Sen. Hillary Clinton remained a fugitive from the press yesterday amid growing calls for probes into her husband’s controversial last-minute pardons – including that of billionaire tax-cheat fugitive Marc Rich.
Clinton was holed up in Chappaqua while New York state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso demanded a U.S. Senate inquiry into the “unethical and diabolical” pardons.
Faso, an upstate Republican who has written to U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asking for an inquiry, said he was “absolutely dumbstruck and ashamed of the pardon of Marc Rich.”
Rich, whose ex-wife Denise Rich has given $1.1 million to the Democratic Party since 1993, fled to Switzerland after his 1983 indictment.
He allegedly hid $100 million in income from the IRS and made illegal oil deals with Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis.
Marc Rich and ex-partner Pincus “Pinky” Green were pardoned by Bill Clinton in his last hours in office.
Without going into specifics, the former president said yesterday the facts will prove him right.
“The only thing I would ask people to do is look at the facts,” he told reporters. “I think if people have the facts, they would agree with me.”
Also under scrutiny is Clinton’s decision to cut prison sentences for four Hasidic Jews convicted of defrauding the government of $40 million in a Rockland County village that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary in November.
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.,) chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, has launched a probe of the Rich and Green cases.
Mayor Giuliani, who as the Manhattan U.S. attorney in the ’80s oversaw the Rich prosecution, had planned to meet with Hillary, but canceled out of anger over the pardons.
“There are more questions raised than there are answers,” Giuliani said. “In fact, there are no answers in some of these cases. The Marc Rich case is the most glaring example.”
Rich’s lawyer, Jack Quinn, hit back in a CNN interview last night, saying the charges against the fugitive financier were “wholly without merit.”
“This man was wrongly indicted. Mr. Giuliani brought a terribly bad case,” said Quinn – who promised to cooperate “completely and promptly” with any congressional probe.
Meanwhile, the conservative group Judicial Watch, a frequent critic of the Clintons, announced it was filing an ethics complaint with the Senate against Hillary Clinton over the $190,000 in gifts the couple received as “housewarming presents.”
Denise Rich gave the Clintons two coffee tables and two chairs worth $7,375 after getting a wish-list last March of items the Clintons wanted.