Fact Check: Was Hillary and Bill Clinton forced to return furniture they took from the White House?

Times-Union readers want to know:

I read that Hillary Clinton was forced to return $28,000 worth of furniture and art after she and her husband left the White House. Is that true?

There was a controversy almost immediately after President Bill Clinton left office over household items and gifts that the first couple took with them, FactCheck.org notes.

Bill Clinton said that he had retained $190,027 worth of gifts that he had received. The Washington Post reported this on Jan. 21, 2001.

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 On Feb. 5, 2001, the Post reported that some of those gifts - $28,000 worth - were intended for the White House, not for the Clintons personally, based on documents the newspaper reviewed and interviews it conducted with donors.

About a week later, the Post reported that the Clintons returned the $28,000 worth of furnishings to the National Park Service. The Post also reported that days earlier the Clintons had paid the government $86,000 for other items they received as gifts.

In general, presidents are "free to accept unsolicited personal gifts from the American public," FactCheck.org reported, quoting a 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service. Federal law requires that all gifts valued at more than $350 be listed in financial disclosure reports each year, but the president is free to keep them after moving out of the White House.

Gifts from the public given directly to the White House, however, are considered the property of the U.S. government and cannot be taken from the White House by the president or family members when the president leaves office.

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The Clinton White House furnishings in question, which were donated in 1993, included two sofas, an easy chair and an ottoman, worth $19,900, from Steve Mittman; a kitchen table and four chairs, valued at $3,650, from Lee Ficks; a $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe; $1,170 in lamps from Stuart Schiller; and a $1,000 needlepoint rug from David Martinous, according to the Post as reported by FactCheck.org.

Mittman, Noe and Joy Ficks, the widow of Lee Ficks, told the Post that their donations were gifts to the White House, not the Clintons. The contributions were intended to complement a 1993 White House redecoration project.

The Clintons and their transition team said that they were unaware that the gifts were not intended to go to them.

"All of these items were considered gifts to us," Hillary Clinton said in 2001, according the Post. She added, "… But if there is a different intent, we will certainly honor the intention of the donor."

Martinous told the Post that he wanted the Clintons to keep the rug he gave to the White House. Schiller couldn't be reached for comment by the newspaper, but the lamps he gave were intended as gifts to the Clintons, according to a spokesman for Clinton's transition team, who told the Post that's what Schiller told the transition office.

In any case, the $28,000 worth of furniture the Clintons took with them was returned in February 2001, according to the National Park Service.

Although the Clintons were not "forced" to return the gifts, Jim McDaniel, a National Park Service spokesman, said the items returned were indeed property of the federal government. So it is possible that the Clintons would have been forced to return them, if they did not do so voluntarily, FactCheck.org noted.

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"I feel 99 percent certain that everything that's been returned to us is government property," McDaniel was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story.

Before returning those gifts, the Clintons also agreed to pay for $86,000 worth of other items that they received in their last year in office.

The Post's disclosure that the Clintons took with them more than $190,000 in china, flatware, rugs, sofas and other personal gifts triggered an immediate backlash. The gifts included $7,375 for tables and chairs from Denise Rich, a prominent Democratic fundraiser and the ex-wife of a fugitive financier, Marc Rich, who was pardoned by Clinton on the president's last day in office. FactCheck.org reported that former President Jimmy Carter called the Rich pardon "disgraceful," saying "some of the factors in his pardon were attributable to his large gifts."

Because of the criticism, the Clintons decided on Feb. 2, 2001, to pay the government for $86,000 worth of items they received in 2000, as reported by the Post.

In the end, FactCheck.org noted, the Clintons returned or paid for most of the items that they took from the White House, although they were able to keep two items that they had returned.

In October 2002, the House Committee on Government Reform reported that a $1,725 easy chair and a $675 ottoman were returned to the Clintons "since neither had been officially accepted by NPS for the White House Residence." But the committee also said the Clintons underestimated the value of the gifts, placing the total actual value of all the items the Clintons originally kept at $360,000, as reported in 2002 by the New York Times.

Carole Fader: (904) 359-4635