Читать книгу 1997 Special Investigation in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns - United States Senate Committee - Страница 10

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S.Res. 39 required the Committee to complete its investigation by December 31, 1997, and to submit a report to the Senate by January 31, 1998. This report fulfills that command.

Among the subjects aired at the hearings and detailed within this report are the takeover of the DNC by the President and his staff at the White House, who operated the party apparatus as a slush-fund for the President’s re-election campaign. Along with that takeover went the dismantling of any system of vetting contributions and contributors to the DNC to ensure compliance with the law. The theory was to take in as much money as possible to buy advertising and worry later about the Federal Election Commission (FEC), whose meager resources, in any event, were unequal to the task of policing wrongdoing on the massive scale engaged in by the DNC during the 1996 election cycle. In effect, gripped by an overwhelming thirst for money driven by the fear that the Republican victories in the 1994 congressional elections presaged the defeat of President Clinton in 1996, the Democratic Party and the President stopped asking or caring about the sources of this money.

The Committee’s investigation explored the DNC’s and the President’s enormous thirst for campaign contributions to support the President’s re-election bid and outlined the abuses carried out in their pursuit, including selling access to the President and senior officials through “coffees” and White House “overnights,” and blatantly trading access to senior officials in return for campaign contributions. New sources of money had to be found. In this climate, the door was opened in 1996 to contributions from unsavory figures, from foreign bank accounts, and possibly from foreign governments as well. The Committee’s hearings exposed a number of these sources, particularly hitherto untapped foreign sources of money.