This partial transcript from Hannity & Colmes, January 30, 2001 was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House.

SEAN HANNITY: Our top newsmaker on this Tuesday. In one of his last acts as president, Bill Clinton issued 140 pardons. One of the lucky few was his former Whitewater business partner Susan McDougal who was convicted of fraud in 1996. She served 18 months in prison for contempt for refusing to testify about Bill Clinton, and a few months into serving her time on fraud convictions, Mrs. McDougal was released from prison for health reasons.
And Susan McDougal now joins us tonight from Little Rock.
 

Susan, how are you?
 

SUSAN MCDOUGAL, PARDONED BY CLINTON: I'm good. Thank you.
 

HANNITY: I know you've been looking forward to this all day.
 

MCDOUGAL: Yeah. All week, actually.
 

HANNITY: All right. Well, I appreciate that.
 

All right. Let's get down to business here. Susan, you were convicted by a jury of your peers on four felony counts. You went to prison rather than cooperate with the prosecution. At the time this all happened, people were convinced that you were promised a pardon. Now you got your pardon. In the minds of many, it looks very suspicious. What do you say to them?
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, I — I say that, you know, if I was — there was no deal, and if there was a deal, next time, I would really like...
 

HANNITY: You wouldn't tell me.
 

MCDOUGAL: ... to get it earlier. You know, I'd like not to wait until the last minute and hang by my fingernails, you know, looking at television wondering if I've gotten it. You know, the — the scuttlebutt I heard was that he slept on mine. You know, after hearing about the one he gave Rich, that's pretty unsettling.
 

HANNITY: All right. So you deny a deal. You deny you ever had any discussion of a pardon with Clinton or any intermediary of some kind or anybody at all. You never had any discussion...
 

MCDOUGAL: No.
 

HANNITY: ... any deal. There was no winking and — not — nothing. OK.
 

MCDOUGAL: I had not talked to him for years before I got charged...
 

HANNITY: All right. That's him, but, you know...
 

MCDOUGAL: ... and then years afterward, and — no intermediary, nothing.
 

HANNITY: All right.
 

MCDOUGAL: I was promised nothing, and — and let me just tell you I got nothing. I got no money. I got...
 

HANNITY: No, you got a pardon.
 

MCDOUGAL: ... no job. I got no help. I got nothing.
 

HANNITY: Well — but, as you know, I mean, you know, in part, you're a convicted felon. You're responsible — at least partly responsible for $73 million being bilked form the U.S. taxpayers for the failed Madison Guaranty. But you know what I have a question about?
 

MCDOUGAL: No one ever said that. You know, that would be like me saying to you...
 

HANNITY: That's all true.
 

MCDOUGAL: No, that is not true.
 

HANNITY: It's all true.
 

MCDOUGAL: It would be like me saying to you, you know,
"A lot of people say you got this job by handing out sexual favors." I mean, it is...
 

HANNITY: No, no.
 

MCDOUGAL: ... no basis in fact. It's a mean thing to say...
 

HANNITY: Well...
 

MCDOUGAL: ... and it's just not true.
 

HANNITY: It's not a mean thing to say because...
 

MCDOUGAL: No one even said it.
 

HANNITY: ... the taxpayers were bilked out of $73 billion because of...
 

MCDOUGAL: No one ever said that about me, Sean.
 

HANNITY: They were bilked out of $73 million.
 

MCDOUGAL: You just make things up, which is why this show is getting like Jerry Springer.
 

HANNITY: Well — in your view.
 

MCDOUGAL: It's opposed to the truth.
 

HANNITY: But you keep coming back. But — wait a minute. Seventy- three...
 

MCDOUGAL: You know, I could say accusations about you, but they wouldn't be true.
 

HANNITY: Let me ask the question. Did Madison Guaranty — did it cost the taxpayers $73 million or not?
 

MCDOUGAL: Not while I was involved with it, no, and I never worked there, and...
 

HANNITY: You don't want to answer the question.
 

MCDOUGAL: ... it closed down — Sean dear, they owed me money. If they...
 

ALAN COLMES: You know what's interesting, Susan?
 

MCDOUGAL: ... paid me the money they owed me, I could have paid back my loan.
 

COLMES: Susan...
 

COLMES: By the way, Susan, thank you for doing our program. You know what's interesting?
They very rarely care to bring up all the S&L scandals during the Bush and Reagan years that
conservatives and Republicans were involved with. Those hardly ever get discussed. You paid quite a price...
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, I want — I want you to know that I — unequivocally, no person in the government, no prosecutor, no one ever said that I took money from a Savings & Loan. Not the one that Jim McDougal owned.
 

