Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White may be replaced before she completes her probes of President Clinton’s last-minute pardons and Sen. Robert Torricelli’s fund-raising, a Justice Department official said yesterday.
The official could not say when President Bush would replace White, a Democrat holdover from the Clinton years.
“I don’t think they would fire her [White] outright, but they would come to some agreement with her,” said a source familiar with the situation.
The source also said White could wind up completing the Clinton pardon probes before she goes.
Her office had no comment.
A leading candidate to replace White is James McGuire, Gov. Pataki’s counsel. McGuire worked for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, and Pataki is pushing him for the job.
She has not yet been replaced by Bush because of her probes of Clinton and Torricelli (D-N.J.).
By staying in the job, she has helped to deflect criticism that Attorney General John Ashcroft is pursuing Clinton and Torricelli for partisan political purposes.
But she may have angered Bush administration officials by trying to stymie the appointment of Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., to a panel charged with overseeing the Teamsters union.
White is investigating Clinton’s pardon of financier Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland after he was indicted on federal fraud and tax charges in the early 1980s.
Rich’s ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, got criminal immunity in return for her grand jury testimony, but she hasn’t offered any evidence that incriminates her husband.
White is also investigating allegations that first brother Roger Clinton offered to sell pardons for cash as well as the commuted sentences of four men involved in a scam to gain federal money for the Hasidic community of New Square in Rockland County.
She has also been working on terrorist bombing cases involving followers of Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.