Clinton Says No Improprieties Intruded on Rep. Ford’s Case

President Clinton said Saturday that there was no apparent wrong-doing by the White House or the Justice Department in the handling of a criminal case involving Rep. Harold E. Ford (D-Tenn.).

In a letter to House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), who expressed concern that undue political influence had been used, Clinton said he has been assured that nothing improper was done.

Acting Atty. Gen. Stuart M. Gerson supported Ford’s move to dismiss a nearly all-white jury, a decision made just before the trial against the black lawmaker was to begin.

Gerson’s decision came after a meeting he attended with a 26-member group from the Congressional Black Caucus.

The meeting was arranged and attended by Webb Hubbell, who has been sent to the Justice Department by the White House and who works out of the attorney general’s office.

Clinton said when “the White House received inquiries concerning this jury issue, they were referred, at the direction of my counsel, to the Department of Justice for whatever action the department deemed proper.”

He said he has been assured “by the counsel that the White House made no recommendation to anyone” on a course of action.

Clinton wrote that Gerson “has informed us that he personally made the decision to object to the impaneling of the jury and that he did so strictly on the merit” of the case.

A federal judge rejected the request by Ford’s attorneys and the Justice Department to select a new jury from Ford’s hometown of Memphis. The jury consists of 11 whites and one black chosen from rural counties around Jackson, Tenn., 100 miles from Memphis.

Ford, 47, a congressman since 1975, is to be retried on bank fraud charges stemming from $1.5 million he allegedly received in bank loans between 1976 and 1982 from Knoxville bankers.

Ford’s first trial, in 1990, was before eight black jurors and four white jurors and ended in a hung jury divided along racial lines.