Mrs. Clinton’s Commodity Transactions Called Legal : Investments: Expert, asked by family to review trading records, finds no violations. Analysis backs previous White House assertions on the issue.
The White House released additional records Thursday related to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s commodities trading activities in further efforts to show that she did nothing illegal or unethical in making her investments.
The White House also issued a brief analysis by a commodities expert who was asked by the Clintons to review her trading, in which he found that she “violated no rules in the course of her transactions.”
Leo Melamed, former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the nation’s largest commodities exchanges, noted in a statement that the new records released by Mrs. Clinton confirm his assessment that she broke no rules. The new data from the Chicago exchange “largely confirms and also complements” records from Mrs. Clinton’s brokerage account released last month by the White House, he said.
“These records are being released today . . . to give as complete a picture as possible of Mrs. Clinton’s trading,” said Lisa Caputo, Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary.
Caputo said that the records were not released earlier because Mrs. Clinton had not known of their existence at the Chicago exchange. Caputo said the new records corroborate those released by Mrs. Clinton last month from her brokerage account at the commodities brokerage firm where she invested beginning in 1978.
In particular, the new records confirm, Melamed’s review stated, that the First Lady did not violate the rules in her first, and perhaps most controversial commodities trade, in which she turned a $1,000 investment into $6,300 overnight.
Melamed said that the records provide more detailed information about Mrs. Clinton’s first day of trading than was available from the earlier records. They show, he said, that Mrs. Clinton had risked her money in the transaction, demonstrating that it was a legitimate investment and not some form of favorable insider transaction arranged by her broker.
In that one trade, Mrs. Clinton sold 10 December live cattle contracts on Oct. 11, 1978, at the price of $57.55 a pound, and offset this trade with a purchase of 10 December live cattle contracts the following day at a price of $56.10 a pound for a profit of $5,300, after commissions.
He noted while Mrs. Clinton did not have enough margin, or reserves in her account to cover her exposure in the trade, that “does not represent a rule violation by the customer. Rather, it is an issue between the clearing firm and the exchange.” His statement is consistent with previous White House assertions that, if there were any such rule violations, they were the fault of her broker.
Elsewhere Thursday, Whitewater special counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr. met with House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) to discuss the possible schedule of congressional hearings on the Whitewater controversy. After the meeting, Foley said that the House will not begin Whitewater hearings before late July.
Fiske is looking into allegations that President Clinton may have benefited improperly from his association with James B. McDougal, owner of the failed Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan and partner with the Clintons in an Ozark real estate development firm known as Whitewater Development Corp.
Foley’s statement came in the wake of increasing Republican demands that the Democratic congressional leadership not try to back out of its commitment to permit hearings. The Republicans want hearings scheduled as soon as possible and Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York, a leading Republican Whitewater critic, introduced a resolution this week calling for the creation of a 16-member Whitewater committee.
But Democratic leaders have said that they do not want to begin hearings until Fiske has completed the first phase of his investigation into the Washington-related elements of the controversy.
