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Hubbell Pleads not guilty in court appearance
Updated November 23, 1998
1:26 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Presidential friend Webster Hubbell pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that he covered up his and Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in a fraudulent real estate development owned by
Mrs. Clinton's Whitewater business partner and Hubbell's
father-in-law.
"I am not guilty," Hubbell told U.S. District Judge James
Robertson.
Charged with 15 felonies, the former associate attorney general
is accused of participating in a scheme to impede federal
regulators investigating the collapse of the Arkansas savings and
loan operated by President and Mrs. Clinton's business partners,
Jim and Susan McDougal.
The 40-page indictment, which refers to Mrs. Clinton three dozen
times, alleges Hubbell lied to federal regulators and Congress over
a seven-year span ending on Dec. 27, 1995. That was nine days
before the mysterious reappearance of Mrs. Clinton's law firm
billing records that revealed her work on a failed McDougal
development south of Little Rock called Castle Grande.
Mrs. Clinton's records turned up in the White House family
residence and were turned over to prosecutor Kenneth Starr in
January 1996, two years after they were first subpoenaed.
In testimony Thursday to the House Judiciary Committee, Starr
said that "after a thorough investigation, we have found no
explanation how the billing records got where they were or why they
were not discovered and produced earlier. It remains a mystery to
this day."
Jim McDougal and Hubbell's father-in-law, prominent Little Rock
businessman Seth Ward, owned the 1,050-acre Castle Grande
development, which federal regulators concluded was riddled with
"insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips."
The indictment alleges that Hubbell "falsified, covered up by
scheme and concealed ... the true nature" of the relationship
between Hubbell, Mrs. Clinton and their law firm and Ward and the
Castle Grande development.
The indictment accuses Hubbell of perjury, fraud, false
statements and corruptly impeding the functions of the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Resolution Trust Corp.
The failure of the McDougals' S&L has cost taxpayers $65
million. Regulators estimate $3.8 million in damages to the S&L
from the Castle Grande transactions.
— Pete Yost
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