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Arkansas Supreme Court Recommends Disbarment for President Clinton

May 23, 2000

President Bill Clinton's right to practice law in the state of Arkansas should be revoked because of "serious misconduct" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, a committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court recommended May 22. The state Supreme Court released the decision on the afternoon of May 22, although the panel made the decision May 19.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright referred the Clinton case to the court's committee on professional conduct, saying the president lied under oath in the Jones case by denying he had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The president's private counsel, David Kendall, issued a terse response to the panel's ruling late Monday afternoon. "This recommendation is wrong, and clearly contradicted by the president," Kendall said. "We will dispute it in a court of law."

Clinton gave a sworn deposition in the Jones case in January 1998. That deposition, coupled with the public revelation of the Lewinsky affair just days later, ignited a fierce firestorm that culminated in the president's impeachment by the House of Representatives in late 1998, and his subsequent acquittal in a Senate trial early in 1999.

A majority of the panelists who met Friday to consider two complaints against the president found that he should be disciplined, the Supreme Court said. "This action is being taken against (the president) 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," the committee said in the document released by the state Supreme Court. The document was signed by James Neal, the committee's executive director, whose retirement from the panel also was disclosed Monday.

The Lewinsky matter was brought up in the Jones case by Paula Jones' lawyers, who had sought to illustrate a pattern of alleged sexual misdeeds committed by the president. Clinton insisted that he did not lie when he was deposed in the Jones case, arguing that his relationship with the one-time White House intern did not meet the standards of a sexual relationship as defined at the beginning of the Jones deposition. "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky," Clinton claimed in the deposition, though he admitted in federal grand jury testimony later in 1998 that he had engaged in inappropriate physical activity with Lewinsky.

Jones had accused Clinton of exposing himself to her in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991, a year prior to his ascension to the presidency. Her suit was dismissed in 1998 by Wright, who said Clinton's alleged behavior, while it might have been "boorish," would not have met the legal standard of sexual harassment. Wright cited Clinton for civil contempt last year and fined him $90,000 for giving "intentionally false" testimony.

Under the rules of the committee, the disbarment recommendation now goes to a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge in Little Rock for consideration. Should the judge rule in favor of disbarment, the president's case may be appealed to the state's Supreme Court.

Clinton has been a lawyer for more than 25 years and taught at the University of Arkansas law school. He has not practiced actively since the early 1980s, in the two years that lapsed between his first and second terms as Arkansas governor.

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