From The Washington Post, 12/20/03:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16412-2003Dec19.html
Ashcroft Not Queried On Campaign Funds
Critics See Weakness in Election Panel
By Walter Pincus and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
During more than two years of investigating two campaign committees
that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft maintained when he was in the
Senate, the Federal Election Commission never directly questioned
Ashcroft or obtained a sworn statement from him even though the issue
of his personal ownership of a mailing list and the income it produced
were central to the inquiry.
Ellen L. Weintraub, chairwoman of the FEC, said she and the other two
Democrats on the panel did not have the required four votes to carry a
motion to interview Ashcroft.
In addition, she said, all the commissioners did not want to be seen
as "harassing the attorney general of the United States" and so never
sought to question him.
Critics of the commission say the handling of the case illustrates the
FEC's reluctance to aggressively investigate people in power -- a
tendency exacerbated by the partisan split among the six
commissioners.
By law, three are from each party.
"The FEC is known to be 'squeamish' about bothering people in the
administration," said Lawrence M. Noble, a former FEC general counsel
and now executive director of the Committee for Responsive Politics.
Noble said the first choice when dealing with someone central to an
investigation would be a deposition; second would be written
questions; third would be an affidavit; and the last choice would be a
statement from his lawyer.
"They bypassed all these," Noble said, "and the result is a weak
ending to an important case."
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Reichsfuehrer Asscroft gets away with another crime.
Harry
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