COLMES: Right.
 

MCDOUGAL: Never. It is a scurrilous remark, and it is unfounded.
 

COLMES: Were you aware of any wrongdoing on behalf — on the part of Jim McDougal or anybody else?
 

MCDOUGAL: I wasn't. I went to trial believing that everyone there was completely innocent because I knew I was.
 

COLMES: Now you didn't have to serve that 18 months in prison. Had you testified before that grand jury,
you very well could not have had to see that time behind bars, right?
 

MCDOUGAL: That's true.
 

COLMES: So why didn't you?
 

MCDOUGAL: Because I had already tried to talk to Kenneth Starr, and I had already tried to tell him what I knew, and he did not want to hear it. He asked me to lie about the president and back up the story David Hale had told, and I wouldn't do it.
 

COLMES: Did Kenneth Starr do anything that you — in your view was not legal?
 

MCDOUGAL: Yes. He put on perjured testimony by David Hale — the prosecutors who worked for him did, and now,
again, in another case, those same prosecutors are being prosecuted themselves for doing to other people what they did to me. Ray Juan (ph) and his wife.
 

COLMES: And you felt you were intimidated by what amounted to a fourth branch of government.
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, I felt like — and — well, I didn't feel like. I was told, "If you'll back up this story about Bill Clinton, you won't be charged. Nothing will happen to you," and to me, that was the most un- American, most unbelievable thing I — I had ever heard.
 

COLMES: Well, it was clear they were using you to get to the Clintons.
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, actually, Starr testified to that. He testified that his plan was to indict me, to convict me and, therefore, further his — his investigation into the Clintons.
 

COLMES: What recourse do you have at this point? I mean, you've been pardoned.
You still feel used and abused, but, at this point, it's over for you, right?
 

MCDOUGAL: Oh, yeah. It's absolutely over. I got a pardon. It's done for me. Thank God I got the pardon.
 

HANNITY: We're going to take a break. All right. Well, I'll tell you what. When we come back, we'll talk about your now deceased former husband. He said the Clintons were up to their eyeballs in Whitewater and Castle Grande, and we'll get you to respond to that.
 

That's all straight ahead. More with Susan McDougal right after this here on "The Jerry Springer Show."
 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
 

COLMES: Welcome back to HANNITY & COLMES. I'm Alan Colmes.

We continue with Susan McDougal. How were you treated in prison?
Was there a sense that you were a political prisoner?
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, I was in lock-down a lot of the time. I was in isolation for about seven or eight months,
and that was really hard.
 

COLMES: At whose order were you in isolation?
 

MCDOUGAL: The independent counsel testified that they had some influence over how I was held, and I have to believe that that would be the case since I was there for civil contempt, and people there for murder and for every other imaginable crime were not in lock-down, so...
 

COLMES: That is absolutely amazing. I mean, I've often said and I — Sean kids the fact that I would use the word "proportionality" during the whole impeachment saga, but...
 

HANNITY: Oh, yeah.
 

COLMES: ... there was clearly — let me get one more shot in. There was clearly a lack of it. The fact that you spent this time in jail — I've heard the conservatives say that Paula Jones was the Joan of Arc of this debacle. I think you were. You paid an incredible price.
 

HANNITY: Oh, geez.
 

COLMES: Sean is going crazy now that I'm saying this. But you paid an incredible price because you stood on principle, and you would not speak because you felt you were being railroaded to say something you would not say out of your own sense of integrity.
 

MCDOUGAL: I did.
 

COLMES: What happens to you now? Are you going to get politically involved? Is your life changed because of this?
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, you know, my life changed when I went to jail. I — I go around the country now and tell people
what I saw. You know, most of the other people in lock down with me were people who were mentally ill, and the
jails in this country are full of the mentally ill, and we wouldn't have to build more jails if we could do something
about that. There's nowhere for them to go.
 

COLMES: Well, now that you have been pardoned, you can run for office.
 

MCDOUGAL: Yes.
 

COLMES: You can vote. Will you run for office?
 

MCDOUGAL: I don't think so. Not for — not for a long time. I'd have to listen to people like Sean.
 

COLMES: Are you going to — you like to listen to people like Sean?
 

MCDOUGAL: Oh, no.
 

HANNITY: All right. Let me get to some harder questions here, Susan, now that — well, obviously, this is a fan club here.
Look, the taxpayers were bilked out of $73 million, and it — this is a fact. Seventy-three million dollars.
If you want to say you're not responsible...
 

