2 Lawyers Say Roger Clinton Sought Payment for Pardons

Lawyers for two men who sought presidential clemency said Friday that their clients were solicited to pay large sums of money in return for Roger Clinton’s help in their cases.

In one case, a Texas man paid $200,000 in two installments to an Arkansas firm to secure clemency for his brother, who was imprisoned for fraud, said New York attorney Edward W. Hayes. The convict was not released.

In the second, Arkansas lawyer Gene O’Daniel said his client, a North Little Rock caterer, was approached to pay $30,000 in return for Clinton’s help in winning a pardon for a 10-year-old felony conviction.

“I told him it was crazy,” O’Daniel said in an interview. “I had to talk him out of it.” The caterer ultimately received a pardon without paying Clinton, O’Daniel said.

Allegations about Clinton’s role in seeking clemencies also have surfaced in a third case, involving a Louisiana man. However, the man’s attorney said no money was solicited or paid on his client’s behalf.

The new developments come as a New York grand jury broadens its inquiry into controversial pardons that President Clinton, Roger Clinton’s half-brother, granted in the final days of his administration.

Although the clemency actions are final, the new information appears to increase the chances of further legal repercussions if investigators conclude that bribery, fraud or other crimes occurred.

Like Clinton brother-in-law Hugh Rodham, who was paid--and then returned--more than $400,000 to win clemencies for a Los Angeles drug dealer and a convicted herbal remedy marketer, Roger Clinton enjoyed unfettered White House access and appears to have tried to use it to influence the clemency process, say those involved in the new cases.

The fraud case is the first public allegation that money was paid for Roger Clinton’s influence with his brother.

Roger Clinton Remains Silent

Repeated telephone calls to Roger Clinton at his Torrance home went unanswered Friday. A spokeswoman for Roger Clinton, who works and travels as an entertainer, said: “We don’t have any comments or statements coming forward at this point. I’m sure he will at some point.”

Garland Lincecum, of Dallas, was prosecuted in New York, where federal officials have convened a grand jury to investigate the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich and other New York defendants who sought presidential clemency.

Lincecum was convicted in August 1998 and sentenced to seven years and two months in prison for his role in a multimillion-dollar investment fraud case.

Three months later, his brother, Guy Lincecum of Roanoke, Texas, paid the first of two $100,000 installments to members of an Arkansas law firm that he understood was linked to Roger Clinton, said Hayes, who represents the Lincecum family.

The Lincecum family paid “intermediaries who said Roger Clinton could get Garland Lincecum either a pardon or a commutation of his sentence,” Hayes said.

“They paid it to an individual who said he was an associate of Roger Clinton. . . . They paid on the theory that he would be pardoned.”

Guy Lincecum declined to discuss the matter, saying he had been admonished to keep quiet by FBI agents. “I can’t talk to you,” he said Friday.

Sources familiar with the matter said the money was paid to C.L.M. LLC, a now-defunct Arkansas firm. Dickie Morton, one of the firm’s associates, is a close friend of Roger Clinton. Clinton was closely associated with the firm, the sources added, but his exact role was unclear Friday night.

Hayes provided The Times with copies of the two canceled $100,000 checks from November and December 1998, signed by Guy Lincecum.

Garland Lincecum remains in the federal prison in El Reno, Okla. He was convicted along with Paul W. Eggers, former general counsel in President Nixon’s Treasury Department. They were among four people who promised a group of Southern Californians large returns on investments that never materialized.

In the second case reportedly involving Roger Clinton, an Arkansas lawyer told The Times on Friday that he had to talk his client, a North Little Rock caterer, out of paying Clinton to help arrange a presidential pardon for his 10-year-old felony conviction.

O’Daniel, an attorney for Phillip David Young, said in an interview with The Times that his client “was ready to do it,” referring to the proposed deal. “I told him he was crazy,” O’Daniel said, and in the end, “he didn’t.”

O’Daniel said his intervention scuttled the proposed arrangement. Young received a pardon Jan. 20 for his conviction on a violation of federal wildlife laws.

O’Daniel said Young turned down an initial proposal calling for him to pay Roger Clinton $30,000 to aid in his presidential pardon request. Young subsequently was seriously considering a scaled-down payment of $15,000 when O’Daniel learned of the offer and ordered his client to abandon the idea, O’Daniel said.

He said Young did not tell him exactly how the offer had been made--or whether Roger Clinton had offered the proposal in person or through an intermediary.

“Frankly, I didn’t want to know,” O’Daniel said. “All I know is he was ready to do it and he didn’t.”

Irritated at what he perceived as Roger Clinton’s “meddling,” O’Daniel said he reported the solicitation attempt to the Justice Department in early January in two telephone conversations with the pardon attorney’s office.

“I was upset,” he said. “I didn’t want my client’s chances jeopardized because of a buffoon like Roger Clinton sticking his nose in it.”

Young, who works in a family restaurant in North Little Rock, did not respond to attempts to reach him there.

