Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [328]
At the conclusion of the voice votes, Ewing told his fellow prosecutors in a thick Memphis drawl, “As far as I’m concerned, she [Hillary Clinton] did it.” Yet Hickman conceded that they might be missing certain key ingredients necessary to convict. Given that death had sealed Jim McDougal’s lips and that neither Susan McDougal nor Webb Hubbell seemed ready to cooperate—at least not yet—Ewing surprised his fellow prosecutors by concurring. “We shouldn’t go,” he said, shaking his head in exhaustion. Ewing himself cast the final vote against going forward with the indictment of Hillary Rodham Clinton—at least for now.
For the rest of the night, the worn-out Starr prosecutors shifted to the next essential topic: Should they take further action against Susan McDougal or Webb Hubbell, to tighten the screws so that Hickman could make one final push to extract the “real” story from these intractable witnesses?
Instead of indicting Hubbell anew, on the basis of his business dealings with Mrs. Clinton, as set forth in the existing draft indictment, several prosecutors suggested resurrecting an earlier plan: Why not indict him in Washington on tax evasion? That might be a quick and easy way to apply pressure on the hulking former assistant attorney general to force him to cooperate. As for Susan McDougal, she had already spent eighteen months in prison on civil contempt charges; now she was beginning her two-year sentence for bank fraud on the Whitewater/Madison Guaranty conviction. OIC needed to ratchet up the discomfort level for her, too. Brett Kavanaugh and other prosecutors proposed indicting McDougal for criminal contempt, a much more serious charge, and then giving her additional jail time until she was ready to talk.
The nervous energy sapped from his body, Ewing headed home to catch a few hours of sleep. As he drove off into the Washington night, he resigned himself to the fact that the Office of Independent Counsel would not “charge her [Mrs. Clinton] now.” At the same time, the Tennessee prosecutor would admit, “I was hopeful, of course, that perhaps [after exerting pressure on] Hubbell or Susan McDougal, we would have information from them that might change things.”
He knew the odds of that happening were not great, especially given the enormous amount of prosecutorial time and resources being plowed into the Monica Lewinsky investigation that had eclipsed his Arkansas case overnight.
“On the other hand,” Ewing told himself, “I’ve been a prosecutor a long time, and very seldom do I ever say, ‘That’s [over] forever.’”
CHAPTER
39
OUT-GUNNING THE SECRET SERVICE
Although the Whitewater grand jury in Arkansas had expired without charging Mrs. Clinton, the White House didn’t crack open any champagne bottles. One unnamed adviser told the New York Times: “Until they announce they will not empanel another grand jury, I’m not even going to break out a Diet Coke.” Sources in Starr’s office made clear that they still viewed the Whitewater and Lewinsky probes as “parallel investigations.” Both sides understood this meant escalated warfare.
On April 30, the Office of Independent Counsel filed surprise new tax evasion and fraud charges against Webb Hubbell. The indictment, dubbed “Hubbell II,” featured highly unusual criminal charges against Hubbell and his wife, Suzy (as well as their Little Rock accountant and attorney, both of whom had assisted Hubbell while he was in jail) for failing to pay delinquent taxes after he had run out of money. In part, the indictment focused on taxes still owing on $700,000 paid to Hubbell in “consulting fees” by companies friendly to the White House, just as Hubbell was facing prison time. Hubbell stood at the door of his home next to his wife