OPINION:
ABC News Chief Investigative Reporter Brian Ross just wanted to ask a few questions but when he recently stopped Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, a burly guard for Mr. Mayorkas put his palm in Mr. Ross’ face to make it clear that there would be no answers that day. ABC News’ camera crew caught the deputy secretary ducking away.
Mr. Mayorkas’ immediate problem is his prior service as head of Homeland Security’s immigration program and most particularly, its highly controversial $500,000 Green Card program for foreign investors. According to Mr. Ross and his colleague Matthew Mosk, there is deep suspicion that foreign “criminals,” “narcotics traffickers,” and “child pornographers” are abusing the program to gain immediate entrance and residency in the United States. Even more alarming, ABC News points to possible “espionage” issues involving at least one Iranian-born investor in Los Angeles who may be “smuggling” potential terrorists into the United States. There is also a great deal of worry over some Chinese users of the program. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told ABC News of his concern that the visa program Mr. Mayorkas ran may “undermine the national security of the United States.”
Mr. Mayorkas could skate free on this one, but it’s going to be difficult. In addition to the ABC News team, Mr. Mayorkas faces a Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigation based at least in part of what Homeland Security whistleblowers have told Sen. Grassley.
The Mayorkas saga goes back at least 15 years to a major cocaine kingpin from Los Angeles who wanted to get out of federal prison. This story was extensively reported by the late Barbara Olson in “The Final Days” (Regnery, 2001).
According to her account, one Carlos Anibal Vignali was a “high volume cocaine trafficker convicted of shipping almost half a ton of drug to Minneapolis. There the cocaine was turned into crack and sold in poor neighborhoods at a substantial markup.” A U.S. Department of Justice attorney in Minneapolis declared that “[Vignali] was a major source in keeping a drug organization here being fed with dope from California.”
So in late 2000, Mr. Vignali was looking at some serious hard time in the federal penitentiary. But then, as the attorney later said, “Word around the prison was that it was the right time to approach the president.” With that news, a flood of money from Mr. Vignali’s wealthy family began to flow to Democratic politicians, and letters and phone calls went out from them to the Clinton White House seeking a presidential commutation for Vignali.
At the time, Alejandro Mayorkas was the Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney for Los Angeles. His job was to prosecute major criminals like Mr. Vignali and make sure they stay in prison. However, as Ms. Olson noted, “Remarkably, Mayorkas called the Clinton White House on behalf of the convicted felon (Vignali).” When he heard about Mayorkas intervention for Mr. Vignali, Assistant U.S. Attorney Duncan DeVille fired off an angry resignation letter. Mr. Mayorkas was his boss in Los Angeles and Mr. DeVille knew he had no credibility in the fight against organized crime under these circumstances.
President Clinton commuted Mr. Vignali’s sentence to time served but Mr. Mayorkas is only half the story here. If Mr. Mayorkas was the Mr. Outside giving a cover of legitimacy for this travesty, there was also a Mr. Inside, and that would be Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother. Barbara Olson reported that the Vignali family paid Mr. Rodham $200,000 “for Carlos’ ticket to freedom.”
To the extent that Mr. Mayorkas is in the news now tied to activities that are the subject of an inspector general’s probe and likely full Judiciary Committee hearings, the trail could lead to the Rodham family and Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In 1998, a Capitol Hill colleague and I wrote “Year of the Rat” (Regnery), an account of how Chinese military intelligence gained financial inroads into the Clinton administration. The book was a New York Times best-seller, and an investigative team from The New York Times won a Pulitzer for its separate reporting on the same subject. While we were looking at actions taken by Mr. Clinton, we kept coming across the trail of Mrs. Clinton. All the cast of characters from those days — Johnny Chung, John Huang, James Riady and others — certainly ended up at Mr. Clinton’s doorstep, but they went through the Mrs. Clinton’s first. This is also true of all of the other Clinton-era scandals that don’t involve sexual abuse of women — Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater and cattle futures. All roads led to Hillary.
When Mr. Mayorkas was confirmed by the Senate in 2013, all the Republicans present voted against him and all the Democrats voted for him. If he came up for confirmation again today, he would probably be defeated on a bipartisan vote. Hillary would not want Mr. Mayorkas anywhere in sight.
• William C. Triplett II is the former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations.
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