 Sen. Hillary Clinton greets Peter Paul at Hollywood gala (Courtesy Hillcap.org) |
Business mogul Peter Franklin Paul is appealing a California court’s decision to dismiss Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as a defendant in his lawsuit charging her husband, former President Clinton, with fraud.
Meanwhile, an election watchdog says Sen. Clinton has false campaign-finance statements on file with the Internal Revenue Service.
Paul – who says Sen. Clinton made false statements in two Washington Post articles to hide his million-dollar-plus contributions in 2000 – sued Bill Clinton for fraud for destroying his public company so the former president could renege on a $17 million deal in which he promised to promote Paul’s public company in exchange for massive contributions to his wife’s Senate campaign.
Paul’s representative, the United States Justice Foundation, filed the appeal last week with the Appeals Court of California to challenge a trial court decision in April granting Sen. Clinton First Amendment immunity.
As WorldNetDaily reported, a judge in Los Angeles dismissed Sen. Clinton as a defendant in the civil lawsuit, but she will be deposed as a material witness in preparation for a trial set to begin March, 27, 2007.
Paul, claiming Sen. Clinton pulled off the biggest campaign-finance fraud in history, separately is preparing to file his second complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging the Democratic senator with submitting a false report – for a fourth time – that hides his personal multi-million dollar contributions to three Hollywood fund-raisers he hosted on her behalf, including the largest of her campaign, a Hollywood gala. Paul’s first FEC complaint resulted in an admission last December that Sen. Clinton’s campaign filed false reports with the FEC, hiding more than $720,000 of Paul’s contributions.
USJF argues Clinton had no right to invoke California’s Anti-SLAPP law, designed to protect candidates from being silenced by frivolous lawsuits during their election campaigns.
Paul says Clinton invoked that law only after her motion-to-dismiss was denied by the California Supreme Court. The Judge exercised his discretion to ignore that Clinton’s Anti-SLAPP appeal was filed six months late, under California law.
“Hillary’s cynical use of a law intended to protect resource-poor candidates whose freedom of expression during a campaign is challenged” shows “total disdain and contempt” for the Constitution, Paul said.
In a related development, the online election-finance watchdog PolitcalMoneyline says Sen. Clinton filed reports with the Internal Revenue Service identical to reports admitted as false by in her campaign’s settlement with the FEC.
PoliticalMoneyline says, “Although the federal account of New York Senate 2000 has amended their reports with the Federal Election Commission, the non-federal account (a Section 527 organization) of the committee has not filed corresponding amendments with the IRS.”
Paul is preparing a new complaint with the FEC that seeks to revoke a conciliation agreement in which Clinton’s joint fund-raising committee, New York Senate 2000 and its treasurer Andrew Grossman agreed to pay a $35,000 civil penalty for not filing complete reports.
The fourth amended report, says Paul, misrepresents former business partner Stan Lee, the famed Marvel Comics creator, as a contributor of $225,000 to Sen. Clinton’s campaign and wrongly attributes Paul’s holding companies as making other donations totalling some $800,000.
Clinton’s former campaign finance director David Rosen was acquitted last year of campaign fraud in a trial based on the donations, but the Justice Department told the jury the contributions were made by Paul personally.
Paul says, “I specifically advised Hillary in person and in a demand letter delivered to her Senate offices in 2001 that I personally made these donations.”
He claims that because his sole interest was to influence a federal election and he never chose to apply contributions that exceeded the maximum, he must be refunded everything he donated over $25,000.
Paul says “the same false information Grossman admitted reporting to the FEC to hide my contributions remains uncorrected by Sen. Clinton’s campaign.”
“We intend to litigate that issue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” Paul said.
For the civil suit, Bill and Hillary Clinton head a list of potential witnesses that includes celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Brad Pitt, Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, George Hamilton, Olivia Newton John, John Travolta, Diana Ross, Shirley McLaine, Michael Bolton, Toni Braxton, Paul Anka and Larry King.
Also on the list are former Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton’s daughter Chelsea Clinton, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, former California Gov. Gray Davis, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terrence McAuliffe, CBS News reporter Mike Wallace and ABC News reporter Brian Ross.
Paul has compiled his charges, with documentation, on a website.
The Clintons’ longtime attorney David Kendall has told WorldNetDaily he would not comment on the case.
In her declaration, Sen. Clinton admitted spending time with Paul on several occasions prior to the gala and during the event but refused to deny Paul’s allegations outright, instead declaring that if there was any discussion of her husband’s employment with Paul, she would have remembered it.
Paul stated in his declaration to the court, “Mrs. Clinton personally assured me she would specifically discuss with her husband, the President, my interest in making a post-White House business proposal to him. She told me her understanding that such a proposal would include my offer of substantial support for her Senate campaign as a good-faith advance on the business arrangement he would be agreeing to.”
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