I certainly realize that there's an unseemly connection between Obama and Rezko, the latter of whom is currently on trial in federal court for charges of money laundering, extortion, and fraud. But for Clinton to try to sully her opponent for connections to someone who, at this point, is innocent until proven guilty while ignoring her own much more intimate connections to federal criminals... well, that's simply hubris.
Here's an excerpt the entry for James McDougal on Wikipedia (normal caveats on Wiki reliability apply):
James B. (Jim) McDougal (August 25, 1940 – March 8, 1998), a native of White County, Arkansas, and his wife, Susan McDougal (the former Susan Carol Hendley), were financial partners with Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the real estate venture that led to the Whitewater political scandal of the 1990s. Starting in 1982, McDougal operated Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.
On April 14, 1997, McDougal was convicted of eighteen felony counts of fraud and conspiracy charges. The counts had to do with bad loans made by Madison in the late 1980s. As his savings and loan was federally-insured, the $68 million was paid by taxpayers. During the McDougal case, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr requested a reduced sentence for McDougal because of McDougal's assistance in the investigation.
He joined with his wife, from whom he was later divorced, and the Clintons to borrow $203,000 to buy land in the Ozark Mountains for vacation homes. When the development failed, he attempted to cover the losses with S&L funds. McDougal was prosecuted for fraud in 1984 and hired the Mrs. Clinton's Rose Law Firm to defend him. Questions remain in regard to Mrs. Clinton's Rose Law Firm billing records on Madison Guaranty and how much work she actually did. McDougal also held a fundraiser that paid off Clinton's then campaign debt of $50,000. Madison cashier's checks accounted for $12,000 of the funds raised.
Jim McDougal was also found by federal regulators to have made fraudulent loans with regards to his Castle Grande project that was a real estate development about 10 minutes south of Little Rock. The project was a 1,050-acre lot where he hoped to build microbrewery, shopping center, a trailer park and other future projects in 1985. The sales price was $1.75 million. State regulations prohibited Jim McDougal from investing more than 6% of his S&L assets in the project. So, he put in $600,000 of Madison money and then for the difference had Seth Ward put in the remaining $1.15 million. This money Ward borrowed from Madison Guaranty on non-recourse loan. Jim worried that if federal regulators found out the S&L could be shut down, since it had already been operating under orders to correct its lending practices.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._McDougalFrom the Wikipedia entry on Susan McDougal:
Susan McDougal (born 1955 in Heidelberg, Germany) is one of the few people who served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy in the United States, though fifteen individuals were convicted of federal charges. She is most notorious for refusing to answer "three questions" for a grand jury about whether President Bill Clinton lied in his testimony during her Whitewater trial. Her refusal lead to 18 months jail time for contempt of court, which was most of her total 22 months of incarceration. McDougal received a full Presidential pardon from outgoing President Clinton in the final hours of his presidency in 2001.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougalObama has connections to someone under Federal indictment. Clinton has far deeper connections to two people who were convicted of multiple Federal crimes, to the point of representing them legally, and in Susan McDougal's case, President Clinton
pardoned her for refusing to answer questions about connections to the President and Senator Clinton.
Is this a point that she really wants to bring up? Why is she attempting to destroy the Democratic nominee for something that she's even more guilty of?
This was a year to celebrate. It seems that now it could potentially be a year to mourn for a generation, thanks to a scorched earth/kitchen sink strategy of someone who just can't accept that they weren't the choice of the people.
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