Reprinted from The Washington Times, March 20, 1998
Clinton fights to keep funding for lawyers
By Paul Bedard
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The White House Thursday vowed to fight congressional moves to ax taxpayer funding for President Clinton's massive legal team, which has been accused of handling personal legal problems for the first family in violation of Justice Department rules.
"We will object to any effort to curtail our funding," said Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House counsel's office.
"It's politicizing an issue in which we could probably do with less politics," added White House spokesman Michael McCurry.
Scrambling to derail a Senate Appropriations Committee bid to block the White House from spending its nearly $3 million budget for lawyers until it can prove they aren't doing personal work for the president, the administration also claimed that its staff wasn't the largest in history.
But in a letter to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Colorado Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the White House budget, White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff conceded that administration lawyers are handling personal legal issues for the president.
On the second page of a four-page letter, Mr. Ruff said that his lawyers are aiding the defense of the president in cases being probed by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
-- Continued from Front Page --
Mr. Starr's Whitewater probe has been expanded to investigate reports that Mr. Clinton engaged in oral and phone sex with 24-year-old former intern Monica Lewinsky and asked her to lie under oath about it.
Mr. Clinton has denied the reports.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Affairs has ruled that government lawyers are not allowed to handle personal legal issues for government employees.
In his letter, Mr. Ruff explained that every legal issue facing Mr. Clinton in the Whitewater and sexual-misconduct scandals affects his presidency and thus requires a taxpayer-funded legal defense.
"Litigation involving the president in his personal capacity, in connection with which he is represented by private counsel, does have an important effect on the day-to-day operations of the presidency," Mr. Ruff said.
"Our responsibility in connection with those matters is to assist the president and the staff of the office of the president in responding to the demands placed on them in their official capacities and to ensure that they remain able to perform their constitutional, statutory and other official duties," added Mr. Ruff in his letter.
Rebuffing claims that his staff is the largest ever, Mr. Ruff said that the Reagan administration employed more than the Clinton administration total of 34 paid legal staff plus 15 lawyers borrowed from other agencies.
Mr. Kennedy said that President Reagan had 65 lawyers working on the Iran-Contra scandal. He suggested that the large staff continued into the Bush administration.
In his letter to Mr. Campbell, Mr. Ruff said, "I must, in all candor, tell you that I reject any suggestion that the counsel's office is overstaffed or is somehow misusing its resources."
C. Boyden Gray, who served as counsel in the Bush administration, rejected the charge that he ran a bloated office and said he had eight lawyers.
He also explained that Mr. Reagan's legal staff was large only during the first six months of 1987 as the administration answered subpoenas from independent counsel Lawrence Walsh for documents about the scandal from the White House and four other agencies.
"This staff ballooned for six months to comply with document requests. They didn't do any lobbying or 'spinning' of the media. ... The explosion wasn't permanent," added Mr. Gray. "This is apples and oranges."
Mr. Ruff and Mr. Kennedy blamed the growth of the Clinton legal office from four to 49 on GOP congressional demands for documents related to the multiple scandals besieging the White House.
Both noted that during the 1997 Senate hearings on the campaign-finance scandal, the Republicans told the White House to add more lawyers from other agencies to help locate campaign memos.
"We are not out of sync with past operations and have even been advised by the Republicans to expand more," Mr. Kennedy said.
Reviewing his staff, Mr. Ruff said that the "regular staff" included 19 lawyers, two press secretaries, and 13 assistants and paralegals. He added that the White House has borrowed from other agencies 14 lawyers and one paralegal.
He said his staff has fluctuated between 48 and 52 over the past two years.
Mr. Ruff also said the counsel's duties include handling judicial nominations, ethics issues, presidential pardons, advice on legislation and checking the backgrounds of presidential nominees.
Other White House officials, however, said that Mr. Ruff's lawyers have also helped White House staffers called before Mr. Starr's grand jury find private attorneys who are "debriefed" after the appearances by the president's staff.
In addition, Mr. Ruff's staff has headed the campaign to locate documents and letters used to help undermine the credibility of Mr. Starr and other Clinton accusers, such as Kathleen E. Willey, who said on CBS' "60 Minutes" that the president sexually assaulted her in 1993.
The White House attack on Mr. Campbell's plan came after The Washington Times Thursday revealed the congressional plan to stop the White House from spending any fiscal 1999 money on legal affairs until the administration shows that White House lawyers aren't conducting personal legal work for the Clintons.
The letter to Mr. Campbell, demanded by noon Wednesday, arrived Thursday at 11:30 a.m.
Mr. Campbell said the letter did not answer his questions about the roles of each attorney and legal aide and he said his subcommittee still plans to pass legislation to cut off funding of the counsel's office.
"This is just a stonewall," he said.
Mr. Campbell announced a hearing April 2 to review the White House budget and will subsequently draw up legislation targeting the counsel's office.
Noting that the White House response dwelled heavily on the legal counsels of past administrations, Campbell spokeswoman Audrey Hudson said, "I find it very interesting that after 16 days of seeking this information about the White House counsel staff, they can tell us how many lawyers the Bush and Reagan administration had during the Iran-Contra affair."Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
To subscribe to the Washington Times National Weekly Edition, click this icon or call 800-363-9118.
