Clinton Lawyer Says He Misled Judge

President Clinton’s lawyer in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case has formally notified an Arkansas federal judge that he misled the court when he declared Clinton had “absolutely no sex of any kind” with Monica S. Lewinsky, according to a copy of the lawyer’s letter released Thursday.

Attorney Robert S. Bennett, one of Washington’s preeminent defense attorneys, notified U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright of his erroneous statement in accordance with legal professional ethics standards covering such incidents.

Some legal experts have suggested that Bennett is obliged now to resign as Clinton’s lawyer for misleading the court.

But Bennett, who declined public comment, has told associates that he will remain on the case because of another professional rule forbidding a lawyer to resign when such an act would be devastating to a client.

Bennett’s Sept. 30 letter to Wright refers to one of the numerous repercussions from Clinton’s admission in August of having an intimate relationship with Lewinsky, after months of denying it.

Wright is also considering whether to hold Clinton in contempt of court for denying having sexual relations with Lewinsky when he gave a deposition under oath in the Jones case in January.

The judge, who dismissed the Jones lawsuit on April 1, is planning to release Clinton’s deposition and other case records on Oct. 19. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments for Oct. 20 on Jones’ appeal of the dismissal.

The new hearing is nudging Clinton’s lawyers further toward settling the case, and some White House officials believe that a resolution might even strengthen the president’s hand in his struggle to avoid impeachment. Jones, whose original complaint sought $700,000 in damages, has recently dropped her insistence on an apology from the president.

In his letter to Wright, Bennett did not cite Clinton’s new account of his conduct but rather Lewinsky’s.

In August, Lewinsky told a federal grand jury that, contrary to her own previous denials in the Jones case, she had about 10 sexual contacts with Clinton from 1995 to 1997. “Therefore, pursuant to our professional responsibility, we wanted to advise you that the court should not rely on Ms. Lewinsky’s affidavit or remarks of counsel characterizing that affidavit,” Bennett wrote.

In January, when Clinton gave his deposition in the case, Bennett referred to Lewinsky’s affidavit and told Wright it meant that the young woman had “absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form with President Clinton.”

Clinton sat mute while Bennett made that statement. In August, Clinton told grand jurors that he was not paying much attention to Bennett’s words at the time and that he, not Bennett, was the witness.

Clinton also insists that his own denials of having sexual relations with Lewinsky were “legally accurate” because the two engaged in oral sex rather than intercourse.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a professor at Seton Hall Law School and a former state judge, said that the acknowledgment of a misstatement is not enough and that Bennett “is legally obligated to withdraw from the case . . . because his client has perpetrated a fraud upon the court.”

Writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, Napolitano said that lawyers’ rules of professional conduct require an attorney such as Bennett to resign if he has made, or allowed to be made, a false statement of material fact to a judge.

Jones’ attorney Donovan Campbell also argued in an appeals court filing this week that “no fair-minded person . . . can fail to conclude that Mr. Clinton lied under oath in his deposition in this case and unlawfully interfered with Mrs. Jones’ efforts to obtain” the truth.