Word: weinig
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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President Clinton's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich ignited the firestorm - but inside the Justice Department, career prosecutors are also burning over the clemency grant for Manhattan lawyer Harvey Weinig, sentenced in 1996 to 11 years in prison for facilitating an extortion-kidnapping scheme and helping launder at least $19 million for the Cali cocaine cartel. In Weinig's case, Clinton didn't bypass the Department of Justice - he defied...
...When Weinig petitioned DOJ for a commuted sentenced last April, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White of New York - whose office also indicted Rich - objected. Justice pardon attorney Roger Adams agreed, and so did Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who sent a formal memorandum to White House counsel Beth Nolan with the department's negative views...
...Reid Weingarten, Weinig's well-connected lawyer, took his case to Nolan, Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and presidential confidant Bruce Lindsey, pleading that Weinig's law professor wife Alice and two sons had suffered enough. "I submitted a binder that made people cry," Weingarten told TIME, though he wouldn't release the names of those who wrote letters on Weinig's behalf. "It was very compelling...
...Perhaps even more persuasive was former White House aide David Dreyer, who is related by marriage to Weinig. "I think of him as my cousin," Dreyer says, explaining that he appealed to Podesta and Nolan for "an act of mercy...
...Weingarten says Weinig's sentence was longer than any of his 22 co-defendants' - and besides, he was not a mastermind, but, as one of his defense team put it, "uncommonly stupid." Weingarten and Dreyer say they did not talk to Clinton personally, but the message got through. In his last hours as President, Clinton slashed Weinig's sentence to five years and 270 days...