Starr, White House Clash Over Advice for Jones Camp

WASHINGTON —  The clash between independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and the White House escalated Thursday as new details emerged about Starr’s failure to disclose that he had given legal advice to lawyers working on the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton.

At issue is whether Starr should have informed Atty. Gen. Janet Reno that he had counseled the Jones lawyers when he asked her last January to permit his office to investigate whether the president had lied in his deposition in the Jones case.

Robert S. Bennett, the president’s personal attorney in the Jones case, called on the House Judiciary Committee to determine whether Starr acted inappropriately when he did not disclose that he had had a half-dozen earlier conversations with the Jones legal team.

But Starr responded that he “did not mislead” Reno in his request for an expanded inquiry and strongly defended his actions once again under a barrage of criticism from Clinton defenders.

“If the theory is that there is a conspiracy between Starr and the Jones lawyers in January 1998, that theory fails,” said Charles G. Bakaly III, spokesman for Starr. “We didn’t have contact with them then.”

One neutral observer, however, said he found it “disturbing” that Starr did not disclose the conversations to Reno.

“As long as he talked to them, it looks like he was part of the Jones team,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University Law School professor who served with Starr in the Reagan and Bush Justice departments,

Reno will add the matter to other complaints about Starr that her office is reviewing.

Last January, Starr asked Reno for authorization to expand his Whitewater investigation after learning that Monica S. Lewinsky, a former White House intern, may have lied in an affidavit in the Jones case. She claimed in the statement that she had not had a sexual relationship with Clinton.

In seeking the expanded review, Starr did not advise Reno that, before being named to the independent counsel’s office, he had discussed the issue of presidential immunity with a Jones lawyer.

Gil Davis, the Jones lawyer, appeared on television in January--just after the Starr investigation was expanded--and described his conversations with Starr in 1994. He recounted them again in an interview with The Times this week.

Davis said he spoke with Starr about half a dozen times in June and July 1994, shortly before Starr was named independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation.

Davis said he first called Starr to discuss presidential immunity because “he was a constitutional scholar who had already taken a position on it” during television news show appearances.

Starr was “helpful” in pointing out relevant legal cases and providing guidance on the immunity question, Davis said.

“It really sort of pointed me to the cases and the way somebody ought to analyze immunity questions,” he said.

Davis said he did not follow Starr’s advice on a key procedural matter: whether the question of immunity should be decided before the sexual harassment lawsuit continued.

Davis said he never paid Starr for his guidance and that Starr told him “he was not rendering any opinions on the merits of the Paula Jones case against the president.”

That version of events closely parallels Starr’s recollections. The independent counsel described a story reported Wednesday by National Public Radio on the same matter as nothing new.

“The facts regarding the 1994 communications between Mr. Davis and Mr. Starr have been long known and reported,” a Starr statement said. “This office did not mislead the Department of Justice regarding relevant facts relating to its jurisdiction, or any expansion.”

Nevertheless, Starr’s detractors were critical.

At a business luncheon in Chicago, Clinton attorney Bennett said it seems “very clear that there is a serious issue of an appearance of conflict of interest--if not a real conflict of interest.”

Bennett complained that politics and congressional investigations have merged to pursue “conspiracies around every corner” and mar the reputations of politicians.

“Our government is made up of men and women, both Democrats and Republicans, who don’t deserve the hell that partisanship has wrought on them,” he said.

A Clinton advisor said that, while the allegation against Starr does not change Clinton’s situation, “it does taint” Starr’s work.

Starr, he said, “hardly came into this as a neutral. Clearly he had been collaborating. It goes to the issue of whether he should have been the independent counsel.” In Congress, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said Starr should appear before the Senate Governmental Affairs and Judiciary committees to “answer questions about possible conflicts of interest.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, questioned Starr’s motives.

“He wired Linda Tripp before he had jurisdiction, he bullied Monica Lewinsky, he may have set up perjury traps for the president,” said Nadler.

Rising to Starr’s defense was a Republican staff aide on the Judiciary panel who said that, regardless of what Starr failed to disclose, it does not alter the bottom line: that Clinton is still under investigation for lying to the federal grand jury and in his Jones deposition about his sexual affair with Lewinsky.

“The Democrats would love to change the focus,” the aide, who asked not to be named, said. “But we can’t ignore the fact there are still these serious charges against the president.”

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Times staff writers Marc Lacey in Chicago and Alan C. Miller in Washington contributed to this story.

Complete text of documents from the Starr investigation, Times editorials and commentaries on the Monica S. Lewinsky matter are on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/scandal