Clinton's lawyers rewrite the rules - how Bill Clinton has used every legal resource to avoid accountability in the Whitewater Development Corp. investigation and other scandals - Column

Insight on the News, Sept 12, 1994 by Mark R. Levin

During the past few months, we have watched our president exploit his high office to protect himself from the consequences of his misbehavior. Indeed, President Clinton and the gaggle of Washington lawyers with whom he has surrounded himself are asserting a legal defense that comes down to this: Bill Clinton is above the law.

In particular, they claim Clinton is immune from civil lawsuits, exempt from strict prohibitions preventing him from soliciting millions of dollars in contributions for his legal-defense fund and free to receive a "heads up" about ongoing criminal investigations in which he is mentioned. Talk about an imperial presidency.

Super-expensive lawyer Robert Bennett, the president's defense counsel in the sexual harassment civil suit filed against him by Paula Jones, fancies himself a former boxer. His recent low blows -- in the form of intemperate public attacks against the new Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, and the panel of federal appeals courtjudges who selected him -- seem to confirm that Bennett is indeed a much-worn boxer with a law degree.

Bennett, whose former clients include Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and Illinois Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, has asked a federal judge in Arkansas not only to dismiss Jones's civil suit against the president but also to dismiss the defamation and conspiracy lawsuit she brought against Arkansas State Trooper Danny Ferguson. Ferguson allegedly brought Jones to the hotel room where Clinton is said to have made unwanted sexual advances toward her.

No court has ever ruled that a president is immune from civil suits relating to allegations of personal misconduct. Moreover, in Clinton's case, the claimed conduct occurred before he was even a candidate for president. Clearly the court can accommodate Clinton's schedule, and undoubtedly Clinton has time in his schedule to answer serious allegations that, for the American people, go beyond the issue of sexual harassment to the matter of Ferguson. Here Bennett contends that Clinton "would be a major and indispensable witness," and since the president is busy, he doesn't have time to be a witness. Therefore, the argument continues, presidential immunity would extend to Ferguson, his codefendant.

It should be obvious that Bennett's courtroom and public antics have nothing to do with defending the office of the presidency and everything to do with preventing Clinton, his client, from testifying under oath about what happened that day. Clinton refuses to answer the charges filed against him, and he refuses to be a possible witness in the related Ferguson case. In other words, the judicial process applies to everyone except Clinton.

Next is the little problem of Bennett's $475-an-hour legal fee, and the fees of the Clinton's Whitewater lawyers. Simply put, the Clintons have hired lawyers they cannot afford. Perhaps the time has come for universal lawyer coverage in which the Clintons would be guaranteed a standard legal package subsidized by the taxpayers, but nothing more.

Enter White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. Cutler, formerly of the Carter administration, is a consistent apologist for the Clinton team. Indeed, last year he dismissed calls for a special counsel to investigate the Travelgate scandal as a Republican attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill. Never mind the Clinton White House's misuse of the

FBI and the despicable effort to destroy the careers and reputations of former Travel Office personnel.

In any event, Cutler helped the Clintons concoct a scheme under which the Clintons hope to raise $2 million in donations for a legal-defense fund. This begs the question: How can Cutler, a government lawyer, justify spending the people's time to assist the Clintons in raising private funds to pay their private lawyers for their private legal problems? No doubt Cutler, like Bennett, would claim to be defending the institution of the pr

No president has ever attempted to establish a legal-defense fund. In fact, the president is prohibited from soliciting gifts, whether he seeks to do so directly or indirectly. Somehow, Cutler and the Clintons' other lawyers overlooked this indisputable fact. Having been alerted to it, they now claim the Clintons are not soliciting, but merely accepting, donations.

Of course, the Clintons may not accept the money either, and the "legal" arguments urged by the Clintons' lawyers have become increasingly preposterous. According to Cutler, the legal prohibitions against asking for or taking gifts, such as money, apply to all government officials except the Clintons.

Lest we be concerned, Cutler assures us he is not a "special pleader" for Clinton. At least that's what he told the House Banking Committee under oath during the so-called Whitewater hearings. No, Cutler is an objective, judge-like fellow who has looked at all the evidence relating to Treasury Department and White House contacts, including the "heads up" Clinton received about the Resolution Trust Corp.'s criminal referral of the Madison case to the Justice Department, which happened to mention the Clintons. He declared his client, the president -- and the rest of the Clinton administration -- innocent of all legal or ethical wrongdoing.