Clinton/Gore '96





PRESS RELEASE
October 22, 1996

STATEMENT BY ANN LEWIS
DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER

Bob Dole’s former Finance Committee Vice Chairman Simon Fireman is scheduled to be sentenced to six months in jail tomorrow for illegally funneling money through a Hong Kong bank to the Dole campaign. Fireman has already agreed to pay a record $6 million fine. In addition, federal agents are currently investigating similar money schemes undertaken by DeLuca Liquor & Wine of Nevada and Empire Landfill of Pennsylvania that are linked to the Dole campaign (Washington Post, 4/25/96; K.C. Star 10/21/96).

Given Bob Dole’s current election-year campaign finance conversion, here are a few questions for him on his own campaign finance record:

1) Why did your running-mate Jack Kemp mislead the American people by claiming on national television that you fired your Vice Chairman after his illegal actions on behalf of your campaign were discovered, when, in fact, you never fired or even suspended Fireman? (K.C. Star, 10/21/96)

2) Why haven’t you made Simon Fireman available to the press to answer questions about his illegal fundraising scheme on your behalf?

3) Why won’t you make your staff fundraisers who raised the money from Simon Fireman, Empire Landfill, and DeLuca Liquor available to the press to answer questions about these illegal schemes to raise funds for your Presidential campaign?

4) Have you returned the nearly $50,000 that your campaign received from Empire Landfill and the over $10,000 that your campaign received from DeLuca Liquor & Wine? (Wall Street Journal, 5/8/96; K.C. Star, 9/29/96).

5) Do you expect Haley Barbour and Newt Gingrich to resign from their jobs? Each said that they would stake their jobs on the fact that the RNC had not accepted money from foreign nationals or a foreign company. Yet yesterday’s Roll Call reported that the RNC just returned an illegal $15,000 check from a Canadian company. (Roll Call, 10/21/96)

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Paid for by Clinton/Gore ’96 General Election Committee, Inc.