Statement of Senator Leahy, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary at Hearing of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts on “The La Bella Memorandum”

May 02, 2000

Statement of Senator Leahy, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary at Hearing of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts on “The La Bella Memorandum” May 2, 2000

This hearing was scheduled at a time when Senator Torricelli, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, made clear that he could not be available. Consequently, I thank the presiding Chairman for the opportunity to make an opening statement in Senator Torricelli’s stead on behalf of the Democratic minority.

Senator Specter has outlined for the Committee the scope of the campaign finance investigation he wished to pursue and promised that his review would not deal with “campaign finance generally,” but would be targeted at three convictions obtained by the Justice Department Campaign Finance Task Force pursuant to plea agreements with John Huang, Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung. It is within the rights of the majority to review the plea agreements and sentences in these three cases, if that is their priority and how they choose to focus the time and attention of the Committee.

To the extent that the plea agreements for Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie and John Huang are deserving of this Subcommittee’s scrutiny, Mr. La Bella may be able to resolve the concerns of certain Members. After all, Mr. La Bella was the supervisor of the Task Force from September 1997 to June 1998. During that time, the plea agreement for Mr. Chung was negotiated by attorneys at the Task Force and approved and signed by Mr. La Bella. In addition, as I understand it, the Trie case, in which an indictment was returned on January 29, 1998, was well underway. Given their publicly expressed criticisms of the resolution of these matters achieved by Mr. La Bella’s Task Force, I trust that the Subcommittee will use this opportunity to voice their concerns to Mr. La Bella and allow him the opportunity to respond.

It seems far afield from the limited focus on those three plea agreements, however, to use this hearing and this Subcommittee to reiterate the recommendation of Mr. La Bella that the Attorney General appoint an independent counsel. That topic has been already been explored with the Attorney General before this Committee and with Mr. La Bella before other committees of this Congress. Indeed, Mr. La Bella has offered public assurances that whatever his disagreements with the Attorney General, he believes that her integrity and independence were beyond reproach. He also recently reiterated that whatever his frustrations with the Department of Justice, he does not believe that “the Attorney General, in any way shape or form, was protecting anybody, or anyone else at the Justice Department was politically protecting anybody.” Accordingly, I do not see what good purpose would be served by going over that ground, again.

On the other hand, a review of the shortcomings in our campaign finance laws would be helpful. According to a recent press account, Mr. La Bella identified in his investigation certain flaws in the current campaign finance laws, including the fact that serious campaign finance offenses are only misdemeanors and that the applicable statute of limitations is only three years. I agree that these are serious flaws. That is why I was proud last November to cosponsor S. 1991, a bill that would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act in just these areas. This bill would treat as felonies violations involving improper contributions aggregating $25,000 or more during a calendar year. It would also increase the statute of limitations to five years – which is the standard statute of limitation for federal offenses. In addition, the bill would provide increased direction to the Sentencing Commission in the area of federal election violations. I hope that Mr. La Bella will have an opportunity at this hearing to further explain his views on these proposed changes and to express his views on any other necessary reforms.

It seems that the majority may be embarking on a much more free ranging endeavor than previously announced. This inquiry has moved from examining the events at Mt. Carmel, Texas, to the ongoing matter of Wen Ho Lee, to the plea agreement in the case of Peter Lee and is now turning its attention fund-raising activities in the 1996 federal elections. These are not only matters that remain under active review by the Department of Justice, but matters that have been explored over the last several years by other congressional committees at great length and expense.

The Department of Justice long ago established a Task Force to conduct a thorough analysis and investigation. That Task Force, which for a time was headed by Mr. La Bella, had launched 121 investigations by the end of last year. Perhaps this Committee intends to review them all. As of March 31st of this year, the Task Force had initiated 24 prosecutions and obtained the convictions of 15 individuals and one corporation. Perhaps this Committee intends to second guess the way each prosecution was handled.

