Clinton-haters like to suggest that in 1993 he fired the US Attorney that was investigating his role in the Whitewater land deal. Rightwingers hope you won't remember the truth, or that you don't know where to go to refresh your memory.
According to a February, 1998 investigative report by Mollie Ivins, the fraud division of the Justice Department, shortly after Clinton's inauguration, concluded that the RTC's Whitewater referral didn't appear to "warrant any criminal investigation."
Even more interesting, in light of today's allegations of hanky-panky in Dubya's Justice Department, it appears that Daddy Bush's henchmen also tried to pressure a US Attorney into pushing ahead on an investigation for purely political purposes.
Daddy Bush's Attorney General William Barr was angry that things weren't moving quickly enough on the RTC's Whitewater referral, and ordered Little Rock US Attorney Charles Banks to get the lead out. This was despite the fact that Banks had already determined that "no action should be taken on the referral at that time." He also said he believed "no prosecutable case existed against any of the witnesses," particularly against the Clintons.
'On Oct. 8, Barr convened a joint FBI-Justice Department panel to examine the referral. But the panel concluded that the referral "failed to cite evidence of any federal criminal offense." The panel's comment about the referral ranged from "junky" and "half-baked" to that its allegations were "reckless, irresponsible" and "odd."Does this sound a bit familiar, boys and girls?
Nevertheless, Barr put a preliminary investigation into motion and ordered Banks to review it again and to report back by Oct. 16, two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.'
[Then the October 16, 1992 report back to Bush's DOJ]
As Banks noted in his report to the Justice Department dated Oct. 16, Barr's desire to expedite the Whitewater investigation smacked of improper political use of the federal judicial system. "I know in investigations of this type," wrote Banks, "the first steps, such as issuance of ... subpoenas ... will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation all too often publicly purport to 'legitimize what can't be proven' ... I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ... For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario and to the possible denial of rights due to the targets, subjects, witnesses or defendants is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions and believe that such would be detrimental to the Department of Justice, FBI, this office and to the President of the United States [George Bush]."'
