When Hillary Clinton decided to run for the New York Senate, she knew she needed to reach a vast array of voters, in order to win the Senate. What better way for her to get votes than to use her husband’s power of pardoning or commuting prison sentences.
At the time, Clinton's campaign was desperately trying to boost stagnant support for her among the state's key Jewish voters. Her opponent, former Long Island Republican Rep. Rick Lazio, seemed to be gaining momentum.
She knew that New York's Orthodox and chasidic communities would be a hard sell, as they were expressing their personal dislike for her and her positions, particularly regarding Israel. She needed to show she could win some support in Orthodox circles.
In August of 2000, Hillary Clinton campaigned in a small town north of New York City, called New Square, a Chasidic Jewish village of 7,000 residents in Rockland County New York. (Which formerly voted overwhelmingly for arch-conservative Sen. Alfonse D'Amato).
New Square was coping with a series of scandals in which top village officials were going to jail or fleeing the country for swindling tens of millions of dollars in federal education, housing and small-business subsidies in a decade-long scam.
One widely publicized case included laundering money through a phony yeshiva set up in Brooklyn.
Rabbi Twersky desperately wanted to win clemency for the four noted New Square residents who on Jan. 25, 1999 were convicted of 21 charges including conspiracy, embezzlement, and wire and mail fraud. Kalmen Stern, 42, was sentenced to 78 months; David Goldstein, 54, of Brooklyn, 70 months; Jacob Elbaum 40, 57 months; and Benjamin Berger, 30 months. They were ordered to pay back millions of dollars.
She met with Rabbi David Twersky, and afterwards, New Square officials began campaigning for Clinton, even outside the village, though Clinton's positions on such core issues as school vouchers, abortion and Israel were in opposition to New Square.
Community members drove around in cars with loudspeakers urging — in Yiddish — Rockland County Orthodox residents to vote for her. A Yiddish weekly endorsed her based on lobbying from New Square.
"It's not a secret their support was based on the hope that she would look kindly towards the people that are incarcerated," said Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, a prominent Orthodox leader who lives in nearby Monsey. "They really went out and helped her. It was an honest attempt to get votes and get support for Hillary Clinton."
On Election Day, Clinton carried New Square, 1,400 to 12. It was a glaring exception to much of the Orthodox world and New Square's chasidic neighbors, who voted overwhelmingly for Lazio.
Several weeks after her senate victory, she met with Rabbi David Twersky again, attending a meeting in the White House with President Clinton.
During a scheduled 15-minute meeting on Dec. 22 that stretched into 45 minutes, according to New Square officials, Rabbi Twersky raised the issue of seeking mercy for the New Square four and help for fugitive Chaim Berger in Israel.
Rabbi Twersky has never publicly commented about the sins of his community members, and repeatedly turned down interviews to explain the scandal.
That visit launched a series of events that culminated in a controversial last-minute clemency action on behalf of New Square by outgoing President Clinton.
The decision by President Clinton to commute the sentences of four prominent New Square men who stole tens of millions from the federal government in a phony yeshiva scheme enraged law enforcement officials. (Source:
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2001/012601e.htm)
Convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg (
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1806) was pardoned by Bill Clinton in January 2001, just days after Clinton left office. She was serving out the 16th year of a 58-year sentence for the possession of more than 700 pounds of explosives and a stockpile of illicit weapons.
Moreover, the onetime member of a leftist terrorist outfit called "The Family" was also a suspect in a 1981 robbery-gone-awry that left three people dead in Nyack, New York. She was involved with several terrorist groups in 1970s and early 1980s, including the Black Liberation Army, the Weather Underground.
In an attempt to win over New York's Latino voters, Bill Clinton pardoned 16 members of the FALN, a violent Puerto Rican nationalist group who had planted over 130 bombs in the U.S., that killed six people and injured 70 in New York City and Chicago.
The Latino vote (
http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/vol4n45/Hilary-en.shtml) lead Hillary to victory which many believe those pardon helped seal enough votes to secure the victory.
Perhaps the most controversial was the pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich and his former partner in Brooklyn New York, resident Pincus Green, both charged in 1983 with conducting the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history.
Rich, 65, who donates vast sums of money to Israel, is the ex-husband of Manhattan songwriter Denise Rich, who has contributed more than $320,000 to Democratic Party causes in the past two years and is a friend of the Clintons.
When Hillary runs for President, she’ll no longer have Bill to cut pardon deals for votes, but you can be sure she’ll be scheming and cutting other deals for votes to return to the White House.
In an attempt to again earn votes from Latinos in 2008, Hillary was seeking to have Puerto Rico vote in the next election. The ruling was denied, and was unsuccessfully overturned. Previous federal court rulings have held that the Constitution must be amended or the independent commonwealth must become a state before its residents can vote for president.
So she is attempting to buy Puerto Rico votes (
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/21/160848.shtml) with child-credit refunds on their Social Security and Medicare taxes.
