Rodham Has History of Dubious Dealings

Hugh Rodham, the Florida attorney and would-be politician who is Bill Clinton’s brother-in-law, has often been seen in the Clinton family montage, playing golf with Clinton every Thanksgiving.

But his eagerness to become a success in law and business sometimes has proved to be an embarrassment to his sister, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), and the former president.

Even before the disclosure Wednesday that he had received about $400,000 for his lobbying efforts to help secure a controversial pardon and a commutation that Clinton granted, Rodham, 50, was a flash point for controversy.

Two years ago, the genial, bearlike Rodham plunged into a projected $118-million deal with his younger brother Tony in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia that led to unforeseen political implications. The brothers organized a company called Argo Holdings to harvest and sell hazelnuts but got too close--in the White House view--to a local political figure named Aslan Abashidze, a rival of Georgia’s president, Eduard Shevardnadze, a staunch U.S. ally.

Abashidze sought to use his newfound friendship with the Rodham brothers to claim that their venture was a sign of political support by Clinton. That irked Shevardnadze, and a chagrined Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, leaned on the Rodhams to abandon their enterprise.

While Hugh Rodham initially agreed, he and his brother soon were seen by local reporters back in the Georgian port city of Batumi in late 1999, where they said they had given up harvesting hazelnuts and were just in the business of distributing them.

The White House was not mollified. Spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters: “If in fact this project is still going forward, we don’t approve and will continue to make clear to Georgian officials that this venture has no connection with or sanction from the U.S. government.”

But Hugh Rodham was also after other things. He involved himself in class-action lawsuits being pursued by other lawyers against the tobacco industry, despite his relative lack of experience in the field. His efforts to lobby for a congressional settlement drew fire from Republicans on the House floor, where he was attacked both as a symbol of rich trial lawyers and as a personal gladiator fighting for Clinton’s interests.

In 1995, Rodham, an ex-smoker, joined the so-called Castano group that had filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit in 1994 against the major tobacco companies in New Orleans. At the time, he had never tried a major case. But the politically astute legal team, headed by Louisiana lawyer Wendell Gauthier, thought that he might be of use to the group, attorneys said at the time.

Rodham floated the idea of a possible nationwide settlement with the tobacco companies with President Clinton on Thanksgiving 1996, according to “The People vs. Big Tobacco,” a 1998 book about the tobacco litigation wars by three Bloomberg News Service reporters. That deal never got off the ground, however.

During the spring of 1997, when prospects of a nationwide tobacco deal appeared to be good, Rodham, and other attorneys from the Castano group met with top White House aide Bruce Lindsey several times on the settlement issue.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who was skeptical about the deal, attacked Rodham’s role in the negotiations, saying that it represented a conflict of interest for the White House. Rodham remained involved in the talks, which ultimately led to a $368.5-billion settlement on June 20, 1997. But that deal required congressional approval, and it fell apart in Congress the following year.

Rodham insisted he had earned his seat at tobacco talks through hard work and commitment, saying that he had traveled from city to city, hotel to hotel, searching for common ground with the industry.

“I’ve known Hugh for years,” said fellow attorney Joe Geller, who has been active in Democratic politics in Miami. “He is an honest, bright and hard-working lawyer who earned respect as a public defender in his earlier days.”

Nonetheless, Geller and Rodham have not always been on the best of terms. In late 1996, Rodham tried to unseat Geller as Miami-Dade County Democratic Party chairman, a move that Geller did not appreciate since he had championed Rodham in his ill-fated race against Republican Sen. Connie Mack of Florida in 1994. Mack wound up humiliating the inexperienced Rodham, winning 71% of the vote.

Rodham, who now pursues a modestly successful general practice of law and government relations from his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., office, spent more than a decade as an assistant public defender, including five years defending clients in Miami’s pioneering drug court. He was among those who recommended Janet Reno when Clinton’s first two choices for attorney general foundered.

More recently Rodham has joined a group of lawyers filing lawsuits on behalf of five cities against the firearms industry, and he sought in vain to negotiate a 1999 settlement with a gun-industry trade group.

But attorney Robert Ricker credited Rodham with being “a serious player” in arranging meetings on the issue with Lindsey and White House lawyer and then-domestic policy advisor Bruce Reed.

In his personal life, Rodham, a Chicago native and former Penn State football player, has enjoyed an especially close relationship with his sister Hillary as well as younger brother Tony. “The boys,” as the family calls them, viewed the 1975 marriage of Hillary and Bill Clinton as such a family event that they even tagged along on the honeymoon.

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Times staff writer Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this story.