Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

COULD IMPENDING COURT CASE HAUNT HILLARY’S 2008 PRESIDENTIAL BID?
by Terry Heath, 2006

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the nomination of the Democratic Party in New York for a second term as a United States Senator and presumably will win this November’s general election against her Republican opponent. She will then be safe from public accountability for the next six years. With that accomplished it would appear she is finally ready to announce her expected candidacy for the presidency in 2008.

There’s just one minor thing for her to worry about these next two years while she considers that run for high office. Will she be forced to testify in a lawsuit filed against her and her husband in a Los Angeles, California court by a business partner to a comic book icon despite being recently dismissed as a co-defendant in the dispute from a fund-raiser from her first senate campaign?

The plaintiff in the case claims he spent almost two million dollars of his own company stock for a Hollywood fund-raiser in August, 2000 for Hillary’s senate race in expectation that by doing so the soon to be ex-President William Jefferson Clinton would agree be a business partner to that company once he left office in January, 2001. Clinton was then expected to help raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the company as the business entity’s goodwill ambassador.

California computer entrepreneur Peter F. Paul, is seeking damages of 1.9 million dollars in expenses and thirty million in stock losses against the former president and current U.S. senator by claiming fraud and deceit, negligent misrepresentation and unfair business practices when he financed the California campaign fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton’s successful 2000 senate race. He filed the suit in 2003. The case number is BC 304174 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Mrs. Clinton has successfully filed a motion to have her removed as a separate defendant in the case in April on the grounds that based on a current California law since she is a presently a candidate for public office in her New York senate re-election bid she is immune to frivolous lawsuits that could impugn her First Amendment Rights in being able to freely speak on public issues. That action is currently on appeal by the plaintiff.

Judge Aurelio N. Munoz of the Los Angeles Superior Court is presiding over the dispute and ruled on September 25 that the action could not go forward toward trial until Paul’s appeal of Mrs. Clinton’s dismissal as a defendant in the action is adjudicated. Once that is resolved then the case can proceed toward the taking of depositions of all the parties in the matter with a tentative trial date now set March 27, 2007.

Paul co-founded an Internet show business company with legendary ‘Spiderman’ creator Stan Lee in 1998 to pursue new avenues of entertainment. It was that endeavor that put him in contact with members of the California Democratic Party that was hoping to hold fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 New York senate campaign since the First Lady was attempting to become the first spouse of a president to hold a public office position at the same time her husband was the nation’s chief executive.

The fund-raiser took place on August 12, 2000 as the ‘Gala Hollywood Farewell Salute to President William Jefferson Clinton.’ It was deemed very successful and many of the celebrities attending included Michael Jackson, Larry King, John Travolta, Cher, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston. Paul states in his complaint that he was prominently introduced to the numerous show biz personalities by both Clintons and their impending partnership was discussed in front of those greeting the president that evening.

It seems apparent that, based on the original filing made by Paul in his claim of fraud against the Clintons, he was hoping the future ex-chief executive’s contacts and personal charm would encourage potential investors to put money into the Internet company so he and Lee would have the necessary finances to create ‘marketable characters’ for entertainment purposes and the licensing of merchandise of such characters on a global scale. That was the main reason he claims he agreed to finance the event from funds belonging to ‘Stan Lee Media.’

It appears, according to the complaint filed by Paul in 2003, that relations between the two parties soured once the Washington Post revealed on August 18, 2000, six days after the fund-raiser took place, that Paul had two previous felony convictions. One occurred in the 1970’s when he pled guilty to a charge of trying to defraud the government of Cuba of almost nine million dollars in a coffee transaction. Several years later he pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to distribute and spent three years in prison. He has since pleaded guilty in 2005 to one count of violating the regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission in attempting to manipulate the price of the Stan Lee stock to save the company from insolvency before the company eventually filed for bankruptcy.

The case will come down to whether there was an agreed upon oral agreement between the two parties that was then dropped by the Clintons once they allegedly found out about Paul’s felony past. The main question that needs to be asked if this impending legal matter will be enough to destroy or, the more likely scenario, distract Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presumed upcoming presidential aspirations enough to where she won’t run?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com