Predicted reaction: The Atty General gets charged with contempt of Congress. Reno Rejects Clinton Campaign Probe WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite House Republican allegations, the Justice Department says there is no ``specific and credible information'' that President Clinton's former campaign manager received an illegal $1 million payment in connection with a controversial office building development. Attorney General Janet Reno announced Thursday that she was ending the investigation into lawyer and lobbyist Peter Knight, a former top aide to Vice President Al Gore who ran Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996. The decision means that no independent counsel will explore Knight's financial dealings. Knight received $1 million from Tennessee developer Franklin Haney shortly before becoming Clinton's campaign manager. Republicans on the House Commerce Committee issued a report last month questioning whether the money was an illegal contingency fee for helping get the Federal Communications Commission to move to Haney's Portals development in Southwest Washington. Haney and Knight both have said the $1 million payment represented legal fees for Knight's work on several Haney projects over a three-year period. Committee Republicans criticized Reno's decision Thursday. ``The legal burden is on the attorney general to show why the evidence contained in the report is not specific and credible,'' the committee said in a statement. ``The Justice Department's cursory response utterly fails to meet this legal obligation. We expect a full explanation of this decision.'' Acting Assistant Attorney General Dennis Burke said in a letter to the committee chairman, Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr., R-Va., that the allegations against Knight were investigated as part of a Justice Department campaign task force's probe of Haney. ``The task force concluded that the evidence does not support the report's view that Mr. Haney's payment to Mr. Knight was a contingency fee,'' Burke wrote. As a result of the task force's investigation, Haney, a longtime supporter of Gore, was indicted last month on 42 counts alleging he made illegal donations to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and to two senatorial candidates.
