Former White House aide Bruce Lindsey has admitted in sworn responses
that he and other Clinton White House lawyers intentionally released
government documents about Kathleen Willey because of concern that her
accusations of sexual misconduct against the president “might influence
— and even expand — criminal investigations into Mr. Clinton’s
activities.”
According to a statement released yesterday by Washington, D.C.-based
Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm, Lindsey said letters sent to Clinton by Willey were released from government files after considering the “general public confidence in the president’s credibility.”
Though the former Clinton aide said he could not remember “details” of his conversations regarding the Willey documents, he testified that Clinton “concurred” with the recommendation that her letters be released and that the timing of the release be determined after the broadcast of Willey’s famed interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 1998.
Federal District Judge Royce Lamberth, who has been on the receiving end of a number of White House-related corruption cases,
ruled in
March that the president committed a criminal violation of the Privacy Act when he released the letters to New York Times reporter Jill Abramson.
That ruling, thus far, has been upheld on appeal, Judicial Watch said on Monday.
Lamberth’s ruling came in the context of the ongoing Filegate civil lawsuit filed by the public interest firm on behalf of Republican lawmakers and former government officials whose FBI files were allegedly obtained illegally and misused by White House officials.
First lady Hillary Clinton, a defendant in the Filegate suit, also allegedly participated in the release of Willey’s letters.
Judicial Watch said that in the context of the Filegate lawsuit, “the misuse of Ms. Willey’s government files is circumstantial evidence that the FBI files [in general] were misused.”
Lindsey said in his sworn interrogatory responses that he, White House Counsel Charles Ruff and Deputy White House Counsel Cheryl Mills “considered the impact that Ms. Willey’s allegations might have on the ongoing Lewinsky investigation (and) the potential for impeachment hearings.”
Lindsey said the trio concluded that “Ms. Willey’s allegations, without any context, might bias the public and Congress and thereby increase the potential for the expansion of the independent counsel’s jurisdiction and the likelihood of impeachment proceedings against the president.”
Once the decision was made to release Willey’s letters, “they discussed the timing of the release. They decided to wait until after viewing Ms. Willey’s appearance [on “60 Minutes”] to make a final decision regarding the release of the letters and the timing of the release.”
“The release of Ms. Willey’s documents was not only a criminal violation of the Privacy Act, but, as Lindsey’s admissions confirm, was also part of an effort to obstruct justice and intimidate a witness in a criminal probe concerning Bill Clinton,” said Judicial Watch Chairman and general counsel Larry Klayman. “Criminal prosecutions are warranted.”
Ruff was appointed White House counsel Jan. 8, 1997. Mills — who joined Clinton’s legal team in 1992 shortly after his first election — will join
Oxygen Media as senior vice president of Corporate Policy and Public Programming in October.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said that if Texas Gov. George W. Bush is elected president in November,
he would consider referring Clinton,
Vice President Al Gore and Attorney General Janet Reno over to a new
Justice Department for prosecution.
“I believe that Janet Reno … and her chief lieutenants knew that the [now-defunct] independent counsel statute mandated that they appoint an independent counsel, and they didn’t do it,” Burton told Tim Russert on NBC. “If she did not appoint an independent counsel because she thought her job was in jeopardy, even though the law required it, she broke the law and obstructed justice,” he added.
“After this election, assuming we get a new attorney general, I think I will be sending criminal referrals. The reason that I’m waiting is because I don’t think this Justice Department is going to do anything,” Burton said, adding that both Clinton and Gore also knew of foreign donations from illegal sources during their 1996 reelection campaign.
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