Roger Clinton: Following
the Money
The former president’s brother is entangled in another
pardon scandal
By Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEKJune 16 — Government investigators trying to untangle the Clinton pardons scandal are taking a hard look at the former president’s half brother, Roger Clinton. Federal prosecutors want to know if he was involved in alleged schemes that promised the possibility of pardons and other favors in exchange for cash fees.
INVESTIGATORS ARE ESPECIALLY interested in Clinton’s alleged dealings with Garland Lincecum, a Texan convicted of investment fraud in 1998. Lincecum’s lawyer, Ed Hayes, told Newsweek his client was looking for a way to avoid prison when a friend, Richard Cayce, suggested he enlist Roger Clinton’s help. Investigators say Cayce, an alternative medicines salesman, claims Clinton was going to help him secure diplomatic passports—which he hoped would impress foreigners. Cayce also says Clinton and two associates, George Locke and Dickey Morton, agreed to get the passports for a fee of $100,000. According to Cayce’s lawyer, Cayce turned over $30,000 cash and wired $70,000 to a company called CLM—which they told him consisted of Clinton, Locke and Morton.
Cayce says he made the cash payment at an August 1998 meeting with the partners at a Dallas airport hotel. Later that day, Cayce says, he introduced Lincecum to Locke and Morton. According to Lincecum’s lawyer, they told Lincecum that Roger would lobby Bill Clinton for a pardon in exchange for $300,000. Roger was not at the meeting, but Lincecum told investigators that at one point Cayce pointed to a man on a balcony and hinted that it was Roger. Lincecum’s lawyer says his client’s family turned over $235,000 to CLM, including two checks for $100,000 each. Financial records obtained by Newsweek show that days after those payments, Roger Clinton in turn deposited checks from CLM worth $25,500 in his own bank accounts. Government sources with access to CLM’s books say they believe the checks to Clinton were likely drawn from the money the Lincecums gave CLM.Roger Clinton Caught with $200,000 in ChiCom Cash
NewsMax.com
Thursday, June 28, 2001 1:40 p.m. EDT
Congressional investigators have found at least $200,000 in cash from Communist Chinese sources in the bank account of former first brother Roger Clinton, a development that could spell major trouble for his brother, ex-President Clinton.
"Investigators said they have discovered 'a couple hundred grand' in unexplained traveler's checks that Roger Clinton cashed that were sent from Hong Kong, China and Venezuela," the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The House committee's discovery of Clinton's Chinese cash connection lends credence to earlier reports by NewsMax.com and WABC Radio in New York, where witnesses were quoted saying that Roger and his business partners were doing a lucrative business with Beijing.
This past weekend, Mississippi businessman R.V. Wilson told WABC's John Batchelor and Paul Alexander that in June 1999, Roger's business partners tried to get him to bankroll a plan to import building materials from China, an arrangement they said had been facilitated by then-President Bill Clinton.
"They told me right off the bat that Bill Clinton made arrangements with the Chinese when he was over there for his brother to be their principal agent in the United States," Wilson said.
"It would be very difficult for a man off the street to go to China and start buying things," the construction executive added. "But if you went in there with the recommendation of the president of the United States, then the market would have been open for you and [the Chinese] would have dealt with you."
During one bombshell exchange with the radio hosts, Wilson said that President Clinton himself was slated to get a cut of any profits from his brother's China dealings.
BATCHELOR: Now, one thing, R.V. In your discussions with them about the building materials, did they ever indicate that any of this money was going to be going to Bill Clinton as well as Roger Clinton?
WILSON: Absolutely.
ALEXANDER: Wow! R.V., say what?
BATCHELOR: Wait a minute. Hold on. Let's review again. What did they say about where the money you were going to make was going? They said it was going to them at CLM, but was there money going to Bill Clinton also?
WILSON: The money that I was going to make was going to go into my pocket.
BATCHELOR: Right.
WILSON: The money they were going to make was CLM. And they told me that "we've got this organization and blah, blah, blah, blah. We've got our credit cards," you know. And here they go.
ALEXANDER: Did they tell you that Bill Clinton would participate in their profits?
