WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's offer to make Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) the next U.S. trade representative makes him the second Cabinet-level candidate to have been involved in President Clinton's controversial 2001 commutation of a Los Angeles cocaine dealer's prison sentence.
The other is Eric H. Holder Jr., whom Obama has nominated to be attorney general.
The dealer, Carlos Vignali, was convicted in 1994 for his role in a drug ring that delivered more than 800 pounds of cocaine -- worth about $5 million at the time -- from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. He was released after serving less than half of his 14 1/2 -year sentence.
Becerra was one of a number of Southern California political leaders who urged Clinton to consider commuting Vignali's prison term in response to a campaign by Vignali's father, Horacio, a Los Angeles businessman and developer who contributed to Becerra's political campaigns. The senior Vignali also paid Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, $204,000 to lobby for his son's release.
Holder was Clinton's deputy attorney general at the time of the clemency order. The Justice Department's pardon attorney recommended that Clinton not commute the sentence, but Holder did not sign the letter to the White House.
Holder has denied any wrongdoing. He declined to comment Thursday night. But a transition official said complaints about the former judge and prosecutor amounted to partisan sniping by Republicans.
Becerra, a leading California Latino political figure who has been in Congress since 1993, also declined to comment.
But in the past, he has said that his communications with the White House were not meant as an explicit request for clemency but rather as a request that the case be reviewed.
On Thursday, Becerra met privately with Obama to discuss an offer to become the nation's chief trade negotiator, but he is not certain whether he wants the job, according to a Democrat familiar with the matter.
A third official whose name surfaced in Vignali's clemency case, Alejandro Mayorkas, now serves on the Obama Justice Department transition team.
At the time of the clemency grant, Mayorkas was the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and was one of the Southern California officials who contacted the White House to urge consideration of Vignali's release.
