As Bill Defines It?

The battle over President Clinton's law license is getting its latest public airing.

On Monday, a conservative group seeking the revocation of Mr. Clinton's license released its rebuttal to the president's legal brief before the Arkansas Supreme Court. In its rebuttal, the Southeastern Legal Foundation said the president has argued that his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal was - in the Foundation's words - "not false as he defines that term."

Mr. Clinton's 80-page legal brief before Arkansas' highest court in his law license case was filed some weeks ago and remains under seal. David Kendall, the president's personal attorney, has declined to make that document public. Kendall's office said Monday that the lawyer was not immediately available for comment on the group's rebuttal.

The Foundation said that in calling for "a mere reprimand," the president "ignores the plain language of the...most obvious, analogous case of presidential misconduct, that of Richard Nixon" who was disbarred by a New York court despite the absence of criminal conviction or impeachment conviction. Nixon resigned before a Senate trial and was pardoned for "any and all crimes" while in office by his successor Gerald Ford.

But the Atlanta-based group argues the president's admissions during his impeachment provided enough evidence that he misled courts in the Lewinsky matter to warrant revocation.

"The president is no ordinary Arkansas lawyer," reads the Foundation's brief. "Rather, he is the president of the United States of America and, as such, is held to the model rules requiring the higher ethical standard for attorneys who hold public office, even those who may become litigants or defendants."

The group noted that U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright fined the president for contempt for false testimony about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. In her 1999 ruling, Wright cited 10 alleged lies by the president that "no reasonable person would seriously dispute." The Foundation seized on her 1999 conclusions, as well as Clinton's own admission he misled people during the Lewinsky affair.

"First, the president frankly admits the conduct at issue. Second, the allegations are findings of fact by a federal judge in a fully and fairly contested litigation as well as by the Congress in impeachment proceedings," the group said.

"President Clinton spends the bulk of his 80-page brief attempting to show that his testimony was not 'false' as he defines that term," the Foundation's rebuttal added.

And the group countered that the American Bar Association rules for professional conduct "proscribe misleading conduct" as the standard and do not even use the words "false testimony."

"While it is true as the president asserts in his response, that 'charges of false testimony under oath with possibly penal consequences are a serious matte,' the matter before this committee does not deal with perjury by litigants as that term is used in criminal law but rather misconduct within the applicable standards for lawyers," the Foundation argued.

To further its case, the group cited the president's legal filings from the impeachment trial as evidence he has already admitted to being misleading.

"What the president did was wrong…The simple moral truth (is) that his behavior in this matter was wrong. ... He misled his wife, his friends, and our nation about the nature of his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky," the Foundation filing said, quoting one of the president's impeachment filings.

The group filed the first complaint seeking revocation of Clinton's Arkansas law license on Sept. 15, 1998. A second complaint arose automatically under state law when Wright found Clinton in contempt of court on April 12, 1999, for lying about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern. Both complaints focus on Clinton's statements about Lewinsky in the Jan. 17, 1998, deposition in the Jones case.

Wright cited Clinton for civil contempt rather than criminal contempt, thus preserving the authority of the Office of Independent Counsel, now headed by Ken Starr's successor, Robert Ray, to pursue criminal charges against Clinton later if Ray chooses.