AL GORE SAYS “TO STICK IT” WHEN IT CAME TO FOREIGN INTERFERENCE

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Remember ‘No Controlling Legal Authority’?

By 

The CIA probe shows once more that the law does not control this attorney general.

It was a dozen years ago when Eric Holder began his first tour of duty at the Justice Department, as deputy attorney general. At the time, DOJ had a major hot potato on its hands: Al Gore, the vice president of the United States, had engaged in a clear, black-and-white felony violation of campaign-finance laws.

Gore made phone calls soliciting campaign contributions from his White House office. As Charles Krauthammer wrote at the time, “Section 607 of Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code states very clearly there is to be no solicitation of campaign funds in federal government offices. Gore broke the law as written, as understood and as practiced.” Violations of Section 607 called for a penalty of up to three years in prison.

 

 Gore had no real defense, so he trotted out a phony one: There was, he infamously claimed, “no controlling legal authority.” What he meant was that there weren’t many court decisions interpreting the meaning of Section 607. It was laughable. The rule of thumb for judges, as for the rest of us, is that laws are construed to mean what they say, the ordinary, everyday understanding of the words. Most statutes are not 1,000 pages of health-care arcana. When they are succinct and clear, we don’t need judicial opinions to divine their meaning. No solicitation of campaign funds in federal government offices means: No solicitation of campaign funds in federal government offices.

Al Gore and the Temple of Cash

It took more than a year of prodding to get the Justice Department interested in how the White House and the Democratic National Committee financed the 1996 campaign, but the indictments are flowing now. Maria Hsia is charged with laundering over $55,000 from the Buddhist temple luncheon for Vice President Al Gore on April 29, 1996. A Senate committee’s charge that Ms. Hsia was a Chinese intelligence agent during an eight-year period when she worked closely with Mr. Gore and the D.N.C. has yet to be proved, but the tale of those years is too important to be lost amid war talk and sex scandals.

One fascinating aspect is the way in which Mr. Gore’s memories of the temple event have evolved — to use the politest possible term — as more information has emerged. During the 1996 campaign, Mr. Gore said his appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple was a ”community outreach” event. Four months later, he remembered it was ”finance related.” Indeed, it was. According to a report by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, a witness recalled fund-raising announcements from the podium. The committee also found a memo from Harold Ickes to Mr. Gore telling him that the event would raise $250,000 and would be organized by John Huang, the D.N.C. official who circulated among the donors during lunch.

If Mr. Gore was not aware that the presence of Mr. Huang and Ms. Hsia at the temple luncheon in 1996 proved that money was being raised, we are dealing with obliviousness of a rare order. Those two joined with the Clinton Administration’s wealthiest Asian supporter, the Riady family of Indonesia, to form a fund-raising group, the Pacific Leadership Council. In 1989, Ms. Hsia helped arrange a P.L.C. fund-raiser for then-Senator Gore that was attended by several monks and nuns from the Hsi Lai temple. Mr. Gore wrote Ms. Hsia a letter thanking her for helping finance his 1990 senatorial campaign. He also traveled to Taiwan on a trip she arranged.

Others who helped arrange that trip were Mr. Huang, later to emerge as the D.N.C.’s main collector of tainted Asian money, and James Riady, whose family lobbied the White House to put Mr. Huang at the D.N.C. While the Huang-Riady-Hsia team was in close contact with Mr. Gore, Ms. Hsia was developing a remarkable talent for getting nuns and monks to give to the Democrats. The Republicans believe that over $100,000 was laundered through Hsi Lai Temple monastics in 1996 alone. The Justice Department charges specifically that Ms. Hsia helped solicit $55,000 for which individual donors were illegally reimbursed with temple funds.

Justice’s formal charges and the related, but more serious Republican allegations will be proved or disproved over time. Meanwhile, the pattern that emerges is provocative. In Mr. Clinton’s friend Charlie Trie and Mr. Gore’s associate Maria Hsia, people with clear Administration ties are being indicted at a smart clip. Finally, the Justice Department is moving. What we do not know is whether it is curious enough to follow the trail wherever, and however high, it leads.

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