Word: clintone
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...That vague exchange launched a criminal investigation that resulted in Bill Clinton's impeachment and perhaps the most rigorous test of Holder's career. Nearly 11 years later, he is reported to be President-elect Barack Obama's first choice for Attorney General. Transition aides, and much Washington speculation, have focused on Holder's brief part in Clinton's controversial last-minute pardon of fugitive tycoon Marc Rich as a potential snare in confirmation hearings. But the behind-the-scenes role Holder played in the Monica Lewinsky probe - a 10-month Justice Department ordeal - offers a much fuller record...
...subject was explosive. Two days earlier, Bennett had received a phone call from a Maryland woman named Linda Tripp, who said her friend Lewinsky had had an affair with Bill Clinton, and that superlawyer Vernon Jordan was trying to land her a job to buy her silence in the ongoing Paula Jones sexual-harassment suit against the President. The story rang a bell with the prosecutors, who had been pursuing evidence that Jordan helped obtain a lucrative consulting contract for another Clinton pal who was a potential witness in the Whitewater land-deal probe. Starr's team had heard enough...
...Starr decided to defer to the DOJ, prompting the Holder meeting, which took place at 6 p.m. on Jan. 15. The deputy AG sat in silence as he heard the allegations. He knew they had to be investigated quickly. The question was by whom. His own department, run by Clinton appointees, had an obvious conflict. A new independent counsel could be brought in, but not in time to gear up for the President's Jan. 17 deposition. He saw no alternative but to let Starr's office carry the ball. Reno formalized the decision...
...lawyers believed Holder made the right call legally - he had no real choice, given the facts presented by Starr's deputies. But Clinton aides were livid. After years of strained relations with Reno and the six independent-counsel probes she had initiated, Holder had been viewed as someone they could deal with. The deputy had successfully urged Reno not to launch a seventh probe into questionable fundraising practices by Clinton in his 1996 re-election campaign, resisting pressure from Congress and DOJ career lawyers. Holder, in fact, looked like he was being groomed for the top job if Reno decided...
...deputy AG acted more subtly in February after Clinton lawyer David Kendall charged that Starr's office had leaked grand-jury information. When Starr announced plans for an internal investigation of the leaks, Holder advised him to stand down until the federal judge overseeing the case found merit in the complaint. But at the same time, Holder quietly called the judge and offered the DOJ's help in pending issues raised by the President's lawyers, which included the leaks question. When Starr learned about the unusual intervention, he saw it as a betrayal. (Holder has denied that he "ever...