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Posted on 01/10/2003 4:41:24 AM PST by Liz
This is a partial transcript from The O'Reilly Factor, January 8, 2003. Click (web site) to order the complete transcript.
Watch The O'Reilly Factor weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET and listen to the Radio Factor!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the Unresolved Problems segment tonight, the federal government will not bring charges against Global Crossing Chairman Gary Winnick.
On Christmas Eve, Attorney General Ashcroft announced no indictment would be forthcoming. Mr. Ashcroft timed the announcement so few would see or hear it. That's because Winnick is a genuine villain, in my opinion, and most people know it.
He lives on a $100-million estate in Bel Air, California, after taking out $740 million from a company that went bankrupt after that. Winnick's house has 43 room, including 15 bedrooms and 17 baths. Winnick also reportedly owns two other houses in Malibu and another one in Brentwood, as well as yachts and everything else you would expect from a robber baron.
With all this money, Winnick is connected. He has played golf with Bill Clinton and DNC chief Terry McAuliffe. Somehow, after the putting was over, $1 million from Winnick found its way to the Clinton library, and McAuliffe was given the opportunity to invest $100,000 in Global Crossing. He sold his stock for $18 million well before the crash.
In addition, Winnick hired George Bush senior to give a speech and paid him with stock. Mr. Bush cashed out for a reported $4-1/2 million.
With us now in the studio is former federal prosecutor Doug Burns and, from Los Angeles, Brian Lysaght, another former federal prosecutor, who has been closely following the Winnick case.
Were you surprised Ashcroft didn't indict him, Mr. Lysaght?
BRIAN LYSAGHT, ATTORNEY FOR WHISTLEBLOWER: I was shocked. We actually represent Roy Ellison, who's the whistleblower in Global Crossing, and we were expecting an indictment any time. It's just mindboggling.
O'REILLY: What did he do? Tell the folks and me and Mr. Burns what exactly did Winnick do.
LYSAGHT: Well, he cre -- he learned at the knee of Michael Milken. He probably was going to get indicted with Milken except probably turned states evidence when Giuliani indicted Milken.
He started this company, which never made a dime. He had personally made $740 million, as you've mentioned. All his cronies made many, many, many ten of millions of dollars more, and he absolutely crushed the shareholders and 401(k) participants.
And he did it by a very simple accounting fraud, which is known as either Lazy Susan trades or roundtable trades, but essentially illegal swaps.
And the day before the Ashcroft invest -- the Ashcroft announcement on December 24, there was a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal by Dennis Berman talking extensively about the evidence that these swaps were nothing more than pure unadulterated nonsense designed to boost revenues, and it was done across the telecommunications industry, across the Internet industry, and, indeed, across the energy industry by Enron itself.
O'REILLY: So the crime you say he committed is fraud. He basically was basically telling investors --
And I did have some Global Crossing stock, which is recommended by a -- excuse me -- a money manager named John Deschauer (ph), not only recommended but pounded on the table continually by Deschauer (ph), and I foolishly bought the stock.
So you're saying that Winnick all along knew that his company was a shell company, not able to earn legitimate money, and was moving things around to give the appearance of future profit?
LYSAGHT: Yes, especially in the 2000, 2001 time period. Once a fellow by the name of Joseph Pirone (ph), who was the Andersen account executive -- of course, Andersen was the auditors of Global Crossing, like everybody else -- he actually went from Andersen over to Global Crossing and, from our view, orchestrated this entire scam, and...
O'REILLY: All right. I'm going to get to Mr. Burns to reply in a minute, but one more question. Obviously, as we've pointed out -- excuse me again -- Winnick gave big money to important people.
LYSAGHT: Right.
O'REILLY: Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, and George Bush the elder. All right. He gave them big money. There's no disputing that. Everybody knows that. Do you believe that influenced John Ashcroft not to indict him?
LYSAGHT: Well, I'm pretty sure -- it's actually about 55-45 Republicans and Democrats. Everybody has a little tar from that tar baby. But, as far as the indictment itself, it was pretty much handled by the local office out here.
O'REILLY: No, but Ashcroft has to make the call. You know that.
LYSAGHT: And I wish he would. I wish it was...
O'REILLY: But he hasn't and he won't. Now the question is: Was the fix in?
LYSAGHT: Hope springs eternal that Ashcroft is going to change his mind, but I don't know if...
