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Hillary whistleblower: 'I'm a political prisoner'

Art Moore

March 19, 2012

Calling himself a hidden political prisoner, a former business partner of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee who sued Bill Clinton for fraud and accused Hillary Clinton of hiding nearly $2 million in Senate campaign donations claims Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department are obstructing justice by reneging on a sentencing agreement that would have released him from federal prison nearly two years ago.

“Hillary is carrying out her promise to finally destroy my family to punish me for exposing the corruption that elected her to the Senate,” Peter F. Paul contended to WND in an email from the La Tuna federal facility in Anthony, Texas, near El Paso.

An Internet petition posted this week by Hollywood private investigator Becky Altringer, who has examined Paul’s case, calls on Holder to “keep his promise and release Mr. Paul immediately.”

Paul was indicted in June 2001 for manipulating the price of the stock in his company, Stan Lee Media, as it was collapsing. As WND reported in 2005, he blamed President Clinton in a lawsuit for sabotaging Stan Lee Media to get out of a $17 million agreement to serve as an international promoter for the company after he left the White House.

Hillary Clinton was named in the lawsuit for allegedly directing to her 2000 Senate campaign an illegal, in-kind contribution from Paul – a lavish, A-list, million-dollar-plus Hollywood fundraiser. But Clinton suddenly moved to publicly distance herself from Paul when just days after the Hollywood gala, the Washington Post reported Paul’s 1970s criminal convictions in a story that accused the senator of being soft on crime. Clinton continued, however, to quietly solicit money from Paul and sent him letters expressing friendship.

[Paul contends the Clintons were fully aware of his past legal problems, pointing out he was vetted more than eight times by the Secret Service. Prior to the decision to produce the Hollywood gala, the Secret Service also came to Paul's home in Calabasas, Calif., in June 2001 to prepare for a planned overnight visit by President Clinton. Paul made $150,000 in improvements to meet Secret Service requirements. Under the Carter administration, Paul was convicted for cocaine possession and an attempt to bilk Cuban dictator Fidel Castro of $8 million. He ascribes that to politics, arguing he was embraced by Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet, which "realized the problems I had were more related to being gung ho about removing Castro." While still on parole, he said, he worked directly with Chief Justice Warren Burger and visited President Reagan in the White House.]

Peter Paul with President Reagan (Courtesy freepeterpaul.org)

Paul later obtained from the U.S. Attorneys Office that prosecuted his stock case a “smoking gun” videotape that captured a July 2000 phone call between Clinton and his staff indicating she had an active role in the production of the fundraiser. Paul’s co-counsel in his case against the Clintons, Colette Wilson, documented in an affidavit how the tape, and others that belonged to Paul, were withheld by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Without the tapes as evidence, a judge ruled Hillary Clinton was not involved in campaign fraud tied to the gala that resulted in the indictment of her campaign finance chairman, David Rosen, for filing false reports to the Federal Election Commission. The tape was not released until after Paul filed an an appeal in his civil case.

Paul came forward to the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney James Nobile in New Jersey to report the Clinton campaign’s false FEC reports in February 2001, before there was any investigation in New York of Paul’s alleged stock manipulation.

Whistleblowing

Paul maintains that he accepted a deal from Holder in 2009 to credit all 96 months of his pre-sentence incarceration as time-already-served in exchange for not dropping his guilty plea, for silence on alleged government misconduct and for not challenging alleged violations of the speedy sentencing law.

The sentence deal, Paul explains, was a post-plea agreement modification of the original plea obtained by the government in 2005 after Paul had spent 43 months in jail with no bail and no trial date.

The attorney general’s representative in New York, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Chan, has not denied making the sentencing agreement, Paul complains, pointing to court records. But Chan has refused to testify or make any declaration in court in Paul’s appeals.

Chan did not reply to a WND request to respond to Paul’s charges but passed on the request to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which handled Paul’s case.

The public affairs officer for EDNY, Robert Nardoza, declined to comment.

Peter Paul says this photo shows President Bill Clinton celebrating a business deal with him and wife, Andrea (Courtesy freepeterpaul.org)

The Paul petition points to “corroborated claims of political and government misconduct” in his case. It says Paul’s whistleblowing against Hillary Clinton “may have something to do with” what appears to be “a violation of the duties of prosecutors based on their positions as officers of the court and representatives of the attorney general’s office.”

A promotional video of a documentary on Paul’s case against the Clintons went viral on Google and became the No. 1 video for three months in late 2007 as Hillary Clinton was running for president. Paul also appeared in the Citizens United film “Hillary: The Movie,” in which he is shown passing a lie detector test regarding the Clinton case. The non-profit government watchdog Judicial Watch investigated Paul’s allegations and, along with representing him, launched a public campaign that drew the support of more than 300,000 people from 2001 to 2009.

Paul says the sentencing agreement also included a promise not to bring up his whistleblowing on alleged FBI corruption regarding a criminal informant tied to the Clintons, Stanley Myatt. Paul charges the FBI allowed Myatt to loot public companies under the guise of criminal investigations, including his own, as payment for his work on numerous cases. Paul says that Myatt threatened to kill him after the ABC News program “20/20″ aired a report on Paul by Brian Ross on July 13, 2001.

