Transcript excerpt alleging advice on perjury trap and settlement strategy during Clinton‑Lewinsky scandal

4.2.12 WC: 191694 Is that a true and accurate statement” The president responded: “That is absolutely true.” Shortly thereafter, reports began to appear of tape recorded conversations between Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky suggesting that there had been a sexual relationship of some kind between the President and Monica Lewinsky. On January 23, 1998 I appeared on the MSNBC program “Internight” and criticized Bennett for allowing the President to walk into a perjury trap and a swearing contest. I recommended that the President “get out in front of this story. He has to tell the truth, and if the truth is inculpatory he has to tell it.” I recommended that the president “get a new lawyer, tell him the truth, sit down with your new lawyer ... and [have him give you] the straight poop.” The lawyer has to be someone “who doesn’t care what the president thinks of him. His obligation is to tell the president what he doesn’t want to hear.” On January 27, 1998, Robert Bennett called me to complain about what I said on television. Bennett kept me on the phone for nearly half an hour telling me that I did not understand his “strategy” in the case and accusing me of “Monday morning quarterbacking” his decisions. I asked Bennett a direct question: “Did you ever advise the President that in addition to the option of settling the Jones case, he could simply default on the liability phase of the case?” Bennett replied that defaulting would have been “ridiculous” and “a stupid idea” and that he would never recommend it. I asked Bennett what kind of an investigation he had conducted of the Lewinsky matter before he allowed the President to be deposed, and he acknowledged that he simply accepted the President’s word, since it was supported by Lewinsky’s affidavit. I asked him whether he had ever questioned Lewinsky and gave a vague response. He did say that he was surprised about the questions asked concerning Lewinsky at the deposition. I told Bennett that I strongly believed he had made a mistake by walking his client into a perjury trap and allowing him to get into a swearing contest about his sex life. He assured me that he knew what he was doing and that it would all work to the advantage of his client. I told him I hoped he was right, but that I still thought he had made a mistake. A lawyer owes his client the duty to explain all available legal options, even if he believes that the client will probably reject a given option. Bennett failed in this duty. He now argues, in his own defense, that if Clinton had defaulted the Jones case, many more litigants would “come out of the woodwork” and sued Clinton in the hope that he would default. This is a fallacious argument for several reasons. First, the statute of limitations would have passed on virtually all allegations arising — as the Jones case did — before Clinton became President. Even more importantly, the moment it became public — which it quickly did — that the President previously had offered a $700,000 settlement to Jones, there was more than enough incentive for gold-diggers to come 212 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017359