O'REILLY: He's not.
LYSAGHT: You know, I'm a former federal prosecutor. It's inconceivable to me that any prosecutor gets paid off, but it's also inconceivable to me that they're not indicting Winnick. That's just mindboggling.
O'REILLY: Well, why would Ashcroft make the announcement on Christmas Eve? Come on. You know the game.
LYSAGHT: To bury it. To bury it.
O'REILLY: Of course. Of course. Something not right here.
Mr. Burns, why don't you weigh in on this?
DOUG BURNS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I find this interesting because, normally, the complaint is that prosecutors are overzealous, OK, and, when they're in a high-publicity case against a high-publicity target, they want to put a notch on their belt because...
O'REILLY: It depends who the target is. Ken Lay is still...
BURNS: But what's the complaint here, that they're underzealous? I mean, the point is we don't know...
O'REILLY: The complaint here is the fix might be in because this guy greased two presidents and the head of the DNC.
BURNS: Well, I think our other guest is very careful, obviously, not to, you know, agree with that type of allegation. That's very serious.
O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not making any allegation. I want everybody to be clear. I'm giving you the facts. Big money flowed from Gary Winnick to three very powerful Americans. There's no question about that, all right?
BURNS: Right.
O'REILLY: So you can draw your own conclusions of whether that helped him or not. But you -- are you sticking up for Winnick?
BURNS: Not at all. I'm telling you that federal prosecutors out there, who ordinarily would be quite zealous in this type of case -- I was in a case in Los Angeles myself with that office. They weren't cutting us a lot of slack. They were very aggressive, very competent. And the point I'm trying to make is that you've got to draw some conclusion that they had some problem with the evidence in the case.
O'REILLY: The -- so he didn't do anything wrong?
BURNS: I'm not saying that at all. I mean, people confuse guilt and innocence on the one hand versus provability in court on the other.
O'REILLY: All right. That's a good point.
Mr. Lysaght, is it possible that the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles couldn't get him because he was too smart and used the system to enrich himself and his buddies but didn't really violate any law?
LYSAGHT: No, you could take any one of your viewers off a truck he's driving and put him in as prosecuting this case, and it would be successful. There are e-mails all over the place showing that Winnick had blood on his hands in every single one of these transactions. An infant could try this case successfully.
Now, whether it is a crisis of timidity out here, I don't know. Maybe they think white-collar crime is a bank robbery with a videotape and a note. But this is -- this is actually not much more complicated than that, and this...
O'REILLY: All right. Mr...
LYSAGHT: ... and why they didn't do it is mind -- it's just...
O'REILLY: And, of course, we never get an explanation from John Ashcroft's Justice Department, just as we never got an explanation from Janet Reno's Justice Department. The folks are blind when it comes to justice, which should be blind, but it isn't.
Now, Mr. Lysaght, is -- represents the whistleblower who presented the evidence against Gary Winnick. He says that Barney Fife could make this case. Do you doubt Mr. Lysaght?
BURNS: Well, obviously and unfortunately from his standpoint, there may be some problems with corroborating or backing up the information that was provided. Again, we don't have in front of us, Bill, the memorandum of interviews of witnesses, all of the...
O'REILLY: And we'll never have that.
BURNS: Right, but, again, it's kind of hard to criticize the prosecutorial decision, unless we know what specific information they're looking at, and, again, I want to reiterate that, you know, prosecutors in high-publicity cases -- they want to make the case.
O'REILLY: No, they don't.
BURNS: That's their job.
O'REILLY: See, Mr. Burns, you're living in a land of oz because you're never going to get a Marc Rich pardon investigation -- indictment. You didn't get an indictment against Senator Robert Torricelli. You didn't get an indictment in the vote-buying-in-New-Square/Hillary Clinton case. The powerful protect each other.
Mr. Lysaght, do you see it that way? I believe that the powerful protect each other in this country and that that has something to do with this.
LYSAGHT: No powerful person ever suffered by being powerful.
O'REILLY: OK. I mean, but, in this case, we have so much money taken out of a company that screwed so many working people with their pension plans and everything else, and it looks like Gary Winnick will stay atop his $100-million estate in Bel Air and suffer no consequences.
LYSAGHT: Yes. Like Jabba the Hutt up there looking down on the ashes that he's made of other people's lives.
O'REILLY: All right.
Last word, Mr. Burns?