Investigation Expands Beyond Rich, N.Y. Case

The pardon solicitation to Young was referred to Justice prosecutors soon after O’Daniel called the pardon attorney’s office. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors in New York, already looking into the pardons of Rich and four convicted swindlers from a Hassidic Jewish community in New York, expanded their inquiry to focus on Roger Clinton.

O’Daniel, a former federal prosecutor who now defends criminal clients, said Friday that neither he nor Young has been contacted by government investigators. He said that both would cooperate with any federal probe.

“I felt it was my duty” to report the contacts, O’Daniel said.

Despite working for years in his family’s business in North Little Rock, Young had “never met Roger Clinton, didn’t know him,” O’Daniel said. Young also had previously denied ever being “contacted” by Roger Clinton--a comment that suggested the pardon solicitation involved a third party.

When Young told O’Daniel of the approaches, the lawyer added, “I told him I wouldn’t give that man 15 cents.”

O’Daniel, who also represented a defendant in the mid-1980s Arkansas cocaine trial that ended in Roger Clinton’s federal conviction, said, “I saw Roger in action, and when I heard his name again, I wasn’t going to let him screw it up for Phillip.”

Roger Clinton pleaded guilty in 1985 to conspiring to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was released to a halfway house in Dallas after spending a year in a federal prison in Fort Worth. On Jan. 20, President Clinton pardoned his brother for his cocaine conviction.

“Roger Clinton likes to go around bragging that his brother does things for him and can do things for other people. That was what he was doing here [in January], and that’s what I was worried about,” O’Daniel said.

Clemency Sought So He Could Hunt

In 1991, according to O’Daniel, Young was apprehended by federal wildlife agents after illegally buying a shipment of 5,000 crappies south of Monroe, La. “He was bringing it back to Arkansas,” intending to fry the fish for catering clients. “They’re some of the best eating you’ll find,” O’Daniel said.

At Catfish Young’s, which abuts a sandblasting factory on an industrial strip in North Little Rock, a manager said Thursday that Young was “out of town on business.”

Young was convicted and sentenced on Aug. 20, 1992, to 10 months in prison and three years’ supervised release. O’Daniel said Young applied for presidential clemency in November 1998 “so he could get his hunting license back.”

Shortly after Jan. 1 of this year, O’Daniel said, Young told the lawyer about the pardon solicitation and Roger Clinton’s involvement.

“The initial offer was that it could be done for $30,000,” O’Daniel said. “My client told me about it, and I told him absolutely no way. Then it was dropped to $15,000.”

Young still refused, his lawyer said.

O’Daniel said he called the pardon attorney’s office in Washington. First he asked whether such a solicitation was legal and was told it was not. In a second call, about a week later, O’Daniel said he told of the offers and Roger Clinton’s involvement.

“I told them I believed he was shopping pardons,” O’Daniel said. “I asked would it jeopardize my client if it shows up that Roger Clinton was involved in it. I didn’t want something to come in at the last minute to screw things up. [The Justice attorney] said it wouldn’t screw it up if I reported it.”

O’Daniel said he has known “Bill Clinton since law school.”

He added: “I’m not after him. Bill can’t be responsible for what Roger does. He’s not his daddy; he’s his brother.”

The Louisiana case involves Joseph “Jay” McKernan Jr., who served time in a Texas prison with Roger Clinton and was promised clemency by the president’s half-brother in January, McKernan’s lawyer, Richard G. Crane, told The Times on Friday.

On President Clinton’s last day in office, Roger Clinton told McKernan that the pardon he sought “was signed on the dotted line,” Crane said.

But McKernan later learned that the pardon was not granted, a denial that prompted Crane to call the Justice Department. Crane said no money was solicited or paid in his client’s case.

McKernan was in repeated contact with Roger Clinton, Crane said, but “at no time did the issue of money come up.”

Crane said Roger Clinton talked to McKernan “on a number of occasions. [McKernan] got the impression that Roger had talked to his brother and that he would let Jay know the best time for him and I to submit the proper papers.”

A Promised Pardon Never Came True

Crane, who specializes in post-conviction appeals and clemencies, already had helped McKernan win a pardon from Louisiana, where he had been convicted and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and three years’ probation for a 1985 cocaine sale conviction in New Orleans.

Crane had submitted McKernan’s pardon request two years ago, but it was not until January, he said, that McKernan told him Roger Clinton had taken an active role in the case.

“It was Jay’s impression,” Crane said, “that Roger had talked to his brother and said he would let Jay know the best time for them to act.”

On Jan. 20, President Clinton’s last day in office and the day he issued 177 clemencies, Roger Clinton told McKernan in a phone call that the pardon had been granted, Crane said.

“He said his brother had signed it,” Crane said.

But when the lawyer checked the list on the Internet, McKernan’s name was not on the list.

Crane said he called the pardon attorney’s office to see “if there had been a mistake. I was wondering if there was some other list.”

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Braun reported from Arkansas and Serrano from Washington.