Clinton’s Attorneys Take Jones’ Legal Team to Task

Attorneys for President Clinton, arguing that the Paula Corbin Jones legal team has become the “stalking horse” for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, filed court transcripts Monday in which an Arkansas woman flatly denied being raped by Clinton 20 years ago.

The legal filing was in response to court papers submitted over the weekend by the Jones camp. In those documents, an Arkansas man who described himself as a friend of the woman asserted that she had once told him she was raped by Clinton and that Clinton later threatened her and offered her bribes to keep quiet.

That allegation clearly angered the lawyers representing Clinton in Jones’ sexual harassment suit against him. In their response Monday, they asked for court sanctions against Jones’ attorneys to prevent them from filing future “outrageous and false claims” against the president.

The Clinton attorneys said the Jones team is trying to negatively influence potential jurors in her case against Clinton, which is scheduled to go to trial in May.

And they said that the Jones camp is using information gathered in their lawsuit to help boost the criminal inquiry in Washington by Starr and his office into other alleged misconduct by Clinton.

The Clinton lawyers said the rape assertions are part of the Jones team’s “ongoing plan to taint the jury pool and to use these civil proceedings as a stalking horse for the investigation being conducted by the independent counsel.”

Jones’ lawyers responded Monday by standing by their weekend legal filing, in which they contended that the woman, whom they called Jane Doe No. 5, was the victim of “forcible rape allegedly committed by defendant Clinton when he was attorney general of Arkansas.”

The Jones lawyers charged that Clinton lied in his own deposition when he said under oath that “in my lifetime I’ve never sexually harassed a woman. . . . I never have, and I wouldn’t.”

The president’s lawyers said Monday that Clinton is telling the truth. To support their contention, they filed part of the Arkansas woman’s deposition and her legal affidavit. Both times she categorically denied ever being sexually assaulted by Clinton.

In her deposition, the woman said that although she once met Clinton in the 1970s, he never acted “vicious” or “horrible.” Asked if she had ever told her friend that Clinton sexually assaulted her, she said:

“If that was ever said or mentioned and the comments were attributed to me, they were untrue.”

She added in her affidavit:

“During the 1992 presidential campaign there were unfounded rumors and stories circulated that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late ‘70s.

“Newspaper and tabloid reporters hounded me and my family, seeking corroboration of these tales. . . . These allegations are untrue, and I had hoped that they would no longer haunt me or cause further disruption to my family.”

Clinton’s lawyers characterized the rape allegations as nothing more than “a recycled rumor from President Clinton’s past campaigns.”

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The Clinton lawyers also disputed allegations from Jones’ attorneys that the president obstructed justice by not immediately turning over letters to him from Kathleen E. Willey, who provided a deposition in the Jones case.

Willey has said that she was groped by Clinton in the White House in November 1993. After Willey told her story publicly, the White House--in an attempt to raise questions about her motives and credibility--released friendly letters that she had written to Clinton after the alleged incident.

Clinton lawyers said that they would have turned over the letters to Jones’ lawyers first but that the subpoenas were addressed to Clinton, not to the White House.

“They would have been produced without hesitation had Ms. Jones’ lawyers issued an appropriate request to the White House for them,” the Clinton lawyers said.