WILSON: No. They didn't say that Bill Clinton was participating. But let me say this. I was told, before the money was sent, that, for instance, one day Lynn [Garland Lincecum] came by and he needed some money because Mr. Morton had called him and said that Roger was upset. He wanted that money now because Bill needed it to pay some girl or something in Little Rock or somewhere. A judgment had been made against him and he needed that money now.
(End of Excerpt)
Key Pardongate accuser Garland Lincecum told WABC on Friday that in 1999, he received a 2 a.m. call from Clinton business partner Dickey Morton, who was in China. Morton said that thanks to the then-president's help, they were dealing directly with the fourth-most-powerful government official in Beijing.
The Communist Chinese cash was discovered in Roger Clinton's bank account after House investigators subpoenaed his bank records.
In April, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund told Fox News Channel that prosecuters in New York had reviewed bank records for Clinton's business that showed accounts worth $30 million.
Lincecum's attorney Ed Hayes suggested that figure could be too low, telling WABC that, according to his sources, Clinton's business records showed "hundreds of millions" of dollars in activity.
It's not clear whether investigators will attempt to corroborate Mr. Wilson's account by subpoenaing the former president's bank records as well.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
China/Taiwan
Clinton Scandals
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Saturday, Jun. 30, 2001
New Questions About Roger Clinton's Slippery Schemes
For Clinton pardongate investigators, the former First Brother is the gift that keeps on giving. A TIME exclusive by Viveca Novak and Michael Weisskopf
Call him the brother who couldn't shoot straight. While Bill Clinton ran the nation for eight years, his half brother, Roger, lived in Bill's shadow. Now Roger is sweating under the hot lights as questions pile up about whether he had a role in an outrageous array of slippery and ill-fated schemes ranging from Mafioso pardons to Chinese scooter imports to Venezuelan coal mines. Though he always seemed to be the slacker Clinton, Roger now appears to have been a very busy man after all.
For Clinton investigators, Roger is the gift that keeps on giving. Last week, the House Government Reform Committee wrote him asking about his role in clemency pleas made by six convicted felons, including Rosario Gambino, a jailed New Jersey restauranteur reputed to be a soldier in the Gambino crime family. Committee documents show that Rosario Gambino's daughter wrote a $50,000 check to one of Roger Clinton's companies in September, 1999, some months after Roger sought leniency from the U.S. Parole Commission for Rosario, who is serving a 45-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
More than a year ago, sources told TIME, the FBI learned of Clinton's efforts with the parole board. Suspicious of his motives, agents wanted to set up a sting operation. Members of the Clinton-appointed Parole Commission are said to have asked Justice Department officials to nix the FBI probe. The Department refused, but that investigation petered out anyway.
In Bill Clinton's final days in office last January, a White House lawyer included Rosario Gambino on a list of pardon candidates to be screened by the Justice Department, documents show. No pardon was granted. But at least Gambino — the former owner of Valentino's Supper Club of Garden City, N.J. — seems to have been considered for a pardon. The White House Counsel's office included Gambino's name on a list of pardoned candidates to be sent to the DOJ for criminal background checks. That's more than a handful of other convicts whose lawyers or relatives sought help from Roger Clinton got out of their deals.
One of them was J.T. Lundy, former head of the famous Calumet Farms who was sentenced last year to 4 1/2 years in prison for bank fraud. Lundy had given Roger Clinton a job at his Kentucky race horse stud farm after Clinton served a prison term in the 1980s for dealing cocaine. By late 1999, Lundy began asking Clinton for help — even before his trial began. Sources told TIME he suggested Roger try to help delay legal action until the final days of the Clinton presidency, a time in which presidents usually grant pardons.
Lundy offered to reward Roger Clinton with stock in a Venezuelan coal deal, sources told TIME. To protect Clinton from discovery of the payment and assure it remained tax free, the sources said, Lundy suggested to Clinton in November, 1999 that Lundy would transfer the stock to a mutual friend, Dan R. Lasater, a Little Rock financier who was convicted in the mid-1980s for buying drugs from Roger Clinton. The House committee has obtained records showing that Clinton deposited in his bank $100,000 in travelers checks on Nov. 30, 1999, with some of the checks purchased in Venezuela.
