The Destruction and Mishandling of Rose Law Firm Files.
In 1988, Mrs. Clinton ordered the Rose Law Firm to destroy records relating to her representation of Madison.(1214) This was not a routine destruction of records. At the time, federal regulators were investigating the operations and solvency of Madison, in anticipation of taking over the institution. These Rose Law Firm records, which, after Madison's failure would belong to the RTC,(1215) would have been directly relevant to that investigation.
By ordering their destruction, Mrs. Clinton eliminated pertinent records and also exposed her firm to potential liability with respect to her representation. If such representation was proper, as Mrs. Clinton has claimed, her document destruction deprived the law firm of the records necessary to defend itself in a suit by federal investigators. Moreover, in 1988, Seth Ward, a former associate of Mr. McDougal and Webster Hubbell's father-in-law, was suing Mr. McDougal over the Castle Grande land deal that federal regulators have described as a fraud.(1216) Mrs. Clinton had performed work on the project, including numerous telephones calls and meetings with Mr. Ward, and the law firm's records of her work and the transactions surrounding this land deal certainly would have been highly relevant to the conduct of that suit.