"The Cost for the Clintons" - great Wash. Post editorial

[diplomats]

LAST WEEK the special court that oversees the now-defunct independent counsel law batted back a request by former president Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for more than $3.5 million in legal fees associated with the Whitewater investigation. The old law allows the court to award fees to unindicted subjects of independent counsel probes when those fees would not have been incurred "but for" the investigation's having been conducted by an independent counsel -- as opposed to any other federal prosecutor. The court awarded the Clintons $85,000 for the fees they incurred responding to the independent counsel's final report. Yet all of the remaining fees, the three-judge panel quite absurdly ruled, would have been incurred even in the absence of Kenneth W. Starr's long-running investigation: "We harbor no doubt that in the absence of the independent counsel statute the allegations surrounding the Clintons . . . would have been similarly investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice."
We doubt many readers can make it through that sentence without chuckling. For whatever the merits of the Whitewater investigation, there is simply no doubt that it was unlike other federal investigations. Mr. Starr himself has conceded that he saw his role as conducting a particularly thorough investigation aimed not merely at prosecuting cases as a normal federal prosecutor would but at garnering and reporting the full truth of the allegations behind them. Moreover, he reopened matters that his predecessor, a regulatory special prosecutor within the Justice Department, had already closed.

But the decision is important for two reasons. First, its analysis will presumably also apply in cases involving lower-level witnesses swept up in the investigation -- people who have done nothing wrong yet who incurred significant expenses during the probe. Second, the court's approach here is dramatically inconsistent with the way it handled fee requests during the Iran-contra affair, when it awarded fees liberally and openly clucked at the investigative choices of the prosecutors. The role of the special court and its presiding judge, David B. Sentelle, in the Whitewater affair have been controversial ever since the court appointed Mr. Starr back in 1994. That it barely pretends to employ the same standards for the Clintons as for past presidents can only increase skepticism as to its performance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20787-2003Jul20.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. What goes around, comes around.

1) First, the judges showed their bias by stating that the costs would have been incurred anyways. Nobody believes those charges were anything but a political witchhunt, except conservatives.

and

2) Bush will be next, so he and his cronies better have deep pockets since precedent has been set.

[Vitruvius]

5. No, Bu$h will not be next -- for the Rethug judicial system that

appointed him will never go after him for his many crimes and scandals.

In the meantime, the Rethug judges have sent a very clear message: "If you're a Democrat, and you DARE win an election, we will investigate-investigate-investigate you no matter what. And we will put you in PRISON if we can -- even if we have to manufacture a crime or coerce witnesses into perjuring themselves to convict you*. And if we can't, we'll still RUIN you and all the people around you financially with legal bills. No matter what, we will GET you -- and you can't touch us!"

And these crooked Rethug judges can deliver -- especially now that some of them have appointed a president who will appoint more of them.

In the meantime, many of the Democrats who worked in the Clinton Administration have big legal bills courtesy of Ken Starr. Bills that they will be paying off for years.



*As Starr attempted with Susan McD and others. Starr damned near succeeded in framing the Clintons. The Clintons were lucky to survive.

[acerbic]

2. When a Con-servative Numbskull Nutwork whore "reported" this decision,

it said that it means that "taxpayers won't have to pay for the Whitewater investigation". :eyes:

[indepat]

3. Ultra-conservative judges may yet be the undoing of this

nation's moral pennings/legal heritage, for seemingly almost every decision is based on ideology rather than the law or Constitution. Should those judges be impeached for failure to uphold the law, for this was not some error in judgment, but rather an ideological weapon?

[Vitruvius]

4. These crooked judges need to be purged, convicted, and imprisoned;

judging on favoritism or ideology is a crime.

Will they be? Unlikely. Which is why they're so arrogant -- they "know" they can never be touched.

And that is one way that revolutions are made.