Human Events: Ground Hog Day with Al Gore

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Ground Hog Day with Al Gore

Coulter, Ann

In the never-ending nightmare that has become my life, I have to write about the same criminal acts of the President and Vice President, over and over and over again. It will not end until they are out of office, since they control the prosecutors and-most usefully, as it turns out-they own the attorney general.

The late-breaking news this week on the Vice President's felonies (which he confessed to in February 1997) is that lots of attorneys at the Department of Justice can read! Consequently, many more people than we ever knew about had concluded fully two years ago (along with everyone else on the planet who can read except Janet Reno) that an independent prosecutor should have been appointed to look into Gore's manifest campaign fundraising violations.

In particular, Charles G. LaBella, the Justice Department's former chief campaign finance investigator, who was hand-picked for the job by Janet Reno, as well as several other political appointees, recommended appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Vice President's felonious fundraising calls from the White House. Among others, this included high-ranking political appointees, such as Robert S. Litt,, who was previously believed to have opposed such appointments.

The Consigliere

Their reasoning was apparently this: Federal law makes it a criminal offense for "any person to solicit... any [federal campaign] contribution in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by any [person who is paid by the government]."

In addition, it is illegal for the Vice President to be whoring for campaign money in Buddhist temples. Since Al Gore did both those things, LaBella sent a harshly worded memo to Janet Reno stating that the law required her to appoint an independent counsel.

The main Gore felony under investigation concerned his fund-raising calls from the White House. Though the media subtly supports Gore's allegation that the law is old and obscure, it is neither-having been amended by Congress most recently just in 1994, for example.

Moreover, every White House Counsel always sends a memo to "all White House stafF' alerting them to the criminal penalties for making fundraising calls on White House property. This is from one of the memos Gore received on the topic, from Bernard W. Nussbaum dated July 12, 1993:

"A number of criminal statutes prohibit the use of federal programs, property or employment for political purposes. Violation of these criminal statutes is punishable by imprisonment and/or the payment of a substantial fine....

"[T]he following types of activities are clearly prohibited:

-Soliciting . . . campaign contributions on federal property or in federal buildings. This means that ... no fundraising phone calls or mail may emanate from the White House or any other federal buildings . . . ."

- But the guy who wants to be President spent several quiet afternoons in his White House office hitting up about 50 potential donors for campaign cash on his White House phone, and his defense is-ignorance of the law. That was one of Gore's claims, anyway. That he is an ignoramus is, in fact, the only defense not directly contradicted by the law and the facts.

At first, of course, Gore famously claimed there was "no controlling legal authority"--and by the way, did you know I was the inspiration for Love Story. Then he claimed to federal investigators no less (White House felony # 4,562@-that he was not asking for money to help reelect Bill Clinton after all (hard money), but merely to promote general party-building activities (soft money).

That was the preposterous theory ultimately promoted by the Clinton-Gore consigliere, Janet Reno --Gore was only soliciting soft money, so it wasn't against the law.

The concept of "soft money" is never explained in the media, so one is left with the impression soft money is some evil trick of conveying large amounts of cash to politicians in pillow cases or something. All "soft money" means is this: money the federal government hasn't regulated. Since the federal government will regulate anything it can get its fangs into, that essentially means money that the federal government is not permitted to regulate, in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling in Buckley v. Valeo. (Which is why it is illiterate bluster for politicians to claim to want to regulate it.)

Support the Girl Scouts

Any donation to a federal campaign is hard money. Only money that is spent on state campaigns-or no campaigns at all, such as for general "party-building" activities-is "soft money." And it is soft money simply because such money is spent on activities unregulatable by the United States Congress. Taking a broad view, the money you leave on your doorstep for the paper boy is "soft money."

So, if Gore were not calling for donations to "help reelect Bill Clinton" but rather were saying to donors something like, "The Rhode Island Democrat Party could really use your support this year," he would have been calling for soft money. If he had said, "The Girl Scouts of America could really use your support this year," he would also have been calling for soft money.

But he wasn't doing either. And we already knew that because a) we're not stupid, b) he told us so. In that preposterous "no controlling legal authority" speech, Gore said of his calls from the White House, "I made telephone calls... to ask people to make lawful contributions to the campaign" and to-help reelect Bill Clinton." Oh, and one other thing: An awful lot of the money he solicited in those calls somehow ended up in "hard money" accounts at the DNC.

So now we find out that the Department of Justice investigation turned up various "inconsistencies," as the Los Angeles Times put it, in even this ludicrous story. LaBella's report concluded that Gore "may have provided false testimony."

In addition to common sense and the felon's own account of his phone calls, the LaBella task force also found notes and memoranda indicating that Gore's phone calls were part of a massive fund-raising effort launched over a meeting, which Gore attended, in November 1995 in the Map Room of the White House. The discussion was about raising hard money-not reelecting the mayor of Chicago or selling Girl Scout cookies. Gore told investigators that he -did not recall such conversations or the memos.

Candid Camera

Gore's sworn explanation to the FBI? As the report describes it, Gore said "he drank a lot of iced tea during meetings,. which could have necessitated a restroom break."

But White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta told FBI agents that he remembered Gore "walking through the papers" and "attentively listening" to discussions about the hard money aspects of the fundraising. The Task Force actually discovered photographs of Gore at that very meeting reviewing the memos he claimed he cannot remember seeing.

On the basis of all this, Janet Reno concluded that there was not enough evidence to support appointment of an independent counsel-simply to investigate further.

She also called off a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who was already investigating Gore's Buddhist temple fundraiser on the grounds that it might be "covered" by the Independent Counsel statute. But she then refused to invoke the Independent Counsel statute. Gore had initially claimed he was shocked-shocked!-that fundraising was going on in that temple, but months later admitted that he knew it was a "finance-related" event, that it was "a political event," and that "there were finance people that were going to be present."

Next year, the Los Angeles Times will unearth something along the lines of an entry in Gore's diary admitting that he committed a slew of felonies as Vice President, and I'll have to write about this all over again. As long as these criminals are at large, none of us will ever escape this journalistic Ground Hog Day.