"Where the powerful protect each other "

O'Reilly: Bush Insider Claims Clinton Deal Torpedoed Pardongate

A Bush administration insider has privately leaked word that a deal was struck between Democratic congressional leaders and the Bush White House not to prosecute Bill and/or Hillary Clinton on an array of charges related to the Pardongate scandal, Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly claimed Friday on his nationally syndicated "Radio Factor" show.

"A very highly placed source - and I mean this guy knows what's going on in the Bush administration - told me about a month ago that when President Bush took office he had meetings with all of the Democratic leadership.... one on one meetings in the Oval Office," O'Reilly said.

"The Democratic leadership made it quite clear to Mr. Bush that he would not get any cooperation - zero - on the part of the Democrats in the Senate and in the House if he pursued any kind of a criminal investigation against Bill Clinton."

O'Reilly said that according to his source, "Basically they said look, if you embarrass us - by us we mean the Democratic Party - if you, Bush-Ashcroft, indict Clinton on bribery or go after Hillary or any of this - we're gonna shut you down. We're not gonna do anything. You're not going to get any (legislation) passed in four years."

The talk host's highly placed administration source said Democrat leaders then explained to Bush, "If you put this thing on the back track and just play the game the way we've always played it here in the Justice Department since Watergate, where the powerful protect each other - then we'll keep an open mind on your legislation."

O'Reilly never indicated who his source might be beyond describing him as "very highly placed."

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District James Comey, a Bush appointee, ended a key part of the probe into whether the Clintons traded pardons for political favors and campaign contributions.

http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecov...02/6/21/150930

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Stogus Maximus †

I have no love for Clinton, but I don't see anything shocking in this. The presidential pardon is, by definition, a political action. The pardon is granted outside of the confines of the rest of our legal system. It is unsurprising that the party of the prior president would not aid the current president in an investigation.

Is it distasteful if Clinton fiscally profited from pardons? Absolutely. Yet we should remember that, since the founding of the country, pardons have been inextricably linked to political paybacks. If nobody found them distasteful, they wouldn't be necessary. The legal system wouldn't have performed the conviction in the first place.