Today we will be continuing our series on the dark and sordid history of the Clinton administration for the young and perpetually uninformed. The person in this photograph is named Susan McDougal. She worked for years at the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan in Arkansas. Hillary Clinton was a lawyer for Madison Guaranty and the two had become close friends over the years. In 1978, these two individuals decided to go into a real estate business with their husbands. They all became legal business partners and purchased 230 acres of land that would become the Whitewater Development Corporation.
Whitewater Development claimed to provide resort-type housing near beautiful bodies of water for people who wanted vacation property and retirement homes. However, this corporation had arranged their contracts to be so legally restrictive that the individuals would completely lose their property including their entire down payment if they were ever late on even one payment. This resulted in a recurring turnover where the Clintons and their partners could constantly evict their tenants and keep the individual down payments as profit. The Clintons acknowledged that this was harsh but defended themselves by explaining that everyone was doing this kind of thing back then. This partnership failed and was completely dissolved once Bill Clinton became President. Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan eventually collapsed and went bankrupt.
Many people wondered how Bill and Hillary Clinton could have even afforded to become real estate investors back then when they had very little money and low monthly income. That is when former municipal court judge and investment banker David Hale came into the picture. Hale claimed that Governor Bill Clinton coerced and urged him to make a large government-backed bank loan to Susan McDougal and her husband. A fraudulent $300,000 federally-backed loan had been issued to Susan McDougal in order to start up the Whitewater Development Corporation.
Susan McDougal was granted legal immunity if she would simply testify in the case and finally tell the whole truth regarding what actually happened in the Whitewater deal. McDougal remained completely silent. She instead chose to protect her friends and went to federal prison on contempt charges. Her husband was charged with eighteen felony counts of fraud and conspiracy charges and eventually died of a heart attack at the Federal Correctional Facility in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 57. David Hale quickly disappeared from public view and subsequently went to prison because of his role in Whitewater. Hillary Clinton became famous and went directly to the White House.
Hillary Clinton was subpoenaed to produce billing records from the Rose Law Firm in order to reveal her level of involvement with Jim and Susan McDougal’s shady business dealings. Mrs. Clinton denied for many years that any such records even existed. She claimed that the records had simply become lost. Then two years later, a White House assistant discovered copies of these requested documents sitting on a table in a library known as the Book Room which were then immediately turned over to investigators. These records revealed Hillary Clinton’s detailed and intimate involvement with the failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. The FBI found five sets of fingerprints on these mysterious so-called “missing” documents. One set of fingerprints belonged to Hillary Clinton. Bill and Hillary Clinton are the only two active participants in the Whitewater scandal to never serve a single day of jail time.
