Although Clinton dropped plans to name Coia to the Council on Competitiveness, he continued to meet with the union leader, exchanged expensive gifts and frequent notes with him, and invited him to travel aboard the presidential aircraft on a trip to Rhode Island. All of this went on while the Justice Department was preparing a racketeering complaint against Coia and his union. On Nov. 4, 1994, the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section served Coia with a 212-page draft complaint.
"Then something strange happened," noted the liberal muckraking magazine Washington Monthly at the time. Instead of indicting Coia, the Justice Department worked out a sweetheart deal that allowed Coia to avoid prosecution and keep his job, while a federally appointed investigator pursued lower-level mobsters within the union. Just days before the Justice Department offered the deal, Hillary Clinton traveled to Miami to address the annual LIUNA conference on Feb. 6, 1995, despite warnings from the Justice Department that the trip was ill advised.
The decision not to move forward with its complaint shocked everyone, except perhaps Coia himself. The Justice Department had previously filed racketeering charges in 15 other union cases, taking over the corrupt unions' operations. But Clinton couldn't protect his union benefactor forever -- especially when Coia himself couldn't keep his hands out of the union cookie jar. In January 2000, Arthur Coia pled guilty for failing to pay taxes on the purchase of three Ferraris from a Rhode Island car dealer who held a million-dollar leasing agreement with the union. As part of his plea agreement, Coia stepped down as LIUNA president but was allowed to keep his $250,000 yearly salary for life.
If the Clinton administration's dealings with Arthur Coia and the Laborers Union were an isolated incident, it would be bad enough, but the corrupting nexus between union money and Democratic political power was especially tight during the Clinton years. But the unions' role in financing Democrats didn't end when Bill Clinton left office.
This election cycle, unions will spend an estimated $800 million, much of it hidden in the form of salaries for union officials assigned to work on political campaigns, member communications, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other unregulated contributions that go overwhelmingly to elect Democrats. But don't expect to read about it on the front page of the New York Times or in Clinton's memoir.