Deaver Gets $100,000 Fine, Probation and Charity Duty : Sentence Is Too Light: Rep. Dingell

President Reagan’s friend and one-time close adviser Michael K. Deaver was given a suspended three-year sentence and fined $100,000 today for lying about lobbying for big companies after leaving the White House.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson also ordered Deaver to perform 1,500 hours of community service.

The judge said Deaver’s battle with alcoholism “does not excuse, but it helps to explain” possible judgment lapses while the former presidential aide was under investigation for possible ethics law violations.

Outside the courthouse, Deaver told reporters: “It was a very fair sentence, if I had been guilty.”

Flanked by his wife, Carolyn, and his daughter Amanda, Deaver said he was relieved that for the first time since the investigation began 2 1/2 years ago “I know what’s going to happen to me--and for that I’m grateful.”

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, before which Deaver was convicted of lying, criticized the sentence as being too lenient, saying it “sends the wrong message.”

‘Powerful Can Get Away’

“The message is the powerful can get away with things most people can’t. That’s the standard to which this Administration has lowered the country,” Dingell said.

Deaver said he will appeal the conviction and the sentence, which also bars him from lobbying the federal government for profit during a three-year probation.

The judge said Deaver will not have to pay the fine or perform community service until after the conviction is reviewed by an appellate court.

Reagan said in a statement: “This is a sad day. Mike Deaver has been our friend for more than 20 years and has served us and his country with uncommon dedication.”

The judge said Deaver’s “realization that an inexorable disease process had overtaken him coincided with the most intense and uncomfortable public exposure of his personal life he had ever experienced.”

Preoccupation with alcoholism may have resulted in “distraction from exercising the judgment required” to deal with the investigation by a House subcommittee and a grand jury, the judge said.

Nevertheless, Jackson said, “I believe, as the jury obviously did, that Michael Deaver knew his answers were false. He knew he had made the contacts with government officials that his testimony disavowed.”

Calls Prison Inappropriate

But Jackson said a prison term would be inappropriate because it would not deter others from committing “a crime of circumstance and opportunity” and wouldn’t “serve to rehabilitate” Deaver.

“Such rehabilitation as he needs, as he well knows, must come from within himself,” the judge said, again referring to Deaver’s battle with alcoholism.

Deaver, 50, a recovering alcoholic, resigned as Reagan’s deputy White House chief of staff in May, 1985, to start a lobbying business, Michael K. Deaver & Associates, that represented large corporations for six-figure annual retainer fees.

Last December, he was convicted of three counts of lying under oath to the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee and to a grand jury impaneled at his request to investigate allegations he improperly contacted former government colleagues on behalf of these high-paying clients.

Deaver could have received a maximum five-year sentence for each of the three convictions.

Deaver is the second Reagan aide to be convicted as a result of lobbying activities.

Last April, former White House political director Lyn Nofziger was given a 90-day sentence and fined $30,000 for lobbying former Administration colleagues for private clients. Nofziger is free pending appeal.