Separate Bid To Get Clinton Disbarred Fails

Source: ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Published: 7/20/2000 Author: MICHAEL ROWETT

Arkansas' lawyer-discipline committee has dismissed a complaint alleging that President Clinton should be disbarred because of his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by Jim Parsons of Bella Vista, state director of the Arkansas Christian Educators Association and a longtime Clinton critic. The executive director of the state Supreme Court's Committee on Professional Conduct in May notified Parsons that the conduct alleged in his grievance didn't fall under the panel's jurisdiction.
Parsons appealed the decision to the Alternate Committee on Professional Conduct. In a July 11 letter, Parsons was informed that a three-member panel of the alternate committee had affirmed the decision to dismiss the complaint.
In a letter dated Monday to committee acting Director Nancie Givens of Little Rock, Parsons contended that the dismissal has damaged the reputation of the state's legal profession.
"It is your profession that has the thousands of lawyer jokes and it is every attorney in Arkansas that has been degraded by this decision to do nothing," Parsons said.
A soldier or a teacher who admitted to "inappropriate intimate contact" with a subordinate, as Clinton did, would be fired immediately, so lawyers should be held accountable, Parsons said Wednesday.
The comment section to Rule 8.4 of the rules governing Arkansas lawyers states that "offenses concerning some matters of personal morality, such as adultery and comparable offenses ... have no specific connection to fitness for the practice of law."
The committee is seeking Clinton's disbarment on the basis of a referral from Chief U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright of Little Rock. In April 1999, she found the president in civil contempt of court for giving "intentionally false" testimony about his relationship with Lewinsky in a January 1998 deposition he gave in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit against him.
Clinton has been licensed to practice law in his home state since 1973. He has not practiced since 1981-82.

HENCH adds: Don't worry the main complaint is still working it's way to a disbarrment, this was just a second attempt to back that one up!

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