MCDOUGAL: Sean, we had been there (she means gone) for about six or seven years when it finally went bankrupt.
 

HANNITY:  But that's a fact for the failed Madison Guaranty. Your husband was convicted, and your husband also said
that the Clintons, quote, "were up to their eyeballs in Whitewater and Castle Grande." He said it before his death.
Now either he's telling the truth or lying, or you're telling the truth or lying.
 

MCDOUGAL: No, it's much simpler than that.
 

HANNITY: You can't both be right.
 

MCDOUGAL: It's much simpler than that. As I told you before, we hadn't even been there for seven years when
Madison went bankrupt. Neither one of us had been involved with it at all. It was one of the last — the smallest
S&Ls in Arkansas to lose money, but...
 

HANNITY: Seventy-three million.
 

MCDOUGAL: And that — we had more FBI agents at Madison than the largest bankrupt S&L in the country
because of the Clinton involvement, so to speak. Now about Jim McDougal — during our trial, Jim said that the
Clintons had nothing to do with anything. He testified truthfully. Then he got convicted. He was looking at
40 years in prison, which was a death sentence for him, and so, he came to me and said that he'd lie to get leniency...
and he did that.

HANNITY: All right. So you're saying he lied. You're saying he consciously lied.
 

MCDOUGAL: He not only did that...
 

HANNITY: He's a liar.
 

MCDOUGAL: ... Sean. Starr stood beside him in front of the sentencing judge and told the judge
"This man has now seen the light. He's now telling the truth."
 

HANNITY: Let me...
 

MCDOUGAL: It's such a hypocritical thing.
 

HANNITY: All right. but the taxpayers still lost the $73 million.
You don't seem the least bit concerned about it. You're talking about...
 

MCDOUGAL: Yeah. Well, I'm terribly concerned about any loss to the taxpayer...
 

HANNITY: ... "Oh, it's the least amount of money." But I want to ask you this question. You go to jail...
 

MCDOUGAL: I'm concerned that you're blaming me for it when I never worked there...
 

HANNITY: All right. Fair enough.
 

HANNITY: You just said you were not — you're not responsible. We'll let the — we have a saying here at FOX.
We'll let the audience decide. All right. You made your best case. Your husband was convicted in those matters,
and you were closely associated in some of the business deals. We'll let them decide. I'm not going to make a
final determination here. But I have one question.
 

MCDOUGAL: Well, let's make the determination in that do you think that I would not have been charged
by Kenneth Starr if I had been involved in any skullduggery of the Savings & Loan?
 

HANNITY: Well, you're — here's my question to you.
 

MCDOUGAL: Do you believe that? Do you think he wouldn't have found any way he possibly could to charge me for that?
 

HANNITY: Here's my question for you. You never testified...
 

MCDOUGAL: Give me a break, as Judge Judy says.
 

HANNITY: You blamed Ken Starr, that Ken Starr was going to force you to say something you didn't want to say.
 

MCDOUGAL: He had a story...
 

HANNITY: ... why didn't you go — why didn't you go on the stand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth, so help you God? Why didn't you just tell the truth? You couldn't have been nailed for perjury
if it was the truth. I don't — that's one question you've never answered.
 

MCDOUGAL: I've answered it so many times I'm surprised you're asking it.
 

HANNITY: Not satisfactory.
 

MCDOUGAL: Yes! Perfectly...
 

HANNITY: Not to my satisfaction.
 

MCDOUGAL: If you'd let me answer it, it's a perfect answer. I met him the first day.
There were reporters everywhere. I told him, "Let me tell you the truth. Ask me any question.
Show me any document. Let me tell you." This went on over a period of a long time.
 

HANNITY: Why not go under oath?
 

MCDOUGAL: I was happy to go under — I would have gone under oath. That wasn't a problem.
It was his problem. He asked me for a proffer against the Clintons, and I didn't have one, Sean.
 

COLMES: All right.
 

MCDOUGAL: Do you understand the law? Does this come into your mind?

ha ha
 

MCDOUGAL: A proffer against the Clintons. I did not have one. I don't have one. There is not one from me.
 

COLMES: Susan, we give you the last word.
 

HANNITY: That's all you had to say, though.
 

COLMES: We thank you very much for coming on with us tonight.
 

MCDOUGAL: Thank you very much.
 

COLMES: And I think you made a great case.
 

MCDOUGAL: Call me any time.
 

COLMES: Thank you.