Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., House Oversight & Inv. Subcommittee Chairman
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This is a partial transcript from Your World with Neil Cavuto, August 9, 2002, that was edited for clarity. Click here for complete access to all of Neil Cavuto's CEO interviews.
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NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Joining me now from Philadelphia is the chairman of House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Congressman Jim Greenwood. Congressman, thank you very much for coming.
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REP. JIM GREENWOOD, R-Pa., HOUSE OVERSIGHT & INV. SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It's good to be with you.
CAVUTO: You want to talk to Martha, don't you?
GREENWOOD: Well, I do. I do want her to come in and talk -- she doesn't have to be me personally, but she certainly needs to come in and talk to the investigators on our committee, yes.
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CAVUTO: All right. Now, what do you want most to hear from her? Because separately, you have these legal investigations going on. Are you afraid that you would muddy those waters?
GREENWOOD: Well, no. We have separate functions. The fact of the matter is that back in June, Ms. Stewart's attorneys sent to me a letter indicating that Ms. Stewart's sale of ImClone stock was done exclusively based upon a pre-existing verbal order that she had with Peter Bacanovic, her broker, and that she had absolutely no insider information.
Now, that's what she wanted the committee to believe. That's what she wanted the committee to report to America. But we haven't found any evidence to substantiate her claims. And, in fact, all of the evidence that we have seen seems to point in the other direction. So, we have a responsibility when someone communicates to the United States Congress to make sure that what they say is, in fact, the truth.
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CAVUTO: You know, Congressman, you've been very adept at handling these hearings and not going too far. There is a sense that there is a rush to the jugular against Martha Stewart. How do you keep that in check when a lot of people say that she's the big gun that everybody wants to go after?
GREENWOOD: Well, that's a good question, and it certainly is the case that my committee members and our staff and myself have not rushed to Martha Stewart's jugular by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, if we were to be accused of anything, it would probably be the reverse.
We have dragged the executives from Arthur Andersen and from Enron and from ImClone, including Mr. Waksal, before our committee. We have grilled them politely but incessantly. We've not forced Ms. Stewart to come before us yet. We've not subpoenaed her. We have tried in every way possible to gain her cooperation, to invite her to come in. I've even suggested to her attorneys that we would do that in a place of her choice, we'd make sure there wasn't advance notice to the media so they wouldn't have the paparazzi hanging out, and that's been declined. So, we have tried to be...
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CAVUTO: Wait a minute. So, every time you've made these overtures, you've been declined. I mean, is your goal now ultimately, saving any other more declines, to get her down to Washington to speak to your committee entirely?
GREENWOOD: Well, what we did a couple days ago is we sent a letter to her asking for her to provide records with regard to her e-mail accounts as well as her phone records, because we want to see how that compares to the e-mails that we have picked up from Merrill Lynch and from others, as well as phone interaction between ImClone, her broker and herself.
We're hoping that she cooperates with that request. If she doesn't, we will subpoena those records. One way or another, we will examine those records, and if we feel it is important to have her come in and she still chooses not to do it voluntarily, then of course we have the option to subpoena her.
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CAVUTO: Congressman, just your gut call on this. You have got a pretty good legal gut call on a lot of things. Someone who sells a lot of shares the day before an FDA announcement that ultimately torpedoed ImClone's stock, could it be coincidence?
GREENWOOD: Well, there's no coincidence here, but there are several things that could have happened. You can believe her story, which is she told her broker verbally -- it's an unusual thing to do -- but she told her broker that the stock seems to get below $60 a share, why don't you unload it. You can believe that.
Secondly -- second option is that her broker said, look, Sam Waksal is dumping his stock, his family members are dumping the stock. I don't know what is wrong, but you better get out of it.
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The third possibility is that her broker knew that this negative letter from the FDA had come to the company and that he told her very inside information, they're going to get a bad letter from the FDA, it's time to get out. Now, if it were the first scenario, where she was completely innocent, then it is hard for me to imagine why she would let the value of her company's stock drop, I think 60 percent so far, why she would allow herself to go through this public anguish and torture when she could just come forward and sit down and say this is what happened and here's Mr. Bacanovic and so forth to substantiate my story.
CAVUTO: All right...
GREENWOOD: So, it leads us to believe that maybe her story isn't exactly the truth.
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CAVUTO: All right. Congressman Greenwood, always a pleasure having you on. Appreciate it.
GREENWOOD: My pleasure. Good to be with you.
CAVUTO: Congressman Jim Greenwood, Republican of Pennsylvania, the man looking into all of this.
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