Lundy's lawyer, David McGee, told TIME his client had no Venezuelan coal interests to transfer. But a source close to Lundy said a group of his friends from Kentucky did, and Lundy hoped they would facilitate a deal with the president's brother. Roger Clinton's lawyer, Bart Williams, said his client never received payment from Lundy and never recommended him for a pardon. Lasater refused comment.
As the days of the Clinton presidency dwindled, Roger Clinton was in great demand by pardon seekers. Lawyers for two of them shipped documents to Roger Clinton at the White House in care of the usher's office, sources said. Neither of them received clemency.
The House committee is not the only investigative body interested in Roger Clinton and pardons. The office of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White is examining allegations by a Texas family that they paid two associates of Roger Clinton, George Locke and Dickey Morton, more than $200,000 in late 1998 to have Roger secure a pardon for a relative. Business sources say White also is focusing on a firm, CLM — for Clinton, Locke & Morton — and the activities of Locke and Morton. Sources said they invoked Roger Clinton's name to line up investors for a scheme to import wallboard, scooters and other products from China. Their pitch: Roger is "the president's man in China," two sources told TIME. Locke and Morton have claimed their Fifth Amendment right not to talk to investigators.
A California businessman, Davey Crockett (distantly related to the frontiersman, he says), took the pair to China in 1999 to set up a wallboard exporting business. When they had trouble making connections there, they called Roger Clinton on more than one occasion hoping he could open doors for them, sources said; Clinton was supposed to join them but in the end didn't show up.
Roger Clinton's lawyer, Bart Williams, said that his client "has never received any money in connection with a pardon request," though he has received funds from people who have separately asked such favors. Clinton recommended six people for pardons, all of whom were denied, Williams noted.
Roger may be keeping up the Clinton tradition of ethical vagaries. But it's not clear that any of his activities are illegal. That was the conclusion of a high-level Justice Department meeting late last year involving Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, independent counsel Robert Ray, and top FBI officials, sources told TIME. They'd been investigating various allegations about the trouble-prone half brother, but concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. Justice Department officials told the FBI to feel free to present new material if it turned up.
All they had to do was wait.
WISEGUY FIRES AT ‘TRASHY' CLINTONS
July 1, 2001
By AL GUARTMembers of New York's Gambino crime family are distancing themselves from the Clinton pardon scandal, calling the former president's family "low-rent, trailer-park trash."
Thomas Gambino, 72, son of the late mob boss Carlo Gambino, is fuming at reports his family had something to do with Roger Clinton's effort to get a pardon for a New Jersey heroin dealer named Rosario "Sal" Gambino, said Michael Rosen, the New York Gambino's lawyer.
"My client had nothing to do with the low-rent, trailer-park trash politicians who infested our country for the past eight years," Rosen said.
"There is no connection in any way, shape or form between those [Gambino] people who sought a pardon and my client," said Rosen. "He doesn't even know them."
Thomas Gambino, who was released from prison last year after serving a five-year term for loan-sharking, also does not want to be confused with Rosario Gambino's son Thomas, who reportedly paid Roger Clinton $50,000 in a bid to get the pardon for his father, currently serving a 45-year prison term for heroin trafficking.
The money was paid to Clinton by a check issued by a telephone firm owned by Rosario Gambino's children.
Unlike Clinton's other clients, the Gambinos did get something for their money: Rosario Gambino made a White House list of pardon candidates to be screened by the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, Time magazine reports the federal Parole Commission tried to whack an FBI probe of the former president's drug-dealing, pardon-peddling brother.
The bureau hoped to bag Roger Clinton in a sting operation, but, sources said, the commission, appointed by big brother Bill, went to the department to kibosh the case.
The FBI won the argument, but their probe went nowhere.
Still, new allegations keep surfacing, including an overseas stock deal that would have given Roger Clinton a tax-free windfall, Time said.
J.T. Lundy, the former head of Calumet Farms who was convicted of bank fraud, offered to give Roger Clinton stock in a Venezuelan coal deal.
The payoff was to be funneled through a mutual friend, who was convicted of buying drugs from Roger Clinton in the mid-1980s.
Clinton deposited $100,000 in travelers checks, some from Venezuela, in his bank in November, the article said.
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