GOP Ally Targeted Foreign Donors, Memos Indicate

WASHINGTON —  The Republican Party specifically targeted overseas donors through an advocacy group set up in 1993, according to GOP memos that surfaced Friday, heightening questions about foreign-linked contributions to both major political parties.

A day after the Republican National Committee returned $102,400 in illegal donations from a Hong Kong real estate company, Republican officials found themselves again on the defensive as questions were raised about the National Policy Forum, an offshoot of the party created by former National Chairman Haley Barbour.

Barbour, who stepped down as chairman in January, has denied that the National Policy Forum sought foreign funds and has lambasted Democrats for accepting millions of dollars in illegal and improper donations, many of them tied to Asian companies and individuals.

But a 1993 memo to Barbour from Scott Reed, the executive director of the party at the time, mentions an effort by the policy forum to seek foreign money. Under a section titled “Fundraising,” Reed lists several action items, including one simply listed as “Foreign.”

Another internal memo from 1993 shows that the group’s fund-raisers also planned to solicit money from billionaire Ted Arison, the Carnival Cruise Lines founder who saved millions in taxes by renouncing his U.S. citizenship that year and returning to Israel.

It is legal for tax-exempt organizations to receive foreign contributions, which they do not have to publicly disclose. But congressional Democrats have raised questions about whether the policy forum was set up merely to skirt laws forbidding political parties from receiving foreign funds.

The now-defunct policy forum applied for, but never received, tax-exempt status. It did receive a controversial $2.2-million loan guarantee from Young Brothers Development of Hong Kong, which enabled the forum to make loan repayments to the Republican National Committee during the critical final weeks of the 1994 congressional elections.

RNC officials insisted that the policy forum operated separately from the Republican Party and that the foreign money that the party mistakenly received has been returned.

Still, the GOP found itself dragged into a controversy that until recently had ensnarled only the Democrats. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who chairs the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is investigating fund-raising abuses, agreed for the first time Friday to issue subpoenas aimed at Republicans. Criticized for conducting a partisan inquiry, Burton said he would issue subpoenas next week aimed at uncovering foreign contributions received by the Republicans. The Senate investigative committee is already pursuing GOP documents.

House Republicans on Friday sought to return the spotlight to the Democrats’ fund-raising troubles, which have dogged the party for months and forced the Democratic National Committee to announce the return of about $3 million in illegal or improper donations.

GOP lawmakers threatened to launch contempt proceedings against the White House next week if Clinton administration officials do not quickly turn over documents sought by Burton’s committee.

Burton requested that White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff appear on Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain why the committee has not received all the papers it is seeking from the administration. Aides said the committee will be prepared to go ahead with a contempt of Congress motion that day.

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At issue are records sought by the committee about former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang and others.

Administration officials have released some of the requested documents but withheld others, saying that committee staff members can review them at the White House to ensure that sensitive information does not become public.

Burton, accusing the White House of “stonewalling,” said administration officials have sent the committee four partial boxes of documents, including news clippings, copies of the committee’s own letters to the White House and the menu to Democratic fund-raiser Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie’s Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, Ark.

“Rather than produce the documents essential to a complete investigation, the president continues to withhold these records based on novel claims of exemption and purely political complaints about the committee’s document security protocol,” all 22 Republican members of the investigative committee said in a statement.