Say Anything Blog

As if Hillary needed any more bad news:

The recent brouhaha over Hollywood mogul David Geffen’s support for the candidacy of Barack Obama and his disparaging remarks about Bill and Hillary Clinton, money, presidential pardons, and the cost of being a “friend of Bill,” has focused attention on another unsavory aspect of Hillary’s run for the White House… her brothers.

Two days ago, a federal bankruptcy judge froze the bank account of Hillary’s brother, Anthony “Tony” Rodham.  A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee is demanding that Hillary’s brother repay over $100,000 in “loans” he received from United Shows of America, Inc., a Nashville carnival company.

The money was apparently from the company’s owners, Edgar Allen Gregory, Jr. and his wife Vonna Jo, and was “loaned” to Rodham in exchange for his help in obtaining a Presidential pardon from Rodham’s brother-in-law, then-President Bill Clinton.  The couple had been convicted of bank fraud in 1982 plea agreement for making illicit loans (irony alert).

At the time of the pardon, the Department of Justice said it opposed the pardon.  Rodham denied this.  He also denied in an interview with CNN’s Larry King that he had been compensated in any way for his role in obtaining the pardon for Mr. and Mrs. Gregory.

Of course, Tony Rodham isn’t the only one of Hillary’s brothers to get in on the lucrative presidential pardon business during her tenure as First Lady.  Her other brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid more than $400,000 for his assistance in obtaining presidential pardons for two convicted felons, one a cocaine dealer and the other sentenced to 18 months for fraud in connection with millions of dollars in unpaid federal taxes.

Brother Hugh has said that he later returned the money.

With all the other albatrosses from her husband’s administration (FBI files, White House Travel Office scandal, Marc Rich pardon, etc.) and her own fund-raising scandals to deal with, Hillary can ill-afford to have her brothers’ sleazy behavior weighing down her chances any further.

The next 12 to 18 months promise to be very entertaining if nothing else.  Personally, I don’t think she will get the nomination… much less the presidency.