Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal

With Linda Chavez brought down, Democrats are loudly proclaiming that Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft will be next. Issuing a war declaration against Senator Ashcroft and Interior nominee Gale Norton, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, We pledge to do everything in our power, working with our allies in the civil rights, womens rights and environmental communities to persuade the Senate to reject these nominations. As the Ashcroft hearings commence, the Capitol will virtually levitate on the winds of moral dudgeon over Bob Jones University, Missouri Judge Ronnie White and someones freedom to abort. But these are no more the fundamental issue than an illegal immigrant was in the Linda Chavez episode. The Clinton coterie has been filled with individuals skimming along the edges of federal criminal investigations stifled in the current Justice Department, and have much reason to undermine any incoming Attorney General. John Sweeney, in particular, has to worry about the legal exposure of AFL-CIO Secretary Richard Trumka. Also of Terry McAuliffe, the newly named Democratic National Committee chairman. Both of these figures have been mentioned in one of the most important prosecutions of recent years. In November 1999, former International Brotherhood of Teamsters political director William Hamilton was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in a complex series of schemes to embezzle the unions funds to aid the 1996 reelection effort of then-Teamster President Ron Carey. As presented by prosecutors under Mary Jo White, U.S. attorney for Southern District of New York in Manhattan, the case suggests a criminal conspiracy reaching into the top levels of the Clinton-Gore-Labor network. Since the 1999 Hamilton conviction for fraud and conspiracy, however, the case has gone nowhere. A senior aide to U.S. Attorney White tells us the investigation is continuing. The Democrats problem with John Ashcroft is that he looks just like a fellow who might bring such cases back to life. The AFL-CIOs No. 2, Richard Trumka, has in some ways been the unions most visible Democratic powerbroker. He appeared in Iowa as an early and important backer of Al Gore, bestowing crucial public support on the Veep against Bill Bradley, At the Hamilton trial, the prosecution noted that Trumka was a player in two schemes that went before the jury. In one, according to testimony by a Hamilton co-conspirator, Trumka and top labor leaders Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees and Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union conspired to make $50,000 donations each to Teamster President Careys reelection effort, illegal under federal law. None of the men has been charged. In the second scheme, Trumka allegedly helped launder $150,000 of his unions funds to Carey through a Democrat-aligned activist group. Trumka has denied wrongdoing, but when questioned by government investigators asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The AFL-CIOs code of conduct says no officer who takes the Fifth can hold office; Sweeney waived the rule for Trumka. Following Gores defeat, Bill Clinton immediately named McAuliffe DNC chairman. Head of the Clinton-Gore reelection effort in 1996 and one-time prospective financier of the Clintons Westchester home,McAuliffe worked with one of the key, named co-conspirators in the Hamilton trial, Martin Davis. At the trial, former DNC finance director Richard Sullivan testified that Davis and McAuliffe attempted to carry out an illegal scheme in which the DNC would find a donor for the Carey reelection campaign, and in turn the Teamsters would donate money to Democratic groups. McAuliffes lawyer has said his client was not involved in any wrongdoing and cooperated with the investigation. Davis pleaded guilty to conspiring to funnel union funds and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. But on the eve of the trial, news came that Davis would not testify. Prosecutors told the presiding judge that his plea bargain was under review. Davis still awaits sentencing, as do several other figures in the case. The final call on this and other unsolved mysteries of the Reno-Clinton years will fall to the new Attorney General. There is as well the stalled campaign finance task force at Main Justice, the China spy tangles and Independent Counsel David Barretts probe into possible obstruction of justice by Justice Department officials in the Henry Cisneros investigation. The pending Southern District investigation threatening McAuliffe and Trumka is merely item one in the stakes Democrats have to defend by cutting up Ashcroft. Yes, some of Ashcrofts critics want to use his nomination to hyperventilate about abortion and the like. But there are also plenty of reasons Democrats do not want a vigorous Attorney General dedicated to the impartial pursuit of justice. The real threat to his nomination comes from those who seek to impede and obstruct justice.