So many questions surrounding Toussie pardon

Many are the mysteries posed by the announced White House pardon of New York developer Isaac Toussie - and its first-in-memory retraction a day later.

The unanswered questions comprise less a who-done-it than a who-done-what - or a what'll-be-done-next.

Toussie is the 37-year-old real estate operator who admitted involvement in a scheme to inflate the value of the Chandler estate in Mount Sinai, which Suffolk bought for $5 million in 2000. He also pleaded guilty to using false loan documents to illegally qualify home buyers for federally backed mortgages.

He's still being sued by home buyers in places like Coram and Gordon Heights who charge he fleeced them and practiced racial discrimination along the way.

This is textbook white-collar crime - made more vivid in light of the recent financial collapse.

One basic question: Since his federal sentence is served and Toussie isn't, say, suffering in jail, just what public good, what need of personal mercy moved someone in the Bush administration to decide that these criminal acts warranted forgiveness on behalf of the people of the United States?

Isaac Toussie's Washington-based attorney, Bradford Berenson, has one of those public-private roles that spurs interest. He was one of the original eight associate White House counsels who worked starting in 2001 under Alberto Gonzales, former U.S. attorney general. Berenson is quoted in published accounts of how the president's legal authority was expanded in the name of national security after the 9/11 attacks.

After returning to private practice, Berenson last year served as lawyer for Susan Ralston, former executive assistant to senior Bush adviser Karl Rove - when she indicated she'd invoke the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee if asked about contacts between White House officials and convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And earlier this year, Berenson represented Kyle Sampson, a Gonzales chief of staff, in the tempest over political hiring of federal prosecutors.

During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Berenson was frequently quoted in newspapers and on television offering analysis of the president's strategies leading up to impeachment. (Interesting footnote: Berenson knew President-elect Barack Obama on the Harvard Law Review.)

One curious question: How and when did Toussie get hooked up with the White-House-savvy Berenson? Berenson was not immediately available for comment through his office yesterday.

As widely reported, Toussie's real-estate father, Robert Toussie, of Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach, conspicuously became a Republican contributor in the last cycle. This leads to a logistical question: How were the donations solicited or offered and then handled within the GOP?

Finally, lawyers have been informally debating at what point a pardon is considered granted - and what revocation powers a president might have. The Bush stance is that the president has now sent the matter to the Justice Department for review.

Which leads to two last questions in a unique case that takes us from Brookhaven to Brooklyn to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Will Toussie win - or has he perhaps won already?

And how, exactly, did it get this far?