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Don't pardon LI scammer Isaac Toussie

December 29, 2008

This time an unpardonable pardon can be stopped.

President George W. Bush realized last week that his callow and clumsily vetted pardon of developer Isaac Toussie, who was involved in a notorious Suffolk real estate scandal, was just a little too smelly. He pulled it back and is asking the Justice Department to review the facts.

Toussie pleaded guilty and served time, partly for inflating the finances of low-income and mostly minority buyers so they could get subsidized federal mortgages to buy his shoddily built homes, and partly for his role in inflating the value of land that his family sold to Suffolk County and Brookhaven. In 2003, he was sentenced to five months in prison and five months' house arrest.

Toussie still faces a monster civil lawsuit from the buyers of his homes. Could that be why his Brooklyn family tossed almost $40,000 to Republican causes? Federal records indicate that the family, which didn't have much interest in national races in the past, was suddenly this fall caught up in two U.S. Senate races where the GOP was struggling to hold on: Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

Pay to play for a pardon? The phrase has a familiar ring.

Pardons are one of the absolute powers of a president. They do not have to be justified or explained. But the political damage can be unending.

One of the most outrageous was Bill Clinton's grant of clemency to fugitive financier Marc Rich, who fled the country after his indictment, to avoid facing charges that included tax evasion and trading in oil from Iran while that nation held Americans hostage. Rich's ex-wife, Denise, contributed heavily to the Democrats and Clinton's library fund. Eight years later, that pardon is justifiably news again because Eric Holder, a top Justice Department official involved in the Rich affair, is Barack Obama's choice for attorney general.

Was the Bush White House suckered by Toussie, just as so many Suffolk homeowners were? Or was it another brazen pardon sale in the final days of an administration?

Regardless, a Toussie pardon would be unforgivable.