Klink Files Disbarment Response!

8-29-00

President Clinton's lawyers filed a response to the disbarment procedings against him today, the final day of a 30 day extension the President requested. In his 5 page response, he claimed that he deserved to keep his license because losing it would be too great a penalty for his actions. He still denies he lied in his deposition in the Paula Jones case, the one where he said under oath: "I never had any sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, I never had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton had already been fined $90,000 by Judge Susan Webber Wright, a former student of his, and a Judge Clinton appointed during his reign as Governor.

Here's AP's pro-Klink spin on the story:

by JAMES JEFFERSON
Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- President Clinton said Tuesday he should not be disbarred over his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, telling a state judge that losing his law license is too harsh a penalty.

In a five-page response to a complaint filed by the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct, the president said that court precedents in Arkansas would prohibit a stiff sanction.

''On the basis of the relevant facts, the governing law and the applicable decisions of the Arkansas courts ..., a sanction of disbarment would be excessively harsh, impermissibly punitive and unprecedented in the circumstances of this case,'' Clinton's lawyers wrote.

The state conduct committee says the president lied about his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky when asked about it, under oath, in January 1998.

The president's lawyers agreed with the state's claim that Clinton was trying to save face when asked about Lewinsky.

Clinton ''took actions motivated in part by a desire to protect himself and others from embarrassment,'' the lawyers wrote.

A federal judge found Clinton in contempt and fined him more than $90,000, saying he intentionally gave misleading testimony while she presided over the deposition.

Clinton's lawyers also acknowledged that the president didn't fight the contempt citation, but said he did not do so because the needs of the country came first.

Jones filed suit in May 1994, alleging Clinton made a crude sexual advance toward her three years earlier in a Little Rock hotel room. Jones had hoped to use evidence of the Lewinsky affair as part of an attempt to show a pattern of predatory behavior.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, however, said the Lewinsky material was not essential to Jones' case, and later dismissed Jones' lawsuit.

Clinton's lawyers said Tuesday that the testimony at the center of the disbarment lawsuit was so minor that stripping the president of his law license would be too severe of a penalty.

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