Clinton ‘Adamantly’ Denies Hotel Proposition of Jones

President Clinton filed his first formal answer Thursday to sexual harassment charges by Paula Corbin Jones, denying “adamantly” that he had propositioned her in a Little Rock, Ark., hotel room six years ago.

The president’s response, filed in Little Rock federal court where the case originated in 1994, marked the first move by his lawyers since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in May that Clinton would not be immune from facing trial on the civil complaint.

Clinton’s legal team, headed by Washington lawyer Robert S. Bennett, also asked U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright to dismiss the case on grounds that Jones’ complaint is legally defective.

Lawyers not involved in the dispute said it would be highly unusual for Wright to throw out such a celebrated case.

“The president adamantly denies the false allegations advanced in the complaint . . . each and every allegation,” Clinton’s response said. “At no time did the president make sexual advances toward the plaintiff or otherwise act improperly in her presence.”

The filing also said Clinton does not recall ever meeting Jones. Bennett, appearing June 1 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” acknowledged that “she may have been brought up and gone in the room.”

Challenging the legal basis for a sexual harassment claim, the president’s lawyers further said that “this alleged conduct is not a deprivation of her constitutional rights,” adding that at no time was Jones subjected to a “hostile workplace”--a requirement they said was needed to prove harassment.

The lawyers added that for argument purposes only, even if Clinton had propositioned Jones, it would be considered “a single overture--abandoned as soon as she stated it was unwelcome” and thus would not qualify as harassment.

Perhaps recognizing the lawsuit would not be dismissed, attorneys for the president also asked Wright to set a hearing on procedures by which each side may interview potential witnesses and obtain documents leading to trial.

The White House had no immediate comment on the filing, referring all questions to Bennett. Reached at his Washington home, Bennett declined to elaborate on his court filing.

The president’s court filing does not preclude negotiations by his attorneys and Jones’ lawyers to reach an out-of-court settlement to avoid a trial that could prove costly and embarrassing for both sides.

Jones’ legal team, for example, has signaled that their “discovery” efforts will include taking sworn statements from Arkansas state troopers and certain women in Little Rock to try to show that Clinton’s alleged harassment of Jones fit into “a pattern of conduct” by which the then governor engaged in extramarital affairs.

On the other hand, Bennett once hinted that his team might pry into Jones’ past sexual conduct, although the White House, and later Bennett, said that was not the implication of televised remarks he made early last month.

Jones’ lawsuit, which she filed on May 6, 1994, seeks $700,000 in damages from Clinton on grounds that he made unwanted sexual advances to her on May 8, 1991, while she was a state employee and he was Arkansas governor. She alleged that after a state trooper escorted her to Clinton’s hotel suite during a state economic conference, Clinton exposed himself and asked her to perform an oral sex act that she says she refused.

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Until Thursday’s court papers dealing with the substance of Jones’ lawsuit, Clinton’s lawyers had sought to delay any trial or pretrial discovery on grounds that a sitting president should be immune from defending himself from a civil complaint about allegations of personal misconduct until he left office as president.

Wright agreed to that in July 1994, but she was overruled in January 1996 by a federal appeals court. The Supreme Court said in June 1996 that it would take up the issue, a decision welcomed by the White House because it effectively delayed the matter until after Clinton’s reelection last November.

But on May 27, the court ruled without dissent that Jones’ lawsuit could proceed immediately. It said Clinton’s high office would not afford him “temporary immunity” from answering civil lawsuits.

In their legal brief Thursday, the president’s lawyers said Wright now should dismiss the suit because it fails to illustrate that Clinton violated Jones’ equal protection rights under the Constitution and fails to allege “essential elements” of a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.