Sen. Ted Kennedy's brother-in-law, who pled guilty to bank fraud charges yesterday in New Orleans, secretly tape recorded former top Hillary Clinton campaign aide David Rosen - and may have taped Hillary herself - as part of an FBI probe into an Aug. 12, 2000 gala fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton's Senate campaign.
| Well, so much for being invited to vacation on the Cape. |
Ray Reggie, the brother of Kennedy's wife Victoria Reggie, was identified by prosecutors yesterday as the confidential witness who had been cooperating with investigators for three years as part of his bank fraud plea bargain. "I wasn't sure if anybody made any of these connections yet or not," Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, Jan Mann, told the New York Sun, which first reported the wiretapping on Thursday. Prosecutors say Rosen, who served as finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate race, "made a number of incriminating statements" on the Reggie tapes, which they intend to introduce at his trial, set to begin on May 3. 
In an indictment announced in January, Rosen was charged with hiding from the Federal Election Commission hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the related to the Hollywood gala. Mr. Reggie traveled extensively with both Bill and Hillary Clinton, put together fundraisers for the former first couple and was an overnight guest at the Clinton White House. During a June 2000 White House visit, the Clintons and the Reggies stayed up late into the night "chatting," the New York Post said. Asked if Reggie may have also recorded one or both of the Clintons, attorney David Kendall "had no immediate response," the Sun said. The key government witness was "wearing a wire and making secret tapes as recently as last December," the Post said. Another key witness in the probe, celebrity fundraiser Aaron Tonken, says the FBI asked him to record his conversations with Mrs. Clinton, in a bid to gather evidence about the Aug. 2000 fundraiser, which Tonken helped produce. But Clinton insiders suspected he was cooperating with investigators and refused to take his calls. If Mrs. Clinton was captured on tape making comments indicating she knew the extent of Rosen's alleged misdeeds, it could have a devastating impact on her plans to run for president in 2008.
Both Tonken and Hollywood mogul Peter Paul - who bankrolled the Clinton gala - say they personally apprised the top Democrat about the costs of the fundraiser. "I told her about virtually every penny I'd spent on her behalf," Tonken recalled in his recent book "King of Cons." "I told her about the money and what a pleasure it was to spend it on her [Senate] candidacy." Mr. Paul says Mrs. Clinton was even involved in trying to trim some of the event's production costs. "Hillary Clinton personally called the producer of the concert part of this event," he told Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn last November. "She asked him to lower the fee that he was charging of $850,000 at my request. So I don't understand how she could possibly say that she didn't know" about the costs. | Since she is one of the smartest women on the planet |
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