MAYBE it’s an occupational hazard – get a top job with Hillary Clinton and it’s a good bet you’ll wind up talking to prosecutors. So it was at the White House, and now with her campaign staff.
“Just about everybody who was in a senior capacity in the Senate campaign has been asked to come in as a witness” in Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White’s Pardongate probe, says a source.
Among them, sources say: communications chief Howard Wolfson and Jewish liaison Matthew Hiltzik (who came on board after Clinton had her fateful meeting with Hasidic leaders in upstate New Square).
That’s on top of word this week that three Clinton Senate staffers who worked on her campaign – political chief Ramon Martinez III, his deputy, Sean Sweeney, and Aprill Springfield – have set up legal-defense funds.
Wolfson, who now heads Democratic campaign efforts to regain control of the House of Representatives, said: “No comment.” So did Hiltzik, now working at Miramax.
Top strategist Harold Ickes said he hasn’t been called in by prosecutors. Clinton’s campaign chief Bill DiBlasio, now a City Council candidate from Park Slope, promised to return a phone call – and never did.
A key part of White’s Pardongate probe is whether pardons were traded for votes in New Square, where Clinton got 1,400 votes to just 12 for GOP rival Rick Lazio. Other Hasidic villages backed Lazio.
The fact that so many Clinton staffers are being interviewed shows the broad nature of White’s probe, sources say.
But what’s really intriguing is that lawyers are being provided free for those called in by prosecutors – and no one is saying who arranged that.
The New York Democratic Party denies any role although its chief counsel, Gerard E. Harper, is listed as trustee for staffer Sweeney’s legal-defense fund.
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Hillary was wrong if she thought blocking President Bush’s pick to head the consumer-safety agency would keep the job safe for her pal Ann Brown. Yesterday, Brown rushed to quit effective Nov. 1 – before Bush can fire her.
Dems thought Bush lacked power to fire Brown, but the Congressional Research Service said he could. Aides say he’s so livid at Brown’s “character assassination” of his choice, Mary Sheila Gall, that he may fire her before she can quit.
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Monica forever: Jennifer Palmieri, the Democratic National Committee’s news spokeswoman, was Monica Lewinsky’s boss in her White House intern days.
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Lee Radek is a career Justice Department employee, but Republicans saw red when Radek, as head of the Public Integrity section, kept blocking funny-money probes of then-Veep Al Gore.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that Michael Chertoff, the new head of the criminal division, quietly kicked Radek a step downstairs to serve as counsel (rather than head) of asset forfeiture.