If someone wants to compare Fitzgerald to Ken Starr

MrBenchley

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Tue Oct-25-05 09:53 AM
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If someone wants to compare Fitzgerald to Ken Starr

as some right wingers seem to want to do, let's not forget some of the key details between Leakgate and the endless witch hunt the GOP promoted in the 1990s...

1) Clinton was accused of having profited from the Whitewater land deal (in fact, he LOST $200,000). The charge was investigated by Poppa Bush's Resolution Trust Corp during the election and found to be bogus.

After the election ithe GOP commissioned the Republican-dominated law firm Pillsbury, Madison Sutro to carry out an investigation. The report found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.

Which didn't keep crooked Al D'Amato and the Senate Banking Committee from taking up yet another investigation. "This is worse than Watergate," D'Amato cried as the probe started, but it eventually piddled out, and the final report found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.

Which didn't keep Indiana GOP nutcase Dan Burton from launching another investigation with the House Committee on Government Reform. This investigation wandered all over the map investigating imaginary crimes. Some highlights:
--Burton released a transcript of a prison conversation in which Webster Hubbell seemed to be saying that Hillary Clinton; the transcript omitted words like "not" however.
--Burton shot his handgun into melons in public as part of an investigation into Vince fosters suicide.
--Burton launched an investigation into Clinton's supposed "Chinese connection" which subpoeaned schoolteachers and postmen of Oriental descent under the bizarre delusion that they were financiers Time and again these citizens were forced to hire attorneys and fly to Washington to explain that they were not money men for the Chinese govenment.
--Burton subpoenaed Clinton officials to a closed door session where he quizzed them under oath about the meteorite found in Antartica which may or may not have contained organic material from Mars.

Which didn't keep the GOP from demanding a special prosecutor be named by the Department of Justice to look into the Whitewater charges. Janet Reno named lifelong partisan Republican Robert Fiske, who held an investigation into the matter and his final report found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.

Which didn't keep GOP judge David Sentelle from replacing Fiske with Republican woowoo Ken Starr, who:
--had been International Paper's lawyer in the Whitewater deal and had gotten fired because the corporation also got fleeced;
--had been fired from the Justice Department by Clinton's Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell;
--was arguing a case against Clinton's Justice Department on behalf of Brown and Williamson tobacco in Federal Court; and
--wrote an article for a right wing magazine claiming that Bill Clinton was guilty; and
--was secretly advising behind the scenes of the bogus Paula Jones sexual harassment case.
Starr's final report found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.

Which didn't keep the GOP from naming Giuliani crony Robert Ray from launching an investigation into Whitewater; HIS final report found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.

2) Starr's report on Clinton's sex life was read into the House Judiciary Committee as evidence with no hearings. The impeachment vote occured along party lines. Because there was no hearing, the "witness tampering" count disappeared in a puff of smoke when it was easily proved that the person Clinton was alleged to have tampered with had not actually been called as a witness anywhere.

3) Although the claim of perjury was much bandied about during the impeachment farce, the House managers were unable to single out anything that Clinton had said anywhere that might amount to perjury. Which didn't keep Republicans from claiming that perjury had been committed.