Ethics Panel Advises Clinton Be Disbarred

By ROBERT L. JACKSON

May 23, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — An Arkansas Supreme Court ethics panel recommended Monday that President Clinton be disbarred for “serious misconduct” in the testimony he provided in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case.

The advisory committee of six rejected Clinton’s contention that he did not lie under oath when he denied a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

Disbarment of Clinton likely would have little effect on his post-government career. He has given no indication that he would rely on practicing law in Arkansas--the only state in which he is licensed to do so--to earn a living after leaving the White House. But it would be powerfully symbolic, placing him alongside Richard M. Nixon as the only president to be denied the practice of law as a result of scandal.

Nixon, facing disbarment for his role in the Watergate scandal, voluntarily resigned from the New York and California bar associations after his resignation from the presidency in August 1974.

The recommendation for Clinton’s disbarment now goes to an Arkansas state court. David E. Kendall, the president’s private lawyer, said Clinton will “vigorously dispute” the recommendation as “wrong and clearly contradicted by precedent.”

Clinton, in a Monday night interview on NBC Nightly News, said he would “not personally” appear in court or involve himself directly in the dispute “until I am no longer president.”

The recommendation stems largely from a decision by a federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., last year that found Clinton in contempt of court for making “misleading statements” under oath about his affair with Lewinsky.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright declared that, when Clinton was asked if he had been alone with Lewinsky and had engaged in sexual relations with her, “the president responded by giving false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process.”

Wright added that Clinton “undermined the integrity of the judicial system.”

Wright also fined him $90,000 in July, making him the first chief executive ever assessed such a penalty. The judge excoriated Clinton for “false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process.”

Jones, in her lawsuit, alleged that Clinton exposed himself to her and made a sexual advance in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991 when he was governor and she was a state employee. Although later dismissed, the suit led her lawyers to question Clinton under oath in January 1998 about his relationships with other women, including Lewinsky.

Evidence that Clinton was shading his testimony led to a federal grand jury investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and ultimately resulted in the president’s impeachment by the House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. In February 1999 he was acquitted in a Senate trial.

Robert W. Ray, who succeeded Starr as independent counsel, has said he considers Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky an “open matter” for investigation and is actively considering seeking an indictment after Clinton leaves office. Among the charges being weighed against the president are perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements and conspiracy to commit those crimes.

The president has insisted that he did not lie when he denied having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, saying that their encounters did not meet the definition of sex provided when Jones’ lawyers questioned him.

In her contempt finding, Wright determined that Clinton misled the court in the Jones case, over which she presided, and later contradicted himself in his sworn grand jury testimony in the Lewinsky inquiry.

Clinton, while he did not challenge the contempt finding or the financial penalty, has seemed determined to avoid disbarment. In a confidential filing to the state Supreme Court ethics panel last month, he argued that, although his testimony about Lewinsky may have been misleading, he did not consider it false.

Although Wright’s finding was the most weighty evidence placed before the Arkansas committee, an earlier complaint had been filed by the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation of Atlanta.

Matthew J. Glavin, the foundation’s president, said Clinton should be disbarred for “misconduct,” if not lying, because he is “held to . . . the higher ethical standard for attorneys who hold public office.”

Glavin called the panel’s action “a confirmation that the legal system will police its own, regardless of the position held by the attorney in question.”

The committee’s recommendation will go to Pulaski County circuit court in Little Rock, where it will be assigned to a judge. Then, according to a state Supreme Court spokesman, “a hearing will be held and Mr. Clinton may either surrender his license or file a lawsuit” challenging the committee’s finding.

In March the president sought to postpone any action until after he leaves office in January. But the committee denied the request, saying that it would proceed this year.

Ronald D. Rotunda, a University of Illinois law professor who served as a consultant to Starr, said the panel’s recommendation is not surprising.

“The American Bar Assn. has published recommended standards for discipline, and basically misrepresenting oneself under oath--even when not acting in your capacity as a lawyer--would be grounds for disbarment, so this would fall in line with that,” Rotunda said.

James A. Neal, executive director of the Arkansas Supreme Court committee, declined to reveal the exact vote among members, except to say that a majority concluded the president should be disbarred.

The ethics advisory committee has 14 full-time members who sit in panels of seven. Because of Clinton’s wide connections in Arkansas, eight of the panelists bowed out before Friday’s meeting, most of them citing potential conflicts of interest. Of the six who heard Clinton’s case, five are lawyers and the sixth is a retired schoolteacher.

Clinton, who will leave the presidency at a relatively youthful 54, practiced law only sporadically after receiving his degree from Yale University in 1973. He was a law professor at the University of Arkansas but then won election as state attorney general in 1976. He went on to serve as governor before winning the presidency in 1992.

Earlier this spring, the ethics panel said it would not consider discipline for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for work tied to the Whitewater scandal.

The Landmark Legal Foundation had sought an inquiry after federal regulators found in 1996 that Mrs. Clinton, as a lawyer in Little Rock, created a real estate document later used by her Whitewater partners’ savings and loan to deceive federal regulators.

The panel said there was not “a sufficient basis” to pursue Mrs. Clinton.

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.