Web Hubbell Prison Economics - Page A1
March 6, 1997 Clinton Campaign Donors Paid $400k
by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican Newspaper
to Webster Hubbell After Fraud Conviction!
WASHINGTON DESK - Webster Hubbell, once described by President Clinton as his closest friend, received more than $400,000 from a number of companies and individuals with political ties after he was forced to leave the Justice Department in the face of a criminal investigation, The New York Times reported today.
The unlikely payments made to Hubbell were disclosed previously in the Daily Republican Newspaper, but the cumulative $400,000 reported by the Times is far larger than has been known.
The newspaper said much of the money came from businesses controlled by old Clinton friends and campaign donors, including some donors who were guests at fund-raising coffees and overnight stays at the White House.
t relied on government records and contacts with a number of Hubbell's associates for its estimate of Hubbell's income.
The Times included some previously reported figures, such as at least $100,000 from companies controlled by the Riady family in Indonesia, $24,750 from the city of Los Angeles, $5,000 from Time-Warner and $45,000 - later reimbursed - from a California foundation.
But it said Hubbell also was retained by a company controlled by Texas businessman Bernard Rapoport; a company controlled by Truman Arnold, a Texas petroleum distributor and Democratic fund-raiser who has been quoted in other reports as saying he used a White House database for fund-raising leads; and Sun America Inc., a California financial services company controlled by Eli Broad.
he Times said all three men were close friends of the president, had stayed overnight at the White House and that they, their families and companies had contributed nearly $1 million to the Democratic National Committee over the past five years.
The Whitewater independent counsel has been questioning Hubbell, a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton, about his income after he left office in the middle of a criminal investigation into his activities while he was at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock.
Hubbell subsequently pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and mail fraud, and spent 18 months in prison. Investigators declined to seek a reduced penalty for Hubbell at his sentencing on that plea bargain and have said their White House investigation has been stymied by Hubbell's memory lapses.
'I have only declined to discuss my clients because I must honor their confidentiality,' Hubbell told the Times. 'But who my clients were, how I got them, what I did for them and how much I was paid has played no role in either my decision to plead guilty or how I have cooperated.'
The newspaper quoted Rapoport as saying he hired Hubbell to do legal work, including how to do business in China.
But it said the largest payments to Hubbell appear to have come from Riady-controlled businesses in Hong Kong that have been dealing with the Chinese on a $2 billion U.S.-China project to build a power plant, a resort, and industrial park and a port in Fujian Province of China.
Hubbell, it said, was put on the payroll of a Riady family company two months before the late Ron Brown, then Clinton's secretary of commerce, announced U.S. endorsement of it during a trade mission to Beijing.
A month after Hubbell went to work for the Riadys, John Huang left his position as the family's top executive in the U.S. to join the Commerce Department and subsequently the DNC. The party has since refunded more than $1 million that Huang raised and he has become the key figure in Justice Department and congressional probes into campaign fund-raising irregularities last year.