Rush's Rich Excuse
NY Post
By John MainelliI
November 20, 2003
Rush Limbaugh yesterday claimed that the more than $300,000 he withdrew in cash from an account at U.S. Trust in Palm Beach, Florida was just "walking-around money," adding that he knew who was responsible for stories that he's being investigated for violating money-laundering laws. "I have not laundered any money," Limbaugh told his radio audience, two days after returning to the air from five weeks of rehab for his painkiller addiction.
Limbaugh, who pockets an estimated $35 million a year, reportedly made up to 40 cash withdrawals from U.S. Trust in amounts just under the mandated federal reporting limit of $10,000. Investigators reportedly believe the top-rated talker used the money to buy massive amounts of black-market painkillers over several years - most of them from a maid in his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion.
The ABC report questioned whether he helped his supplier hide the proceeds of their transactions. "It's being reported in the paper [that] every time I got cash, somebody from the bank snuck over under the cover of darkness to my building," he said. "It was nothing like that," he said, blaming the bank for telling him to keep the amounts under $10,000 "so they wouldn't have to report anything."
Limbaugh, 52, said he wasn't sure how much cash he got. "I don't know - two or three, four or five, whatever, it wasn't very many" under-the-radar cash deliveries. He said the rest involved him personally cashing checks at the bank - "with witnesses." U.S. Trust paid a $10 million fine in 2001 for similar transactions involving Limbaugh and others.
Limbaugh said he used the cash to remodel his Palm Beach mansion and for travel, food and "playing a lot of golf tournaments." He conceded that $300,000 is "a lot of money, but given the amount of money I earn and so forth, it's pretty much in proportion with, you know, what anybody earns in terms of percentage of walking-around money."
"I answered every question that they had," he said.
posted by Richard at
Monday, November 24, 2003
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