BURNS: I think, again, we must sort out the difference between guilt and innocence and provability in court. Let's not walk out of this show saying he didn't do anything wrong. That's not the point.
O'REILLY: OK. There we go. Thanks, gentlemen. We appreciate it.
BURNS: My pleasure.
LYSAGHT: Yes. Like Jabba the Hutt up there looking down on the ashes that he's made of other people's lives.
Gary "Jabba the Hutt" Winnick. So appropriate.
Hmmmmmmm...MUD
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime. These three should be cell mates.
Also, selling stock in a failing company as CEO is not prima facie evidence of a crime -- i.e., selling as part of a regular pre-committed program of selling, in regular moderate amounts -- otherwise CEOs could NEVER sell their stock.
And the 'swaps' that Global Crossing did weren't prima facie "illegal", as the whistleblower-lawyer said, and that's a sloppy use of language -- the swaps were simply not legitimate as reportable profits from an accounting perspective -- but there is no bar to creating a contract where the exchange of consideration is goods-to-goods rather than $$. Now, Anderson should not have represented that contract as revenue, but that's another matter and Winnick may not have been a party to that decision or knowledgeable about its implications -- we just don't know.
And that's why prosecutors are required to use their discernment and discretion -- that's the only way the system can work. The alternative is to overcharge and then, when a not-guilty verdict is returned, "where does the defendant get his reputation back?"
So -- O'Reilly and his guest are being irresponsible, and the "former prosecutor" has it about right.
O'Reilly is absolutely right to dog this issue as long as he can.
And Ashcroft is not? This is unreal! How can anyone defend Winnick? Unless the Bush Senior part is too much for the bots. I for one see this as a slam dunk case of protection of the hands that are all in the cookie jar. This is sick. Maybe the ownership of the assets of GC by China makes your tummy warm. Not me. This is pure whitewash.
The prosecutors determined that there was no conduct by Winnick that was clearly criminal and where they had some reasonable chance of successfully prosecuting. Now tell me what you know that disproves their conclusion? Hint -- you don't know ANYTHING that isn't hyped innuendo, which is not the same thing as evidence. Read my prior post again and respond with specifics.
If you get away with it, the next thing you know Herbal Life, Amway, etc. will be trying to turn every thread into a sales pitch.
That being said, Winnick could not have built such a company without screwing up somewhere. The Feds need a Kopper who squealed on Enron CFO Fastow who is currently under a 78-count indictment.
Fastow screwed-up bigtime - putting his wife in a no-show job in at least one of the thousands of offshore entities he created. Other Fastow family members - who had nothing to do with the corpo - were sucking up Enon money.
The website you linked to in your post 'Take Shape For Life' with an Associate ID #14635 looks like a commissionable sales generating webpage similar to every single one I've ever been spammed with.
It's also pretty coincidental that the e-mail address on the TSFL webpage thinplan@ureach.com and your personal e-mail address of bankwalker@ureach.com are very similar.
My first guess would be that you are Robert Straub and that you'd receive a commission on anything purchased from that webpage. Maybe I guessed wrong, LMK.
What's next, water filters, air filters, make-up, free gasoline and long distance?
I sent you a copy of my post to bankwalker, because it was about his response to you.
Why do you believe it's necessary to use foul language? You're aware that's discouraged around here, aren't you?
Nice rhetoric, I suppose, and its what substitutes for serious thought on the TV scream-fests, but the simple answer is that, in each case of alleged lawbreaking you mention above, the state has to prove that the defendant committed each of the elements of the crime alleged. They determined that they could not do so with Winnick.
Try to turn this into class warfare if you'd like -- that's the democrat way --which is what your statement implies, but understand that your rhetoric is intellectually bankrupt.
Anyway, what was the relevence of your first post to this thread? You aren't giving the Bush administration a pass just because Clinton got away with so much, are you?
I'll soon be at my fightin' weight ;-)
Then what did you mean by "WTF"???
You should change your name to chicken excrement.
Next time you want to personally attack me or anyone else, have the guts to include the Freeper you're personally attacking in the list of recipients.
You have the same problem as Nephi. If you're going to personally attack me and mention my name twice in one post, you could have the guts to include me in the list of recipients.
Once again, just what did you mean when you said "WTF"?
On the other hand, if the thread was inherently popular, there would be so many posts that the ones that offend you would have been buried and almost invisible.
