Jack Quinn, a Washington insider who served as a White House adviser in the Clinton administration, helped found a bipartisan lobbying firm after securing a last-minute presidential pardon for fugitive financier Marc Rich. He was embroiled in a scandal and died at his home on May 8th. He was 74 years old in Washington, DC.
His wife, Susannah Quinn, said the cause was complications from a double lung transplant in 2019.
Mr. Quinn, popular and approachable in Washington social circles, helped obtain a pardon for Mr. Rich, a billionaire whose ex-wife was a major donor to the Democratic Party, in the final hours of President Bill Clinton’s term. He was later expelled in 2001. One of his largest donations was to Mr. Clinton’s Presidential Library Fund.
Rich, who died in 2013, was indicted on tax evasion charges in 1983, but moved to Switzerland before authorities could arrest him. A congressional investigation ensued, and Mr. Rich became a political punching bag on cable news shows. Clinton later called the pardon “bad politics.”
“The aftermath of Rich was brutal,” former New York Times political reporter Mark Leibovich wrote in This Town (2013), a book about the gilded culture of the Beltway. “When Quinn entered the restaurant, he wondered if people were looking at him and what he was saying. His friends had deserted him.”
Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, began his long career in Washington as a sophomore at Georgetown University, working full-time as an aide to Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and then to Sen. Floyd K. Haskell of Colorado. Worked full time as an aide.
In 1976, at the age of 26, he served as the campaign manager for Arizona Representative Mo Udall’s unsuccessful presidential bid. (He lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter.) Mr. Quinn worked for the Washington, D.C., firm Arnold & Co. before returning to politics as an advisor and communications director to Sen. Al Gore during the 1988 presidential campaign. – Worked as a lobbyist for Porter for several years.
He served as Gore’s chief of staff when he was vice president, and in 1995, Clinton appointed him White House Counsel, making him the fourth attorney to serve in that role during a scandal-plagued presidential term. It became.
Mr. Quinn has been at odds with Congress over the White House Travel Office and its investigation into alleged mismanagement at Whitewater, a failed real estate investment deal involving Mr. Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He left the White House in his 1997 year and returned to Arnold & Porter.
Years later, Quinn was waiting to appear as a talking head in a Fox News studio dressing room when he met Republican lobbyist Ed Gillespie. They became friends and in 2000 Quinn founded one of the first bipartisan lobbying firms, Gillespie & Associates.
They sold the company in 2004, “ultimately for $40 million,” Leibovich wrote. By that time, he added, few people remembered “Marc Rich, much less who his lawyer was, or what Jack Quinn got into the barrel for.”
In 2013, Mr. Quinn served as co-counsel for the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, who sought to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement. His colleagues and lawmakers say he was instrumental in passing legislation that would allow victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement: “Jack Quinn was personable and resourceful, but he did everything he could to ensure some measure of truth and justice for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” And he was a relentlessly effective advocate.”
John Michael Quinn was born on August 16, 1949 in Brooklyn and raised in Glen Head, Long Island. His father, William Quinn, was a manager at the Con Ed Power Plant, and his mother, Mary (Wagner) Quinn, ran the family finances.
He attended Xavier High School, a Jesuit school in Manhattan. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1971, majoring in government, and received a law degree from the same school in 1975.
Mr. Quinn was married three times. Her marriages to Burdett Rooney in 1975 and Diane O’Brien in 1986 ended in divorce.
In 2006, he married Susannah Monroney, the granddaughter of Oklahoma State Senator Almer Stillwell Monroney, who died in 1980.
In addition to his wife, he has a brother, Kevin Quinn. two children from his first marriage, Megan Quinn and Jonathan Quinn; two children from his second marriage, Caitlin Slaviello and Brendan Quinn; two children, Jocelyn and Storm Quinn, from his marriage to Mrs. Quinn; He is survived by two other daughters, Kathleen Quinn and Jessica Del Pizzo; and 12 grandchildren.
Mr. Quinn was a frequent commentator on cable news programs and was known for criticizing the lives of lobbyists, despite his profession. In 2007, Politico asked Washington insiders what summer meant to them.
“Summer in Washington, D.C., is great,” Quinn said, noting that you can ride in a convertible with the top down without being solicited for a fundraiser.
He added, “Forget all the jokes about D.C. about the heat. When people like me go on vacation, the heat index actually goes down.”
