WASHINGTON — Roger Clinton, already under investigation for allegedly taking money to lobby for several presidential pardons, now is being asked to explain whether he helped five additional men try to secure executive clemencies from his half-brother, former President Clinton.
According to documents obtained Thursday by The Times, the House Government Reform Committee wants to know whether Roger Clinton was paid for using his White House connection to help the men, who include a Kentucky horse breeder sent to prison for fraud and a Texas marina operator convicted on tax charges.
"Our documents show that Roger Clinton sought to help some of these people with pardons or that others asked Roger Clinton to help them with an executive grant of clemency," said a committee investigator, who asked not to be identified because of the widening investigation.
The committee is expected to wrap up its probe of President Clinton's eleventh-hour pardons later this summer and turn the findings over to U.S. Atty. Mary Jo White in New York. She has impaneled a federal grand jury that is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with the 177 pardons and commutations Clinton granted on his last day in office.
But just as the House committee was seeking information Thursday on the new names of clemency applicants that it believes are connected to Roger Clinton, it received a scathing letter from Roger Clinton's lawyer. It accuses the Republican-led panel of playing politics with the Clinton pardon inquiry.
"The breadth and scope of the committee's investigation, and in particular of its most recent questions, suggest that something more than an inquiry by the committee into presidential clemency decisions is afoot," Los Angeles lawyer Bart H. Williams told the panel in a fiery three-page letter.
Williams warned that his client will not cooperate with the committee's investigation and added: "Like anyone else who values his own privacy and who respects the privacy of those close to him, Mr. Clinton will not submit willingly to a general warrant" for information.
Roger Clinton has been the target of repeated allegations that he sought or received cash payments and other favors from a number of individuals in return for promising to get or request pardons and other help for them.
Federal and congressional investigators want to determine whether he was involved in illegal shakedown schemes, using his relationship to the president to defraud others.