Paul’s information on Myatt prompted a special report by Scott Burton, an investigator at the DOJ’s Inspector General’s Office, that led to a censure of the FBI and changes in the bureau’s handling of criminal informants. In addition, Paul claims the FBI protected Myatt by interfering with former FBI special agent Bob Levinson’s effort to use information provided by Paul to expose an Iranian spy network Levinson was investigating when he was kidnapped in Iran five years ago.

Myatt can be seen in a video with Stan Lee that Paul took in his Stan Lee Media office.

The Clintons with Peter Paul and his wife, Andrea (Courtesy paulvclinton.com)

DOJ under fire

The petition on Paul’s behalf comes as Holder faces a demand from 120 House members to resign for his handling of the fatal gun-tracing scheme “Fast and Furious.” Last Thursday, Holder’s Justice Department was accused in a 514-page special council report of “systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence” in the prosecution of the late Republican Sen. Ted Stevens.

Paul says there’s another reason he’s on Holder’s blacklist. He gave testimony to the Justice Department’s Office of Public Integrity about Holder’s role in brokering President Clinton’s infamous pardon of Marc Rich upon leaving office. Paul says Rich’s wife advised him of a $250 million fund her husband put up to obtain the pardon.

An appeal of Paul’s conviction and sentence was rejected by a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2011. Paul has filed a motion for rehearing before the full court. A habeas corpus petition to expedite consideration of his appeal and release also was rejected by a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas in December.

Paul argues Holder’s office refused to require the Bureau of Prisons to apply the sentence agreement made in court and allowed former Assistant U.S. Attorney Chan to remain silent when court proceedings required him to confirm the agreement.

Peter Paul and Hillary Clinton at a fund-raiser luncheon in 2000 (Courtesy freepeterpaul.org)

Paul’s 12-year odyssey began when he moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in November 2000 – where he had other companies – after the collapse of Stan Lee Media. He was indicted in June 2001 for violating Securities and Exchange Commission regulations and arrested and jailed in Brazil two months later. After two years in Brazilian prisons – including 58 days in the infamous “Corridor of Death” at Brasilia’s maximum security prison – he was extradited to Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Metropolitan Detention Facility, where he awaited trial. When he pleaded guilty to the SEC fraud charge in 2005, the government said he caused “losses to the investing public and financial institutions of approximately $25 million.” He spent four years under house arrest until he accepted a plea bargain in July 2009.

Paul says Stan Lee Media’s stock collapsed because of short sellers directed by the FBI criminal informant Myatt. The FBI built its case against Paul based on Myatt’s information, then later found out it was Myatt who was responsible for shorting the stock and destroying Paul’s company.

The information was withheld from Paul’s counsel, however, and Paul says he was coerced to plead guilty to stock fraud. Myatt’s death threat against Paul the weekend of the ABC “20/20″ broadcast was made when Paul became a witness against the Clintons. According to a 2004 Vanity Fair article, Myatt confirmed he was with Bill Clinton at a fundraiser he funded the day before Paul’s attorney met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Insight magazine, a former Washington Times monthly, reported on Myatt’s role in Paul’s case.

The attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, Paul says, offered witness protection to Paul and his family – he has a wife and three young children – but he was arrested in Brazil for extradition. On the day he was arrested, Paul says, Ashcroft’s chief of staff offered him protection if he returned to the U.S. voluntarily. But Paul claims he was held in Brazil illegally for two years.

Once in the U.S., he waited for four years for sentencing while under house arrest, he says, because the fifth prosecutor assigned to the case could not confirm that any shareholders were injured by his actions.

At the sentencing, the government admitted that his use of margin accounts – from which he drew to pay for the Hillary Clinton fundraiser – did not cause any losses to shareholders.

‘Completely unconstitutional’

Paul argues that none of his four co-defendants – Stephen M. Gordon, Jeffrey Pittsburg, Charles Kusche and Jonathan Gordon – has served a day in prison for the same offense. One received probation, another was dismissed after eight years for lack of prosecution and two others were given concurrent sentences for time served in a separate case in California. Paul claims the concurrent sentences were illegal under Title 18 Sec 3585(b).

Peter Paul and Hillary Clinton in 2000 (Courtesy freepeterpaul.org)

“Effectively,” he told WND, “I was the only defendant sentenced to any jail time, and now I am serving 176 months on a 120-month sentence – 120 months in jail and 56 months in home confinement. That is completely unconstitutional.”

With credit for good time, he added, he should have had only 106 months of incarceration.

When Paul surrendered to prison in Texas, he says, the warden advised him that he would not accept the 96-month credit negotiated with the attorney general’s representative and would instead credit Paul with only 43 months, based on Bureau of Prisons policy.

Paul’s attorney at the time, Joseph Conway, had negotiated the time-served agreement with Chan.

Court records show that after Conway stated that the time already served was 96 months, Chan said, “The plea agreement precludes [the government] from taking a specific position. And I do not disagree with anything Mr. Conway has said.”

Paul argues that only the attorney general has the authority to grant credit for pre-sentence incarceration, according to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Title 18 SEC 3585(b) and the Pardon and Clemency Power provided under the Constitution.

“When that authority is exercised in court to acquire my silence then the Bureau of Prisons is bound by the attorney general’s action and agreement,” Paul asserted.

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