Clinton Legal Team Returns $600,000 in Contributions

Officials of President Clinton’s legal defense fund said Monday that they returned or rejected more than $600,000 in donations this year because of “significant concerns” about the sources of the money, delivered by a friend of the president from Little Rock, Ark.

Some of the checks, turned in at different times by Charles Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, seemed to have identical handwriting, fund officials said Monday. Their investigation also raised questions about whether all the contributors used their own money.

Corporate checks were offered, in violation of the trust’s rules. And some of the donations were in sequentially numbered money orders but from people in different cities.

In addition, the defense fund’s investigation was concerned that much of the money was raised at meetings in the United States organized by Ching Hai, a Buddhist organization based in Taiwan that is under investigation in that country. The unusual sect combines religious asceticism with a financial link to high-fashion clothing worn by its founder, a 46-year-old Vietnamese woman.

Under rules Clinton’s defense fund set for itself, contributions must be made voluntarily by individuals, using their own personal funds, and cannot exceed $1,000 a year.

Trie is the owner of a Chinese restaurant that Clinton frequented while governor of Arkansas. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

“The prudent course was to return all of these contributions,” said Michael H. Cardozo, executive director of the fund.

Trie was appointed to a presidential commission on Asian trade in April, less than a month after his first delivery of contributions. A White House official rejected any notion that the two events were linked.

*

“The idea that there was a cause and effect between the money and the appointment is ridiculous,” said Lanny Davis, special counsel to the president. “The appointment to the commission would have been in the works long before” the delivery of the donations.

The surprising disclosure about the defense-fund contributions comes on the heels of revelations during the last two months of questionable, foreign-linked political contributions to the Democratic Party and the president’s reelection committee, an issue that haunted Clinton in the final stages of his reelection campaign and has prompted the White House to describe campaign reform as an administration priority for 1997.

Although Trie has figured in the investigation of campaign donations, there were no suggestions Monday that the contributions targeted for the Clinton defense fund were from overseas. Indeed, Cardozo maintained that much of the money may have been legitimate. But he said that enough questions surrounded the donations to cause the return of the money to contributors “out of an abundance of caution.”

“We respect the individual judgment of the trustees who, under advice from outside counsel, acted responsibly in the decision announced today,” a White House official said in a brief statement.

The fund was established in 1994 to help pay legal fees incurred by the president or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after they entered the White House in 1993. The president and first lady currently face more than $2.2 million in legal bills arising from ongoing inquiries into their involvement in the Whitewater real estate development and other matters.

Minus the returned money, the fund totals less than $100,000. “We are losing ground,” Cardozo said.

The return of the money is certain to focus more attention on Trie’s behind-the-scenes role in campaign fund-raising for Clinton. Even before Monday’s announcement, there were growing indications that Trie had a hand in orchestrating questionable contributions to the president’s reelection committee.

One such contribution came from Keshi Zhan, a friend of Trie’s who earns an annual salary of $22,408 as a municipal employee in Arlington, Va. Zhan has denied that Trie supplied the $12,500 that she gave to the Democratic Party, and insists it was her money.

A native of Taiwan, Trie first met Clinton while running a Chinese restaurant near the Arkansas state capitol in the 1980s.

One Trie acquaintance, who declined to be identified by name, said that Clinton and Trie still share a hearty embrace whenever they encounter each other.

Trie no longer spends his time running his restaurant. Instead, he has become an international business consultant. Trie, who now maintains an apartment at the Watergate complex in Washington, apparently has gone into business with Ng Lap-Seng, a Chinese-born real estate developer who lives in Macao.

Another close business associate of Trie is Antonio Pan, who formerly worked for another of Clinton’s friends: the wealthy Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady, and his son, James. The Riadys figure prominently in the questions that have surfaced over Democratic fund-raising with overseas links.

Trie also is known to be a friend of John Huang, the former Democratic fund-raiser who played a major role in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal or questionable contributions from Asian sources.

*

The latest tale of curious fund-raising began in March, when Trie arrived at the office of Cardozo, a Washington investment banker and fund administrator, and plunked down $460,000 on his desk.

“He laid down the checks on the table,” then went to a lunch appointment at the Palm restaurant near Cardozo’s offices in downtown Washington, the director of the defense fund said.

Cardozo said Monday that he immediately turned down part of the money because it appeared curious or ineligible on its face, for reasons such as identical handwriting or having been written on corporate checks. The remaining $378,300, contributed by 409 individuals (although not Trie), was deposited in an interest-bearing account at NationsBank.

Cardozo maintained that, even though the money was deposited in an interest-bearing account, the trust fund did not consider it officially accepted until the end of its six-month reporting period. “It gave us a three-month window in which to review the circumstances” and turn over questions to professional investigators, he said.

Cardozo said that he met with the first lady on April 4 at the White House to inform her of the situation involving the donations and that she did not initially recall who Trie was. When told that Trie had identified himself as a restaurant owner in Little Rock, the first lady said she thought that he might have owned a restaurant where Clinton ate when he was governor.

*

She advised Cardozo to exercise “due diligence,” he said. “She was insistent that we be scrupulous in our attention to this.”

About the same time, Trie returned with another $179,000 but Cardozo said that the fund could not accept the new offerings until it had resolved the status of the earlier $378,300.

At the end of June, Cardozo said, the fund decided to send back the $378,300. Even then, Clinton’s would-be benefactors were not exhausted. In July, 136 of the original contributors sent in $122,585.

In the course of its investigation, the fund discovered that much of the money being funneled to it by Trie had been raised with the help of meetings organized by Ching Hai, the Buddhist church based in Taiwan. It was founded by Suma Ching Hai, a Vietnamese artist and designer who has lectured in Southern California.

The church is different from a Buddhist group in Southern California embroiled in a fund-raising controversy involving Vice President Al Gore.

The Ching Hai sect has been under investigation by Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior since October, when authorities began looking into the group’s financial records as part of a general crackdown on religious cults on the island.

The Ching Hai sect is notable in part because it rejects idol worship, formal temples and offerings. Pilgrims to the sect headquarters worship in caves, furnished only with cots and basic camping gear. On the other hand, the sect apparently generates most of its income from the sale of high fashion “Celestial Ornament” clothing worn, and in some cases designed by, the sect founder.

Asked why the fund did not disclose the situation before the November election, Cardozo said that it waited until it had completed its review of all the donations. The White House echoed that view.

“The time question was addressed by Mr. Cardozo and we have no comment beyond what he said,” the White House official said.

Trie has become a regular fixture at Democratic fund-raisers and other political events. In Chicago last summer, for example, he hosted a party for Asian American delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

In addition, Trie has been something of a business mentor to Mark Middleton, the young former presidential aide who has been criticized by White House personnel for using his ties to Clinton in an effort to become an international business deal-maker.

Times staff writers Rone Tempest in Beijing and Peter Hong in Los Angeles contributed to this story.