Clinton 101: Dan Lasater

dan-lasater

Today we will be continuing our series on the dark and sordid history of the Clinton administration for the young and perpetually uninformed. The man in this picture is named Dan Lasater. If one investigates most of the infamous Clinton scandals, his name is surely to pop up. One really cannot understand the Clinton legacy without taking a close look at this man. Dan Lasater was an Arkansas native who grew up in poverty. He started his own hamburger chain in Indiana when he was just 19-years-old. He became a very wealthy man and decided to eventually liquidate his business and move back to Arkansas. He founded the Ponderosa Steakhouse national restaurant chain and began to pursue an interest in his life-long love of racing horses.

Micah Morrison of the Wall Street Journal did an in depth investigation into Lasater in 1995 and she provides much of his backstory. Bill Clinton lost his gubernatorial reelection bid back in 1980 and was introduced to Dan Lasater soon afterwards. Multiple witnesses in Arkansas described Lasater as Bill Clinton’s frequent partying companion. Dan Lasater began working with Bill Clinton almost daily on a plan for Clinton to regain the governor’s seat.

Dan Lasater had actually been a friend of Bill Clinton’s brother and mother since 1979. He met them both at the Oaklawn Park horseracing track because their boxes at the track were sitting directly adjacent to each other. Roger Clinton was working intermittently as a struggling musician in Hot Springs when the two first met. In 1982, Bill Clinton and his mother both encouraged Dan Lasater to provide Roger Clinton with a job. Lasater then hired Roger to work with him on his horse racing farm in Florida.

One day, Roger Clinton approached his new boss and informed him that he owed a drug dealer eight thousand dollars. Roger told him that he feared for his own family’s safety if this debt was not repaid so Dan Lasater reluctantly agreed to loan him the money. Lasater would go on to explain that this private revelation from Roger would introduce both himself and Bill Clinton into Roger’s secret world of cocaine use. To this day, Dan Lasater admits that he and Bill Clinton would provide free cocaine to young girls at parties but that Roger was the only person actively involved in the sale of cocaine for personal profit. Former girlfriend Patty-Ann Smith reported that she once witnessed Dan Lasater and Bill Clinton snorting cocaine in the kitchen of Lasater’s house. Lasater would later admit under oath that he would also provide free cocaine to some of his own employees in an effort to control them.

Over the next few years, the personal bond between Dan Lasater and Bill Clinton would grow stronger. Lasater began to sponsor fundraising parties for Clinton at his offices. He made his airplane available for both Bill and Hillary Clinton to use for campaigning as well as private events. By 1983, Bill Clinton would regain the governor’s mansion. Dan Lasater owned a bond firm which would be approached by Governor Clinton and allowed to become an official underwriter with the ADFA for state issued bonds. A whistleblower would later reveal that this state agency was being used to launder money for the cocaine trade. When an Arkansas State Trooper privately confronted Governor Clinton about personally witnessing airplanes full of cocaine being flown into the state, Clinton reportedly responded, “That is Lasater’s deal.”

Dan Lasater’s bond firm was sued in 1985 alleging that his company committed securities fraud by illegally using funds from a struggling Savings and Loan named First American for unauthorized treasury bonds futures trades. His world began to unravel even further the following year when he was publicly accused of cocaine possession and drug trafficking. The FDIC seized First American during a nationwide bailout of failing S&L banks in 1986 and they decided to pursue the lawsuit against Mr. Lasater in order recoup some of the financial losses for the American taxpayers.

This is the part where the story starts to become very “sticky” for Hillary Clinton. The FDIC hired Vince Foster and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Rose Law Firm for their assistance in going after Dan Lasater. Mrs. Clinton did not recuse herself from the case at the time or report any close personal association with Mr. Lasater. Mrs. Clinton and her law firm would proceed to sue Dan Lasater on behalf of the FDIC and the United States government. She proceeded to only provide two billable working hours and work with fellow law partner Vince Foster to quickly negotiate a secret out-of-court settlement which only recouped a little over half of First American’s total losses. Most outside observers viewed this as a very favorable deal for Dan Lasater. Only afterwards would the FDIC learn of Hillary Clinton’s glaring and obvious conflict of interest and would eventually issue a critical public report regarding the issue. Hillary Clinton defended herself publicly by saying that Dan Lasater was never her personal friend… Dan Lasater was simply Bill’s friend.

The American taxpayers would never end up recouping the other half of their bailout losses. Dan Lasater and Roger Clinton would both go on to serve prison sentences for the illegal distribution of cocaine. Both men would eventually be pardoned by Bill Clinton.

Published by

Michael Guyer

Dr. Michael Guyer graduated from Hendrix College with a degree in chemistry and then obtained a medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He is now a software developer for Apple Computer. He has formal computer programming training in C++, Objective C, Visual Basic, Java, HTML, and Swift.

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