from New York. It later expanded to deal with such White House controversies as the firing of travel office workers and the handling of FBI files from background checks of previous Bush administration workers. Starr sought to expand his investigation to include the Lewinsky matter, arguing it might have been connected to his review of other allegations of misconduct by the president and his associates.

In April 1999, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright found Clinton in civil contempt of court for his "willful failure" to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the Jones case.

Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, sued Clinton in 1994. She accused him of making a crude sexual advance in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991, while he was the state's governor.

Wright dismissed the lawsuit in April 1998, but Jones appealed the decision. Jones and Clinton settled the lawsuit in November 1998, with no admission of wrongdoing by Clinton.
 
In thinking over this...

Perhaps it's for the best. At least the ensuing court proceedings won't be there to overshadow everything GWB does. Now, if Clinton would just fade into the sunset like most out-going presidents tend to do for a while!

:)
 
I have been listening to the radio. I believe that it's now a done deal. Anyone see the POS give his farewell speech last night? I consider it to be a slap in the face! I am
so glad he's gone (supposedly may never go away though)
Bob
 
Probably the Best Outcome

No D.C. court would convict their boy. His major crimes are all buried and I doubt that Ashcroft will undo Reno's work.

Bill will move on and do whatever is needed to keep media attention. Like it or not, we are stuck with him for the duration. He will be like bubble-gum on your shoes. Some might say that he is more like ---- on your shoes, but I'm afraid that you can eventually get that stuff off.

Perhaps we should deify him by placing his lower body on Mount Rushmore. It would be fitting and it would be a first.
 
I will never understand how laws are passed against a Constitutional Right. Nor will I ever understand how criminals get a deal cut. Doesn't that set a precedent for a greyer line between right and wrong for those who know the difference but don't care? And yet it all still goes on.
:confused:
:mad:
 
Personally, I would have preferred an indictment and then a pardon from Bush. But, look at the bright side: history books (which Clinton desperately wants a place in) will show that on the last full day of office one of his last official acts was to accept a plea bargain for his crimes.

"His last day of office." Boy, it just feels so good to say that.

Dick
 
The man is truly one of the great criminal minds of our time. He has shut down the criminal prosecution of the entire US federal judiciary. Truly outstanding work on his part. He will not be criminally prosecuted. That leaves Judicial Watch and a blue scad of civil suits to exact some sense of justice.

Clinton is a predator. No predator should be left alone to do whatever it is will do. Someone had d*mn well keep after that guy to keep him from the great harm he is still capable of inflicting.

He is out of office, but not out of power. Those same FBI files that gave him the ability to blackmail the senate have not been returned. He still has his people inside the NSA that forwarded to him electronic intercepts of his political foes. Clinton is down, but he is not out. All he has to do is squeeze Trent Lott just a little and he will have his way.

I hope President Dubya senses the need to cut this guy off at the knees.
 
He got off without punishment

“This is an appropriate closure for the country and the president,” said Kendall, who characterized the president’s testimony not as lying, but as giving “evasive and misleading testimony.” (emphasis mine)
“He tried to conceal (the affair), and we have acknowledged it was evasive and misleading,” Kendall said. “But that is not obstruction of justice, and it is not intentional falsification.”
Click to expand...

What the HELL happened to the TRUTH the WHOLE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?????

I guess it is OK for Clinton to LIE under oath and be let off. But should anyone else DEFY JUSTICE........
 
if the crux of the agreement is that Klintoon will finally go away nothing else matters. Just get that buffoon off my TV, please.
 
Astonishing...one last laugh in the face of the American publlic. He doesn't even have the decency to say "I lied".... no, this pig says that he may have given statements which were "misleading".

Call me overly conservative, (quite a compliment, thank you very much), but my parents and certainly my Drill Instructors would have beat the Holy living SH*T out of me for

A) LYING;
B) Not being man enough to admit to lying in the first place.


Some example he set for the children of America. I'll be glad to be rid of this fine example of twister bait.

Regards, and sorry for the rant,
S.
 
Bam Bam,

I've never been accused of being a smart man, but I think there is no way the Klintons will not be in every media outlet there is after this day. He must continue his legacy of shame.
 
<Rant On>

You're right. Clinton will show up frequently and every imaginable media outlet if for no other reason than Big Media will seek him out. As President, I think he (even Clinton) had a claim on the ability to communicate with the American people. As former president, Clinton has no claim on my eyes, mind, or temper. All I could reasonably do while he was president was turn off the radio or TV. Now as former president I have no intentions of putting up with Big Media jamming that guy in my face. I will exercise my right turn it off, but will also inform those participating media outlets of my disgust, outrage, and disapproval. I will furthermore go to those organizations paying Big Media bills and protest. I have no intentions of letting our fascists media outlets wave the Clinton in my face. I am tired, oh so sick and tired of having that animal held up for adoration and respect.

The guy is gone; he's a has-been. Shovel dirt in his face and let's get on with repairing the damage he's done.
<Rant Off>
 
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