February 6, 1996
Web posted at: 10:30 p.m. EST
From CNN Producer Terry Frieden
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Clinton associate Webster Hubbell is likely to face some tough questioning Wednesday morning when he's transported to Capitol Hill from his prison cell in Cumberland, Maryland, to testify before the Senate Whitewater Committee.
"We're going to beat his brains out," predicted one Republican staff member involved in the hearings.
Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato was more cautious in his explanation of what is likely to unfold Wednesday.
"Now that we have these billing records, we'll begin to ask him in some detail that we were not able to before -- some questions very definitive as it relates to what work he did or didn't do, what work he was aware of, how it is that the billing records initially had his code name down," D'Amato said.
Hubbell was forced to resign as associate attorney general, the third highest post at the Justice Department, and later pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his law firm and clients through a billing scheme.
He is being brought by the U.S. Marshals Service from the Cumberland Federal Penitentiary to Capitol Hill to testify.
D'Amato and his staff have been analyzing the Rose Law Firm billing records found in the White House in January. They dispute first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's contention that the records confirm what she has said all along: That her work on behalf of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan was minimal.
D'Amato and other GOP senators claim her work on behalf of the S&L, owned by the Clintons' Whitewater real estate partner James McDougal, is far greater than previously known. D'Amato expressed particular concern about Mrs. Clinton's legal work on behalf of a controversial McDougal project known as Castle Grande.
Investigators later determined that the transactions involving that thousand-acre real estate development project south of Little Rock amounted to a fraudulent scheme designed to benefit McDougal associate Seth Ward.
Ward is father-in-law of Webster Hubbell, a partner with Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm, and a close personal friend of President Clinton.
D'Amato said Tuesday that the roles of both Hubbell and Mrs. Clinton in legal work for the Castle Grande project will be the primary focus of Wednesday's testimony.
Democrats on the Whitewater committee have sought to minimize the significance of the information in the recently discovered billing records.
Also Tuesday, Democrats claimed that the records shed little additional light on Mrs. Clinton's role in legal representation for Madison Savings and Loan. No member of either party has claimed that Mrs. Clinton broke any laws.
GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, however, told regulators that he finds it impossible to believe she was unaware of illegal transactions going on around her.
"How could she not know? It would be like a blind horse in a battle," Faircloth said.
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