Meese Defends Role in Hutton, Presser Cases

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III today defended his department’s handling of the cases against Teamsters President Jackie Presser and against E. F. Hutton & Co.

Meese said on the ABC “Good Morning America” program that he had no part in the decision to drop the investigation of Presser “because we wanted to avoid any possibility of anyone claiming that there was any political interference.”

He said Justice Department “career people . . . found it was not appropriate to go ahead with the Presser investigation or to have him be indicted, and I think that case speaks for itself. . . . It’s very clear at no time was there any political influence or any undue influence.”

The Administration dropped its 32-month labor fraud investigation of Presser, the only major labor leader to support President Reagan, after federal prosecutors in Cleveland recommended that he be indicted on charges of authorizing union payments to “ghost employees.”

No Individuals Charged

In the Hutton case, the corporation pleaded guilty to 2,000 charges of wire and mail fraud May 2 and was fined, but no individuals were charged.

Meese was asked to respond to criticism by conservative columnist William Safire, who said the Meese motto seems to be, “On Wall Street there is such a thing as crime without criminal and millions for corporate crime, but not one day in jail.”

“Well, I’m afraid this is one case where poor ol’ Bill Safire didn’t know what he was talking about,” Meese said. “Bill didn’t call the Justice Department or get any information. He just, unfortunately, wrote a very misleading column.”

Meese said that in order to uncover “a very complicated crime, it was necessary to grant immunity to some of the people involved and, by the time that they had uncovered a case which was very difficult to prove, it was determined by the prosecutors that they had really no one who was not granted immunity who was majorly involved in the crime.”