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HenchPAC News5-22 Update: ARKANSAS SUPREME COURT COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS CLINTON BE DISBARRED!
The Arkansas Supreme Court Ethics Committee recommended that President Bill Clinton be disbarred and forbidden from practicing law in his home state of Arkansas. It now goes to a trial hearing, after which the Arkansas SC will review the findings. It appears at this point, that the for the first time in history, a sitting President will be disbarred.
Clinton Disbarment Recommended
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court recommended Monday that President Clinton be disbarred because of ''serious misconduct'' in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.
A majority of the panelists who met on Friday said the president should be disciplined for denying a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky during a deposition he gave in the Jones case in January 1998.
The recommendation from the Committee of Professional Conduct now goes to a Circuit Court judge in Little Rock for disbarment proceedings. If the judge disbars Clinton, the president can appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Clinton attorney David Kendall said in a statement: ''This recommendation is wrong and clearly contradicted by precedent. We will vigorously dispute it in a court of law.''
The president has insisted that he did not lie when he denied having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky; he has said that the relationship did not meet the definition of sex that was given at the start of the deposition.
Clinton, who was Arkansas governor from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 until he was elected president in 1992, has been a lawyer for more than 25 years and taught at the University of Arkansas law school. He has not practiced since the early 1980s, between his first and second terms as governor.
''This action is being taken against (Clinton) as a result of the formal complaints ... and the findings by a majority of the committee that certain of the attorney's conduct, as demonstrated in the complaint, constituted serious misconduct,'' in violation of state rules governing lawyers, the disciplinary committee's executive director, James Neal, said in a letter to the court Monday.
Neal's retirement from the panel was also announced on Monday.
The committee has 14 full-time members -- lawyers and nonlawyers -- who sit in panels of seven. Because of Clinton's widespread connections throughout the state, 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.
The Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm in Atlanta, and U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who presided over the Jones case, had filed the complaints against Clinton with the committee. The foundation wanted Clinton disbarred; Wright -- who last year cited Clinton for civil contempt and fined him $90,000 for giving ''intentionally false'' testimony -- did not suggest a specific penalty from the committee.
''This is a confirmation that the legal system will police its own, regardless of the position held by the attorney in question,'' said Matt Glavin, president of the foundation. ''Remember, this is the first time in American history that a sitting president faced disciplinary proceedings.''
President Nixon was disbarred by a New York court after resigning over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
Clinton sought something no harsher than a letter of reprimand, according to Glavin.
In his deposition, Clinton said: ''I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.'' He acknowledged Aug. 17 before a federal grand jury -- and again in a nationally televised address -- that he had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky.
In Jones' sexual harassment case, the former state employee alleged that Clinton exposed himself to her and made a sexual advance in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991.
Wright dismissed Jones' case in 1998, saying that what Clinton was alleged to have done may have been ''boorish'' but did not amount to sexual harassment. A year later, when the judge found Clinton in contempt, she said his misleading testimony had no bearing on the outcome of the case.
Jones lawyers' drew Lewinsky into the case in an attempt to show a pattern of sexual misconduct by Clinton. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr then picked up the trail, and his investigation of Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky led eventually to Clinton's impeachment by the House. He was acquitted by the Senate.
CLINTON SEEKS COVER FROM TOM BROKE-LAW
NBC NEWS' Tom Brokaw, in an interview previously scheduled to focus on the China trade
vote, spoke with Bill Clinton Monday afternoon soon after the Arkansas Supreme Court
judicial panel recommended that the president be disbarred.
The following is the exchange on the topic between Brokaw and Clinton:
The Roosevelt Room, White House
6:30 P.M. EDT
BROKAW: Mr. President, in your home state of Arkansas tonight a panel for the Arkansas
Supreme Court has recommended that you be disbarred. Your lawyer has already said that you
will appeal, that it's unprecedented. Will you personally take part in that appeal and
appear in Arkansas to argue your case?
