Reprinted from The Washington Times, March 17, 1998
Jones legal team has more evidence
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Paula Jones' attorneys said yesterday they are holding more damaging evidence against President Clinton than what they filed on Friday. That brief was meant only to keep the case alive for trial.
"We are intentionally holding things back for trial," said T. Wesley Holmes, a partner in the Dallas law firm of Rader, Campbell, Fisher & Pyke, and he rejected an assertion by Mr. Clinton's attorney Robert S. Bennett that the brief was "a gigantic vacuum cleaner [that] threw out every bit of dirt in the case."
Mr. Holmes challenged Mr. Bennett to make good on his claim that he is holding evidence under seal that proves Kathleen E. Willey is lying in her account of being sexually molested by the president in his pantry off the Oval Office.
"Because we disagree, Ms. Jones will have no objection to any modification of any existing court orders to allow all of the evidence concerning Ms. Willey to be made public," the law firm said in a written statement.
No one at Rader, Campbell would give specifics, citing a gag order in the case, but their aces are known to include depositions and other evidence involving those close to Mr. Clinton.
Several, including longtime Clinton aide Betsey Wright and Little Rock lawyer Samuel M. Jones, have
-- Continued from Front Page -- been linked by other witnesses to efforts to cover up claims by various women of dalliances with Mr. Clinton.
They have an unpublicized deposition given after some reluctance by Miss Wright, who once described her 1992 campaign job as dealing with "bimbo eruptions."
She now directs a Democratic primary campaign for the Arkansas governorship by Bill W. Bristow, the Jonesboro, Ark., lawyer who represents Mr. Clinton's co-defendant in the case, Danny Ferguson.
Miss Wright, who has worked with Mr. Clinton since the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern, has been managing early phases of the campaign for Mr. Bristow, who formally announced his candidacy yesterday. Mike Huckabee, the Republican governor, is seeking re-election.
Mr. Bristow has never disclosed how he is paid for defending Mr. Ferguson, who has said he has no personal resources.
The Willey account, which has shaken somewhat jaded followers of the case, included her assertion that while touching her breasts and putting her hand on his genitals, the president told her that his 3 p.m. appointment could wait, presumably if she agreed to have sex with him.
She said on CBS' "60 Minutes" that Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen was the first person she saw when she left the office.
In her deposition, Mrs. Willey said, "I believe it was Lloyd Bentsen. I saw about six people standing there. I recall him and, I think, Leon Panetta."
She testified that Mr. Clinton told her a Cabinet meeting was about to start, but there is no record of a full Cabinet meeting that day, and seven of the 15 Cabinet-rank members had left Washington in attempts to drum up support for the president's doomed health care reform bill.
Of her brief encounter with Mr. Bentsen and Mr. Panetta, she said, "I think we just said hello as I left but nothing more than that."
Mr. Bentsen had a small stroke while on a Feb. 22 flight to Paris and is recuperating at his Houston home. He did not return calls yesterday to discuss his recollection.
The former Texas senator and 1988 running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis now works in the Houston office of the Washington law firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand and recently was retained to work for Starwood Hotels & Resorts to kill Clinton-backed tax legislation.
Mr. Panetta, who recently passed up a run at the California governorship, is a consultant to the California State University system, based in Monterey. He was traveling yesterday and did not return a call to his office.
Other veterans of the "bimbo patrol" subpoenaed to testify include Mr. Jones, a partner of White House aide Bruce Lindsey's in the Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings.
Miami lawyer John B. Thompson gave an affidavit relating that Mr. Jones told him his job was to assess the threat each woman posed and pay them to "make them go away" and expressed surprise more of them had not come to light.
"Clinton, just like JFK, is pathological in his desire for women. The man simply has got to have it," Mr. Thompson's affidavit quoted Mr. Jones as saying.
Whether Mr. Lindsey himself already has testified in the Jones case was not confirmed.
Another partner, James Fisher, indicated in a television appearance Sunday his team also is aware of a new witness, Sherry Densuk, 24, of New York. The New York Post said she will testify soon before independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's grand jury.
"That name is not completely unfamiliar to me," Mr. Fisher said when asked about her. He then changed the subject without elaborating.
Shelia Davis Lawrence, the widow of San Diego hotelier M. Larry Lawrence, who was ambassador to Switzerland, was questioned under oath in the case. Her subpoena was served while she was staying at Mr. Lindsey's house, according to a source familiar with intimate details of the case.
Mrs. Lawrence has sued columnist Arianna Huffington for writing that she had a sexual affair with the president and denied under oath in her deposition that she did so.
The president denied that he had a sexual relationship with Mrs. Lawrence. He and his family stayed at her home for a week in March 1994, and he and Mr. Lindsey stayed there overnight on another occasion, the president testified.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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