Deaver Handed Probation, $100,000 Fine for Perjury

Former White House aide Michael K. Deaver, President Reagan’s longtime friend and public relations wizard, was sentenced to three years probation and fined $100,000 Friday for lying about his lobbying activities.

While declining to send Deaver to prison, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said he also must perform 1,500 hours of community service and barred him from lobbying federal officials “for profit during the period of the probation.”

Deaver, convicted last December on three counts of lying to Congress and a federal grand jury about his lobbying activities after leaving the White House in 1985, maintained his innocence and said he plans to appeal.

“I think it was a very fair sentence, if I had been guilty,” Deaver told reporters outside the courthouse. He blamed his legal troubles on alcoholism, calling it “a disease that affects many parts of your body and your emotions and certainly your judgment.”

Family With Him

“We believe in him and we love him very much,” added Deaver’s wife, Carolyn. Deaver was accompanied in court by his wife, a daughter and brother.

Reagan, campaigning in Boca Raton, Fla., 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.”

Special prosecutor Whitney North Seymour Jr., who brought the charges against Deaver after an investigation under the Ethics in Government Act, declined comment on the sentence as he left the courthouse. In a court filing Thursday, he had argued that a prison sentence for Deaver would have “a direct deterrent effect on the ethics and conduct of political insiders.”

Among 18 letters Deaver’s attorneys filed for the pre-sentencing investigation and made public Friday was one from former House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill (D-Mass.), who said that although his relationship with the Reagan Administration was “not uniformly positive,” he “never had a cross word with Michael Deaver.”

An ‘Honorable Man’

O’Neill, who retired in 1986, called Deaver “a decent and honorable man who performed a valuable and important service to his country.”

More than 100 Reagan Administration officials of various rank have been indicted or convicted on charges of wrongdoing, including Deaver associate Lyn Nofziger, the former White House political director found guilty in February of three counts of illegal lobbying.

Deaver was not charged with illegal lobbying but rather for lying to investigators looking into whether he broke the law limiting contacts with the government by former officials.

In addition to three years of probation, the $100,000 fine and community service work, Jackson also sentenced Deaver to concurrent three-year prison terms on each of the three counts, but suspended the prison terms. Jackson also suspended the sentence “in its entirety pending” possible appeals.

Maximum Sentence

Deaver faced a possible maximum prison sentence of five years on each of the three counts, or 15 years.

Deaver, dressed in a dark suit, stood with hands folded when the sentence was read by Jackson, who said he was “left with no doubt” that Deaver is and was an alcoholic who is now recovering.

But the judge said he also believed that Deaver gave false testimony to Congress and to the grand jury.

“He knew he had made the contacts with government officials his testimony disavowed,” the judge said, discounting Deaver’s claim that he genuinely could not remember some of the contacts.

Nonetheless, Jackson said, a prison term would not rehabilitate Deaver. He said that the rehabilitation Deaver needs, “as he well knows, must come from within himself.”

‘Unlikely to Deter’ Others

And Jackson, calling perjury “in many respects a crime of circumstance and opportunity,” said a prison term for Deaver would be “unlikely to deter future would-be perjurers who, when circumstances dictate for them, will have their own unique moments of opportunity.”

In a brief statement, Deaver said alcoholism was “the worst demon that I faced” and asked Jackson for the opportunity to help others suffering from it.

Deaver, 50, was the President’s deputy chief of staff from January, 1981, until May, 1985. During his White House tenure, he was credited with a masterful effort to portray Reagan in the best possible light through carefully crafted events.

He opened a lucrative consulting business after leaving the White House, and was featured on the cover of a national news magazine as the ultimate Washington insider who knew what strings to pull for his clients.

Acquitted on Two Counts

The business collapsed when Deaver was convicted of two counts of making false statements to the grand jury and one count of perjury before the House oversight and investigations subcommittee. He was acquitted on two other counts of lying.

Seymour, in calling for a prison term, told Jackson on Friday that he represented millions of hard-working Americans who know Deaver was “convicted for lying under oath about a mode of doing business in which, for a few phone calls to people highly placed in government, he was earning many multiples of what they earn each year through industrious effort.”