CHARGE LEVELLED AT GOVERNOR SMITH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18418, 21 March 1928, Page 10

CHARGE LEVELLED AT GOVERNOR SMITH.

WASHINGTON, March 19. Politics virtually consumed the whole day in the Senate. Senator Robinson, during a long drawn out debate, made an accusation that Governor Al. Smith, the probable Democratic nominee for the Presidency, got money from IT. F. Sinclair, who is involved in the oil scandal, to further his campaign. A quarrelsome exchange resulted.—Aust and N.Z. Press Assn.

The transfer of oil leases in 1923 from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior and from that Department to the Sinclair-Doheny oil interests has been the subject of criminal charges for the last five years. Sinclair, Doheny and A. B. Fall, who was Secretary of the Interior in 1923, have all been charged with conspiracy to defraud the State, but, though the leases have been restored to the Navy Department by order of the Courts, none of the men has been convicted. The last trial of Sinclair and Fall was declared “no trial,” and a Senate committee took up the investigation. Evidence was given before this committee that the mysterious Continental Trading Company, with which Sinclair was connected, had donated large sums to the Republican Party funds in the last Presidential election. Senator Borah described the Republicans’ possession of the money as an “obligation of shame,” and the President agreed to nis plan to repay it, though he thought that Mr Will Hays had acted in good faith in accepting it.