Questions about the financing of the 1996 federal elections have already been the subject of multiple, expensive, overlapping, repeated and continuing congressional hearings. For example, in 1997, the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs held 32 days of hearings, calling 70 witnesses, at a cost of $3.5 million to investigate campaign finance violations relating to the 1996 federal elections. That same Committee held another hearing this fall to review the investigation of Charlie Trie.

The House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight has been investigating campaign finance violations since June, 1997. To date, Chairman Burton’s investigation has included over 45 days of hearings. In November, 1998, the House Committee issued a four-volume Interim Report and reported spending approximately $4 million on its investigation up to that date, and that was almost a year and one-half ago.

In addition, this Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, has already focused extensively on campaign finance questions at hearings with Attorney General Reno on April 30, 1997; July 15, 1998; and March 12, 1999. The Committee has already engaged the Attorney General on her decision not to call for the appointment of an independent counsel on campaign finance. The Attorney General has spoken to Members about this, testified about it at length and responded to letters about it. At one point the Senator from Pennsylvania was threatening to sue the Attorney General over her decision, although I do not recall whether he followed through on that threatened course of action. Of course, the Committee has not questioned the times that the Attorney General recommended the appointment of independent counsels over the last seven years or called upon any of those independent counsels to provide an accounting or accountability of what they have achieved and at what cost. It would be disappointing if this Subcommittee – under the stewardship of Senator Specter – is now revisiting the matter of campaign fund-raising in 1996. As we approach the parties’ nominating conventions in August and the general elections in November, 2000, I had hoped that the Committee would be focused on the unfinished legislative agenda that can improve the lives of working families across America rather than re-examining old campaign finance cases from 1996.

In the last two weeks, we have witnessed the anniversary of the shooting deaths of 15 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Here in Washington, D.C., we have seen the senseless shootings of seven children at our National Zoo. The Nation has cringed at the apparent hate crime shooting spree last week of a Jewish woman, two Asian-Americans, a man from India and an African-American man. Yet, the majority in control of both Houses of Congress refuses to make a priority for legislative action sensible gun safety laws. This Committee has bottled up action on updated hate crimes legislation, Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, and reporting the judicial nominees needed to fill 79 continuing vacancies on the federal bench around the country.

Instead, our focus today is on a memorandum containing a subordinate’s recommendation to the Attorney General about investigating campaign finance violations. Putting aside the fact that the independent counsel statute has lapsed – so appointment of an independent counsel is simply not an option currently available to the Attorney General – I have questioned in the past whether an unaccountable, expensive and lengthy independent counsel investigation was really the answer to what ails our political fund-raising process.

Once appointed, independent counsels apparently have a difficult time knowing when to close their offices. We have some independent counsel offices still in operation that were set up to investigate the administration of various programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1983 to 1989. According to General Accounting Office reports, the total expenditures for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr alone through September 30, 1999, was $52.3 million. The next financial report on that saga is due out in September 2000. Mr. Starr’s successor, Robert Ray, has estimated his total spending during the last six months as $3.1 million. This would put the total spending for the Starr/Ray independent counsel investigations through March at $55.6 million.

In response to my request for additional information, GAO informed me last August that, as of May, 1999, the Justice Department had detailed 96 employees at various times to help Mr. Starr in his investigations, including 25 attorneys and 78 FBI agents. Despite this large number of FBI agents detailed to his staff and an unreported number of detailees from other federal agencies, Mr. Starr still spent almost $1,500,000 on other “criminal investigators.” I have recently asked GAO to provide me with updated and detailed information on spending by the Starr/Ray independent counsel office.

I hope that this hearing stays focused on the three plea agreements that were said to be the basis for this phase of this Subcommittee’s inquiry so that we may devote our efforts to the unfinished legislative agenda of the Committee. If this Subcommittee is still searching for an appropriate subject for an oversight investigation, I suggest we review the work of the independent counsels that have so far been unaccountable to the Congress and the American people – a fundamental flaw that led to the independent counsel law’s demise . We should not be interfering in the ongoing investigations of the Department of Justice. To the extent we are frustrated by campaign finance abuses, the American people would be better served by attention to S.1991 and other legislative proposals on campaign finance than a reexamination of plowed ground.