Lawyer Makes Talk Show Rounds but Calls Marathon His Swan Song

Monica S. Lewinsky’s lawyer was a busy man Sunday.

William Ginsburg shuttled between five TV talk shows to defend his client as a “very reliable young lady” and predicted the whole controversy will blow over soon.

Then he declared himself finished with talk shows.

“I don’t plan to be ubiquitous very long,” he told NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

“This is it, folks,” he said on “Fox Sunday News.” “This is my last round of Sunday shows. This thing has gotten out of hand.”

Ginsburg accomplished his feat with surprising simplicity.

No multiple layers of staff and public relations agents and handlers to coordinate his TV appearances. There was just Ginsburg, doing his own bookings.

“You call his beeper and he calls you back,” said Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press.”

On the talk shows, Ginsburg said he planned to escort his client, the former White House intern who claimed on tape that she had an affair with President Clinton, to her father’s home in Los Angeles so she could escape Washington.

“She’s having fits,” he said. “Monica has been in her apartment now for two weeks except for the brief forays out into my office or in my hotel. And she wants to go shopping. She wants to take a walk in the park. She wants to do the things that normal people want to do.”

He’s happy to take a break himself too.

“I want to go out and do the things that people normally do,” he told CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.” “It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s tough.”

The networks had hoped Ginsburg would be more revealing.

“What does Monica know, and what will she tell the independent counsel?” Bob Schieffer asked rhetorically on CBS.

Ginsburg, however, spent a good bit of time invoking attorney-client privilege to deflect questions on whether Lewinsky met with Clinton at the White House in December and on other matters.

On CNN’s “Late Edition,” Ginsburg took note of national polls and flatly declared, “The American public doesn’t care about Monica Lewinsky’s sex life.”

“It’ll go away. It’ll pass. The president will remain in office,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “He’ll do a good job. We’ll all hopefully have a sound economy, keep our jobs, and I think everything’s going to be fine,” Ginsburg said.

The California medical malpractice lawyer was tapped to represent Lewinsky because he had represented her father, Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, for 25 years.

Ginsburg joked to Russert that his 15 minutes of fame were up. “Then he paused and said, ‘Actually, I’ve probably had a half-hour,’ ” Russert said.

“I believe he is the first man in history to appear on all five Sunday shows in a row,” Russert said. “Five years from now, if he is not a trivia question or the corner box on ‘Jeopardy,’ then I will be deeply disappointed.”

There was a mob of media awaiting Ginsburg outside NBC’s studios. He went out, gave them some face time, and left by car with his niece and nephew.

Then it was on to ABC and “This Week,” where Ginsburg pithily declared, “It’s the same story this week as it was last week.”