Ex-Senator Apparently Seeks Release of Whitewater Figure
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Former Sen. David Pryor met privately with a federal judge in an apparent effort to obtain the release of Whitewater figure Susan McDougal, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Thursday.
The newspaper cited unnamed sources in its report.
Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who retired from the Senate last year after three terms, confirmed that he met with U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright on Tuesday. But he declined to say what they had discussed.
Pryor, a native of Camden, Ark., where McDougal was born, said he knows her family, “but I’ve not had any contact with them for years.”
The judge also declined to discuss the meeting.
McDougal has been in jail for contempt of court since September 1996, following her refusal to testify before a Whitewater grand jury. She is now in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. She has yet to begin serving a two-year sentence for her May 1996 felony fraud convictions in the Whitewater investigation.
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