THE PRESIDENT: No. No, I promised myself, and I promised the American people when all the
proceedings were over in Congress, that I would take no further personal part. And I knew
when the timetable for this was moved up that I'd always be at a severe disadvantage
because I will not personally involve myself in any of this until I'm no longer President.
It's not right.
The only reason I agreed even to appeal it is that my lawyers looked at all the precedents
and they said there's no way in the world, if they just treat you like everybody else has
been treated, that this is even close to that kind of case. So the precedents contradict
this decision and ultimately the decision has to be made by a judge. And so we're going to
give the judge a chance to do what we believe is right, and I think that's the right thing
to do.
BROKAW: Mr. President, this comes in a state where you were the Attorney General, where
you taught law -- you've now been held in contempt of court by a federal judge in that
state and you've been recommended for disbarment. With all due respect, this is a stain on
your record well outside the political arena, isn't it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, when I'm not President anymore, I'll be happy to defend myself. And
there is certainly another side to both those things you mentioned and I'll be happy to
talk about it. But the main thing I want to say tonight is the only reason I agreed even
to have papers filed, since I'm not going to defend myself while I'm President, is that
there are clear precedents where more significant kinds of conduct -- even if you assume
what the judge says is right, which I strongly disagree with -- that led to nowhere near
this kind of decision. This decision contradicts all the cases on point that the committee
has ever decided in the past. And so we'll let a judge decide whether it's right or wrong.
HENCH adds: The scumbag is still in denial, despite this obvious perjury: "Were you ever alone with Ms. Lewinsky?" Klink: "Not that I remember." THAT's why Judge Susan Webber Wright fined him $90,000, and THAT's why he'll lose his law license.
The Disciplinary Committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court has recommended that Bill Clinton be disbarred. The Clintonoids have already been dispatched, far and wide, to argue that the recommendation is a miscarriage of justice. The only miscarriage of justice is that this recommendation has taken so long to secure.
Let's set the record straight:
1. On September 2, 1998, Landmark Legal Foundation filed a petition with Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright asking her to hold Bill Clinton in contempt of court for obstructing her judicial proceedings during his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit. Landmark argued that the Court had the power to act, under U.S. Supreme Court and appellate court precedent, because Clinton's deposition occurred in front of the judge, and his intentional false testimony, provided under oath, was therefore an offense against the Court itself.
2. On April 12, 1999, Judge Wright held Clinton in contempt. As Landmark had pointed out, and the judge concluded: "[T]he President's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. Lewinsky was intentionally false, and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false, notwithstanding tortured definitions and interpretations of the term 'sexual relations.'" Judge Wright also wrote: "It is difficult to construe the President's sworn statements in this civil lawsuit concerning his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky as anything other than a willful refusal to obey this Court's discovery Orders."
3. Clinton had a right to challenge the Court's contempt order, but he chose not to. He said he was too busy being president to defend himself. The truth is that Clinton didn't want a public hearing into Judge Wright's findings because that would have required him to repeat his lies under oath yet again. (Clinton didn't challenge the over $90,000 in penalties leveled against him, either.)
4. Judge Wright referred the matter of Clinton's misconduct to the Arkansas Disciplinary Committee, which ignored it for months. Subsequently, the Southeastern Legal Foundation filed an ethics complaint against Clinton asserting that his testimony in the Jones case violated Rule 8.4 of the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct. That rule states: "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." Southeastern was forced to ask the Arkansas Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus directing the Disciplinary Committee to act on the ethics complaints, which it did.
5. On May 22, 2000, the Disciplinary Committee, citing Rule 8.4., recommended that Clinton be disbarred. It seems that after eight of the 14 members of the Committee with ties to Clinton finally recused themselves, the Committee was able to come to the inescapable conclusion that Clinton's assault on the judiciary should cost him his law license.
Bill Clinton has been impeached, held in contempt of court, and may lose his law license. And, with any luck, the prosecutors investigating Clinton's crimes will muster the courage to indict him at some point. This is a fitting legacy for the most corrupt president in American history. Perhaps the Clinton Presidential Library should be equipped with bars in the windows, and an exercise yard, as a tribute to this man.
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