In his excellent Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents: From Wilson to Obama, Steve Hayward observes of Bill Clinton: “Clinton’s most flagrant abuse of his constitutional power was the pardon.” As Steve recounts, the pardon of Marc Rich represented abuse of authority, gross corruption and ruthless prevarication all in one tidy package. It signfies!
With the return of the Marc Rich pardon to the news — courtesy (ahem) of the FBI — we have a timely reminder of a case that signifies. Acknowledging the culpability of Eric Holder in the Rich pardon, a reader points out:
The more current culprit, Peter Kadzik, who is an assistant attorney general now, is in charge of the Huma probe, was Marc Rich’s lobbyist in the late 90s, and was Podesta’s lawyer during the Monica scandal as Podesta was asked to get her a UN job to get her out of the White House. Kadzik’s son asked Podesta for a job in the Clinton campaign in 2015. Podesta wrote his letter of recommendation when Obama picked him as assistant AG…”he kept me out of jail,” which I know is a turn of phrase not to be taken literally.
I suppose charts are needed!
Steve likes to invoke the saying of his late teacher Harold Rood that nothing happens for no good reason. Perhaps the underlying FOIA request prompting the release of the (heavily redacted) FBI documents is sufficient reason. However, another reader proposes to evaluate the FBI’s release of the documents by means of old-fashioned Kremlinology befitting Rood’s Sovietology.
Is someone inside the FBI trying to send us a message? This reader writes:
I took it as a the strongest indicator yet of the extent of the battle within the FBI. I saw a report that Kadzik represented Rich and now heads the email investigation. [Paul Mirengoff provided] an excellent summary of the Rich pardon. The career people look to me like they just made a statement on the credibility of Kadzik and what they think of his integrity. They just fired a shot across his bow announcing they will not sit back and let him cover for another felon who is a danger to America.
I doubt that one shot will be sufficient, but we take the point.
STEVE adds: If I can intrude for a brief commercial announcement, it was nice of Scott to mention my Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents. It will be coming out in a second edition in early January, with an updated chapter on Barack Obama. (Not to worry: he still gets a “F.”)
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