Former DNC Officials Deny Alleged Teamsters Swap

No knowledge of that plan, say Thomann and Sullivan; foreign money was handled properly

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Oct. 9) -- Senators probing fund-raising activities during the 1996 campaigns turned today to the alleged swap of Democratic Party money for funds from Ron Carey's Teamsters presidential re-election campaign.

But the two former Democratic Party officials they called to testify on the matter -- former finance director Richard Sullivan and former Midwest finance director Mark Thomann -- said they knew nothing about the alleged scheme, and held their ground in a day of frosty exchanges.

Both Sullivan and Thomann told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that the DNC raised no money for Carey. Sullivan said a Carey election aide called him incessantly, proposing to raise labor money for Democrats in return for help financing Carey's election.

But Sullivan said the trade made little sense from his standpoint because labor, Teamsters included, gave plenty to Democrats anyway, and he allowed the idea to die on the vine before even checking whether it was legal.

Republican senators closely questioned Thomann and Sullivan about $100,000 offered to the party by Philippine businesswoman Judith Vasquez.

Thomann told the panel that he had no knowledge of the alleged swap of funds, and that he handled Vasquez' offer properly.

Vasquez, the would-be contributor, is not eligible to give to the DNC. Thomann says he further determined that the American subsidiary of her company did not have the cash flow to support such a donation.

Thomann told the panel that Sullivan, his boss, suggested he look into having Vasquez give the money to "Teamsters for a Corruption-Free Union," Carey's re-election committee, instead of a Democrat-friendly minority voter-registration organization.

When he did, he found that since she was an employer in the Philippines, she was also ineligible to give to union causes. The money ended up going to the voter-registration group. (448K wav sound)

"I am aware that Mark recalls I instructed him to have this woman make a contribution to the Carey campaign," Sullivan told the senators. "I do not recall being that definitive with him, but I am not bothered by the difference, which is hardly material.

"Our recollections are clear on the key points judged by any objective standard," Sullivan said: "That I asked him to determine the woman's willingness to contribute, that I asked that the legal requirements be checked, that those requirements were not satisfied, and that she did not contribute." (416K wav sound)

Thomann told the committee he felt uneasy being put in the middle and when he expressed his concern to Sullivan, he accepted it and applied no pressure. "We never talked about it again," Thomann said.

Sullivan, who was the committee's lead-off witness back in July, clearly seemed irritated at being hauled back before the panel, and complained of the "heavy-handedness" of the committee's majority counsel. He was combative from the opening words of his opening statement.

"My appearance today marks the seventh day of sworn testimony I have provided to this committee," he said coldly. "Since leaving the Democratic National Committee in February, I have spent thousands of hours and incurred great expense responding to requests from this committee as well as parallel and, indeed, fully redundant, requests from the House of Representatives." (256K wav sound)

The committee's Republicans gained no traction from the day's witnesses, and were probably aware they would not. So why did they schedule them? As one Democratic staffer put it, "Any headline with the words 'Teamsters' and 'DNC' in it together is a bad one for us."

CNN's Brooks Jackson contributed to this report.

In Other News:

Thursday Oct. 9, 1997

• Senators Focus On Alleged Teamsters Swap
• 'Straw Donors' Are First Witnesses In House Probe
• $8 Million Fine For Illegal Corporate Donations
• Reno Frustrated Over Delayed Tapes Release

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