January 25, 2007 1:04 PM
A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee asked a federal judge this week to schedule a new court date in a case against Tony Rodham, the brother of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., accused of failing to repay $109,000 in loans from a carnival company whose owners received controversial pardons issued by President Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency.
According to documents filed in the case, Rodham received the loans, before and after the pardons were granted, from United Shows of America, Inc., owned by Edgar Gregory and his wife, who had been convicted of defrauding several banks.
See the loans paid to Tony Rodham and the actual checks to Tony Rodham.
A congressional report by the Republican-controlled House Reform Committee concluded Rodham "had tried to sell his access to the White House" and that "but for Tony Rodham's lobbying efforts, the Gregory pardons would not have been granted."
With the company now in bankruptcy and Gregory dead, the court-appointed federal trustee for United Shows, Michael Collins, has spent two years trying to get Rodham to repay the outstanding loans.
Collins first had Rodham's accounts frozen in 2005 after Rodham failed to respond to an initial complaint filed by Collins.
The judge issued a default judgment against Rodham.
Rodham appealed, asking for more time to respond, and the judge unfroze the accounts.
"Now, of course, that's money we're going to have to find all over again," said Collins, the trustee. "I guess he wouldn't leave the money in there."
Rodham has not returned a request seeking comment from ABC News, and a woman answering his home phone in Vienna, Va., said, "He probably won't call you back."
During the investigation of the Clinton pardons, Rodham publicly maintained that he worked as a consultant for the Gregorys to help obtain contracts for the carnival business. He refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators but told Larry King on CNN in March 2001, "The Gregorys are the kind of people that the pardon system is made for."
At the time, the Gregorys said they saw nothing wrong with seeking Rodham's help to get their pardons, which were issued over objections from the Department of Justice.
According to the congressional report, Rodham was paid over $240,000 in consultant fees by United Shows in addition to the loans.
The bankruptcy trustee only seeks the return of the loan money which, with interest, he calculates at over $150,000.
At the urging of President and Mrs. Clinton in February 2001, her other brother, Hugh, promised to return some of the $400,000 he received from individuals who also were granted pardons by President Clinton in other cases.
January 25, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (87)
No comments:
Post a Comment