Clinton Legal Team Said to Seek New Date for Jones Case Deposition

President Clinton’s attorneys are looking at trying to reschedule a deposition of Clinton set for next week in Paula Corbin Jones’ sexual-harassment suit, sources close to Clinton’s legal team said Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for Jones said Wednesday that the former Arkansas state employee plans to exercise her right to confront Clinton face-to-face at the deposition, which her legal team, in a subpoena to the president, scheduled for Jan. 17 at the White House.

Clinton’s attorneys may cite the disclosure of the deposition date in Wednesday’s editions of the Washington Times to argue that her arrival and exit from the White House would create a media spectacle, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The deposition could be taken anywhere, but moving Clinton outside the White House gates would involve allowing a standard pool of reporters to accompany his motorcade.

Rescheduling the deposition to a second, secret date would have to be approved by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright in Little Rock, Ark. Wright, saying she wants to prevent the case from becoming a media circus, has banned parties in the lawsuit from commenting on it.

Clinton would be the first president ever to testify as a defendant in a civil or criminal court case.

“I don’t know when or where the deposition will be taken, but whenever it is, Paula will be there,” Susan Carpenter McMillan, a spokeswoman for Jones, said Wednesday.

With settlement talks between the parties at an impasse, Clinton faces a May 27 trial date. The president cannot be compelled to testify in court, but his videotaped deposition may be entered into the record. Twice before as president, Clinton gave taped testimony, but only as a witness in Whitewater-related trials.

In her lawsuit filed in May 1994, Jones contends that Clinton exposed himself and asked for oral sex in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991 while he was Arkansas governor and she was a state employee.

Clinton has denied Jones’ allegations and said he does not recall meeting her.