Group Says Clinton Denies Lying to Court

President Clinton has told the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ethics committee he should be permitted to keep his law license because his statements in the Monica S. Lewinsky case were “not false as he defines the term,” according to a conservative legal foundation that has a copy of Clinton’s confidential filing.

Matthew J. Glavin, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation of Atlanta, made public the group’s own filing in rebuttal Monday, contending that Clinton should be disbarred because he is “held to . . . the higher ethical standard for attorneys who hold public office.”

Noting that U.S. Judge Susan Webber Wright, in Arkansas, held Clinton in contempt last year, Glavin said that the matter before the ethics committee “does not deal with perjury . . . but rather misconduct.”

Southeastern received Clinton’s brief last month under seal as a party to the dispute but is prohibited from releasing it.

David E. Kendall, the president’s private attorney, declined to make public Clinton’s filing but said that the foundation “isn’t interested in issues relating to Arkansas lawyers and legal services . . . but just attacking the president in any way it can.”

Kendall said that the foundation derives financial support from wealthy conservative Richard Mellon Scaife, an acknowledged political enemy of Clinton, and from fund-raising efforts by former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Discussing this issue publicly “is just another part of the long-running, partisan mudslinging campaign against the president,” Kendall declared.

Glavin told a Washington press conference that Clinton’s 80-page filing argues against revocation of his law license and contains language “that suggests a sanction no harsher and perhaps more lenient than a letter of reprimand would be appropriate.”

But in its filing, the foundation argued for disbarment, saying: “No other penalties, including reprimand and suspension, are appropriate in cases where . . . basic honesty and respect for the integrity of the judicial system are in question.”

The Arkansas panel has been studying possible sanctions against Clinton since Glavin’s foundation filed a complaint in September 1998. Its case became stronger 13 months ago when Wright found the president in contempt for deliberately misleading her court about his sexual encounters with Lewinsky, a former White House intern.

The judge declared that, when Clinton was asked during the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit if he had ever been alone with Lewinsky or had engaged in sexual relations with her, he gave “false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process.”

Wright determined that Clinton misled the court in his January 1998 deposition in the Jones case, over which she presided, and later contradicted himself in his sworn grand jury testimony in Starr’s Lewinsky investigation.

Last July, the judge fined Clinton $90,000 for contempt of court--the first such penalty assessed against a president. Clinton declined an opportunity to challenge the action, which Wright automatically referred to the ethics committee.

A normal inquiry by the committee takes six months at most, James Neal, the panel’s executive director, has told The Times. He has declined to discuss the Clinton inquiry on grounds that it is confidential.

The ethics panel has the power to initiate disbarment proceedings against Clinton or to suspend his lawyer’s license for two years. The president, however, has practiced law only sporadically since receiving his degree from Yale University in 1973. As a law professor and state attorney general before serving five terms as governor, Clinton has been licensed to practice law only in Arkansas.

The president in March sought to postpone any action by the committee until after he leaves office next year. But the committee denied the request, saying that it would proceed this year.