I apologize (only because I agree with you) for any inconvenience I may have caused.
Now let's get focused on the real enemy.
Wait Taz, are you sure you don't want to buy some weight-loss products from bankwalker? Maybe join his downline?
Make sure you get that Associate ID #14635 correct on your order form.
LOL!
Just my two cents' worth -- simply click the "Report Abuse" link on the offending post, and let the process work in the background. These offenses can be dealt with individually, without the ensuing public catfight.
I know you meant well, and even if others do not, I appreciate your efforts.
Btw what makes you so sure I don't ANYTHING? Are you that secure in you accusations?
Hutchison Whampoa, the mammoth company that runs the Panama Canal and has close ties to the Chinese army, has a new rhinestone in its crown: Global Crossing. Along with another Asian company, Singapore Technologies, it paid $250 million today for the bankrupt fiber-optic network company - a third of the original offer."
Corporate executives who scam investors or profit by cooking company books will be exposed and given "hard time" in prison under regulations President Bush signed into law Tuesday. Accounting firms are now forbidden from offering consulting services to clients if it posses a conflict of interest, and for the first time an independent oversight board has been established to oversee the industry. Chief executives under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 would have to vouch personally, under penalty of law, for the honesty of earnings reports. Those reports must now be given quarterly.
Republican National Committee chairman Marc Racicot gave his Democratic counterpart Terry McAuliffe a clean bill of health Saturday night on one of the Democratic Party's biggest political liabilities - McAuliffe's suspicious involvement with the now collapsed communications giant Global Crossing.
In 1999 McAuliffe sold his shares in the book-cooking communications company, reaping an $18 million profit on an initial investment of $100,000.
What an investor!
The suit was filed on behalf of Global Crossing shareholders who have brought claims of fraud, civil conspiracy and violations of the California Corporations, Business and Professions Code.
Former defense secretary and Global Crossing board member William Cohen is among the suit’s defendants for allegedly conspiring to "pump and dump” Global Crossing stock, and for allegedly corruptly awarding contracts. This is the same William Cohen who, as a member of the Senate Iran-Contra investigating committee in the late 1980s, seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of piety.
Finally, the suit names Li Ka-Shing as a defendant, along with his Global Crossing affiliate, Asia Global Crossing. The extra eye-opening significance of this is that Li Ka-Shing, a Hong Kong businessman, is an agent of the Chinese communist government, and he is now seeking majority control over the entire corporation. "If Li Ka-Shing gains control over Global Crossing, that would make the Chinese government the phone company for the Pentagon and other sensitive agencies,”
I thought Hillary Clinton was good with her cattle futures trading, but McAuliffe puts her to shame.
"In March 1999, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain wrote a letter to the FCC raising questions" about plans by Global Crossing's competitors - MCI Worldcom, Sprint and AT&T Corp. - to lay broadband cable under the Pacific Ocean, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Within days, "20 employees of Global Crossing, including [company co-chairman Lodwrick] Cook and [Gary] Winnick, contributed a total of $30,000 to Mr. McCain's presidential campaign fund," the paper said.
Despite the appearance of a quid pro quo, the Senate maverick said the campaign jackpot was unrelated to any favors he might have done for Global Crossing, explaining that the helpful letter was prompted by his concern that the MCI-AT&T-Sprint consortium might stifle broadband competition.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, has sent letters to President Bush, the attorney general, the Department of Defense and the investigative arm of Congress demanding an inquiry into the plan, according to Al Santoli, national security adviser to Rohrabacher.
"The purchase of Global Crossing by Li Ka-Shing is another step as his role of a stalker for the People's Republic of China," stated Santoli.
Li Ka-Shing is also part owner of a firm involved in the illegal transfer of missile technology to the Chinese army. The Commerce documents show that Li owns one-third of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Holdings, or AsiaSat.
According to Aviation Week and Space Technology, AsiaSat is also partly owned by the Chinese army. AsiaSat satellites regularly carry "military communications" traffic for PLA units and Chinese military-owned companies.
U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin pleaded guilty to 30 counts of illegal missile technology exports to AsiaSat. Lockheed Martin agreed to pay the U.S. government $13 million in fines for the illegal transfer of "kick-motor" technology to AsiaSat in order to avoid export restrictions.
Despite his hostile attitude toward democracy, Li Ka-Shing met frequently with the Clinton administration.
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