Taxpayer Won’t Foot Legal Bills, Clinton Says

President Clinton said Wednesday he had never considered asking American taxpayers to pay his $5 million in unpaid legal fees stemming from the Monica S. Lewinsky and Whitewater scandals.

“I’ve never considered doing that,” he said in an interview taped for broadcast on CNN’s “Larry King Live” today. “I may be entitled to it, but my instinct is not to do it.”

Clinton said a story in the Washington Post last week alleging that he was considering seeking reimbursement from the government had been leaked by the independent counsel’s office.

A lawyer in that office was quoted by the Post on Saturday as saying the office was preparing to challenge such a move.

Clinton said he considered himself lucky to have a legal defense fund to pay the legal fees but said other people in his administration who were repeatedly called to testify before a federal grand jury had no similar protection.

“You have no idea how many completely innocent people . . . were harassed repeatedly and called into hearings . . . over and over and over again so that they have these massive legal bills and they’re not eligible for any reimbursement at all,” he said.

To qualify for reimbursement, officials must have been the targets of an investigation that did not result in the filing of any charges against them. If the officials were never targets, they are not eligible for reimbursement.

Clinton said he was trying to find a way to help U.S. officials and other people who were asked to testify in Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation pay their legal bills.

“That’s what I wish I could apply for. I wish there was some fund where I could get some money for them to pay their legal bills because . . . these people, they’re not president, they’re not like me, they can’t have a legal defense fund that will pay their bills off,” he told CNN.