WASHINGTON — Former White House counsel Jack Quinn, who persuaded President Clinton to pardon fugitive financier Marc Rich, told lawmakers Thursday that Rich deserved the pardon because of flawed prosecution.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who was U.S. attorney in 1983, and former assistant U.S. attorneys Martin Auerbach and Morris Weinberg Jr. misused the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act to indict Rich, Quinn told the House Government Reform Committee in written testimony.
President Clinton, in one of his last acts before leaving office Jan. 20, pardoned Rich, who has lived in Switzerland since just before he was indicted in the United States in 1983. He was accused of evading more than $48 million in taxes, committing fraud and participating in illegal oil deals with Iran.
Rich was one of the first RICO targets that did not involve organized crime, and the Justice Department has since banned the use of RICO in cases like Rich's, Quinn said. Quinn also said that Rich refused to return to America to face the charges because he thought he could not get a fair trial. "The consequences of Mr. Giuliani's novel and aggressive misuse of RICO caused a thunderstorm of publicity, as the past two weeks have again demonstrated, caused a frenzied rush to judgment that my client was guilty before he was tried," Quinn said.
However, Weinberg and Auerbach said if the government didn't have a case, Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, wouldn't have fled the country and renounced their citizenship.
If their case against Rich and Green was a house of cards like Quinn said, "It was all aces," Auerbach added. The House committee is holding the hearing to find out whether the president had an improper motive for the pardons, said chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind. "On the surface, this doesn't look like a very good case for a pardon," he said. "So the question is, 'How did it happen?' "
Critics are suspicious because Rich's ex-wife was a major contributor to the Democratic Party and to the successful Senate candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton. A pardon is not subject to appeal.
The former wife, Denise Rich, refused to answer questions sent to her by the committee. "Ms. Rich is asserting her privilege under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution not to be a witness against herself and accordingly will not answer any questions of the chairman or the committee," her attorney, Carol Bruce, said in a letter to the committee.
Denise Rich's lawyer told the panel she had given an "enormous sum of money" to the Clinton Presidential Library Fund, Burton said.