Panel Says 4 Refuse to Aid DNC Probe

A Republican-led House committee investigating Democratic Party fund-raising said Wednesday that four figures in the controversy have refused to cooperate, including former Associate Atty. Gen. Webster Hubbell and former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang.

As a result, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, said that the panel has issued subpoenas to the four.

The subpoenas were issued to Hubbell, Huang, former White House aide Mark Middleton and Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, a former Little Rock, Ark., restaurant owner and friend of President Clinton. The four have refused to provide documents requested by the committee.

“I am disappointed that these individuals, some of whom were high-ranking Clinton administration officials, have declined to cooperate with the committee,” Burton said in a statement. “The president has pledged full cooperation in this matter, and I would hope that the president’s appointees and friends would honor his commitment.”

The Senate, which is conducting its own investigation, is poised to issue nearly 50 subpoenas as early as today, aides said. Those requests for documents will go to both political parties, the Commerce Department and many of the major figures involved, including Huang.

The Senate’s investigation, by the Governmental Affairs Committee, will run concurrently with other inquiries on the House side. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, has requested $6.5 million to hire 80 attorneys, investigators and other staff members. Democrats are seeking to reduce the funding level, which they call excessive, and pushing to finish the investigation by year’s end.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) were meeting Wednesday night to try to forge a compromise to allow the Senate investigation to proceed, aides said. Daschle has vowed to stall the funding issue by filibuster if Republicans attempt to push through a plan Democrats oppose.

Huang, Middleton and Trie, all central figures in the fund-raising scandal, have admitted that they were involved in soliciting contributions, some of which have proved to be illegal, from Asian and Asian American donors.

Hubbell figures into the panel’s investigation because he received payments from Huang’s former employer, Moctar Riady of Indonesia, shortly after he resigned his Justice Department post in 1994.

Republicans have charged that the payments from Riady were designed to prevent Hubbell from cooperating with an independent counsel investigation of Whitewater. Hubbell subsequently was imprisoned on charges brought by the independent counsel.

He was released from a halfway house Wednesday after serving 17 months for tax evasion and mail fraud in the bilking of former clients.

Times staff writer Marc Lacey contributed to this story.