As Clinton Foes Piled On, Legal Donations Piled Up

Much like his public approval ratings, contributions to President Clinton’s legal defense fund increased along with his troubles last year, netting him and his wife more than $4.5 million for their mounting legal bills.

In releasing results of their direct-mail appeal on behalf of the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, trustees of the Clinton Legal Expense Trust said Wednesday that more than 50,000 Americans donated money to defray the first couple’s legal bills. The second half of the year was slightly more successful than the first, bringing in $2.3 million.

Former Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.), a longtime Clinton friend who founded the trust a year ago this month, said more than half of the contributions were for $25 or less and that 95% were donations under $200. Yet the list of donors also includes some of the president’s Hollywood supporters and business chiefs who ponied up the maximum $10,000 permitted under the fund’s rules.

The trust fund is intended to “ameliorate” the Clintons’ financial woes but may not resolve them altogether, according to fund executive director Anthony F. Essaye. The Clintons are paying off $9 million in bills from their private attorneys on the long-running Whitewater and Monica S. Lewinsky investigations and the president’s impeachment battle.

Without mentioning congressional Republicans or independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr by name, a recent direct-mail appeal signed by Essaye said in part:

“If you are disturbed by the way politics is conducted today, then what better response than to offer the first family your own gesture of support? I am certain that it will be of enormous comfort to President and Mrs. Clinton to know that so many Americans appreciate their work and have come to their aid.”

Fund trustee Azie Taylor Morton, a businesswoman from Austin, Texas, and U.S. treasurer in the Carter administration, said letters accompanying many small contributions showed the wellspring of support for Clinton.

In one, a contributor of $25 wrote: “This is still a country that allows people to change their lives if they see something within themselves. This must not change.”

Mailing lists largely have been obtained from the Democratic National Committee, and many of the maximum contributions have been raised by Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of the president who headed the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and the 1997 inaugural committee. Beth Dozoretz, a friend of the Clintons who has raised more than $2 million in political contributions for Democratic candidates, has assisted McAuliffe.

Donor lists released by the fund show contributions of $10,000 from such entertainment figures as singer Tony Bennett and Lew R. Wasserman, chairman emeritus of Universal Studios. Another Southern Californian who gave the maximum was producer Peg Yorkin, co-founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Business executives who gave $10,000 include New York investment banker Steven Rattner; Sol Price of La Jolla, Calif., founder of the Price Club chain of stores; and Robert L. Johnson, president of Black Entertainment Television Inc. of the District of Columbia.

The rules of the trust, approved by the White House counsel’s office, are intended to avoid ethical problems. They prohibit donations from non-U.S. citizens, corporations, labor unions, registered lobbyists and employees of the executive branch of government.

However, the fund is not without its critics. Charles Lewis, who heads the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, said in a recent interview that such restrictions do not remove all ethical concerns.

“I do not lack sympathy for the president’s problem, but he faces a real dilemma here,” Lewis said. “The big donors are going to be influential persons with a strong interest in government decisions.”

During the fund’s first six months last year, it received 17,000 donations. But in the six months starting last August, about the time Clinton gave videotaped testimony to Starr’s federal grand jury, 29,000 people contributed to the fund, officials said.

The initial private fund-raising effort to defray the first couple’s legal bills ended in failure in December 1997, having netted only $800,000 in more than three years. It was handicapped by a limit of $1,000 per donation and it suffered from the taint of questionable foreign contributions before organizers voluntarily abandoned it.

After a two-month hiatus, Pryor started the new fund-raising effort with a higher limit and a more aggressive approach.

Officials stressed that none of the fund’s contributions were used late last year to pay the president’s $850,000 settlement of Paula Corbin Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit.

Times researcher Tricia Ford contributed to this story.