Clinton Team Asks Dismissal of Jones Sex-Harassment Suit

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Attorneys for President Clinton asked a federal judge Tuesday to throw out the sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones, contending that she has not proved he engaged in a pattern of sexual improprieties either as governor of Arkansas or president of the United States.

In a massive 500-page legal document, the Clinton lawyers argue for the first time that Jones and her legal team have failed over the last four years to discover other instances in which Clinton used his position of influence to sexually prey on women.

Jones, they said, “spent 99% of her discovery efforts attempting to substantiate rumors that President Clinton made sexual advances to other women. But she failed to establish that.”

“Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that this suit had very little to do with redressing [her] purported personal injury and everything to do with using the compulsory processes of the court in an attempt to humiliate and damage the president.”

Tuesday’s filing represents the first official response by the president’s lawyers to the sworn testimony of witnesses for Jones’ legal team. While Clinton’s lawyers sat in on all depositions conducted by Jones’ attorneys, only since a Jan. 31 deadline for depositions has their accounting of Jones’ legal strategy and its contents been complete.

The documents provide the first public look at evidence collected in the case.

Clinton’s attorneys also reiterated that their client “adamantly denies” that he exposed himself to her in a local hotel room and said that he insists her career as an Arkansas state employee was not later compromised.

In Washington on Tuesday, two more witnesses appeared before the federal grand jury examining the nature of Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, while White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that he regrets telling a Chicago newspaper that he doubts there is “a simple, innocent explanation” for their relationship.

In a Friday interview with the Chicago Tribune published Tuesday, McCurry said that he thought the Clinton-Lewinsky matter would “end up being a very complicated story as most human relationships are. And I don’t think it’s going to be entirely easy to explain, maybe.”

On Tuesday a sheepish McCurry, whose previous comments about the Lewinsky situation had been circumspect, ascribed his remarks to a “lapse in sanity” and faulted himself for speculating on matters beyond his knowledge.

“I think what I was proving was that only fools answer hypothetical questions,” he told reporters.

The motion for a summary judgment against Jones is Clinton’s last legal shot at getting the case dismissed before the trial begins in May. The Jones team, which had no immediate reaction, now has 14 days to respond in court.

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright then will decide whether the case merits going forward.

But it is unlikely that the suit will be tossed out. One Washington legal source who has followed the case closely said:

“There’s a tremendous temptation for a judge in a high-profile case like this to reason: ‘I’m going to let a jury decide it. Why should I take the heat?’ ”

The president’s lawyers said that, regardless of what Jones says happened in a room at the Excelsior Hotel in downtown Little Rock with then-Gov. Clinton on May 8, 1991, she did not “complain, indicate or imply” to her supervisors at the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission that “the governor had acted improperly.”

Rather, they said, Jones received satisfactory job evaluations and a pay raise, and ultimately left state government because her husband was transferred to California.

The Clinton attorneys included lengthy excerpts from Jones’ deposition last Nov. 12, in which she described working at a registration desk at the hotel and then voluntarily going upstairs to meet the governor.

In her deposition, she said Clinton began “pulling me over like he has done this a million times and grabs me and pulls me over to the windowsill and tries to kiss me and just didn’t ask me or nothing.”

She said that he approached her a second time, rubbing his hands up her legs and waist and kissing her neck and straining for her lips. She said that he kept saying: “Oh, I love the way your hair flows down your back. And I was watching you.”

She said that she told him, “Stop it. You know. I’m not this kind of girl.”

But Clinton persisted, she said, even as they both retreated to a couch. “He come over there, pulled his pants down, sat down and asked me to perform oral sex,” she recalled.

“He asked me would I kiss it. He goes--you know, I can see the look on his face right now. He asked me, ‘Would you kiss it for me?’ I mean, it was disgusting.”

As she was opening the door to leave the room, she said, Clinton “held his hand up there and said, ‘You’re a smart girl. Let’s keep this between ourselves.’ ”

“That’s a threat,” Jones contended in her deposition. He told her that her boss was “his dear friend,” and that her boss could take care of any trouble she might get in for being away from the registration desk.

“That was a threat.”

She said that another time, while walking through the state Capitol rotunda, Clinton hugged her and told a bodyguard: “Don’t we make a good-looking couple? We look like beauty and the beast.”

A third time, she said, while she was making a delivery to the governor’s office, state trooper Danny Ferguson, who also is being sued by Jones, told her:

“The governor wanted me to ask you if he could get your phone number because Hillary is out of town a lot and he would maybe like to meet with you.”

She responded by saying that she was living with her boyfriend and, although she had not mentioned his name, Ferguson said: “Well, how is Steve doing?”

Jones later married Stephen Jones. In a separate deposition, he said that she had told him only in general terms later that day what had happened at the Excelsior Hotel.

“She came home and she was upset and I asked her what was wrong,” Stephen Jones said. “She said that, ‘Bill Clinton made a pass at me and I don’t want to talk about it.’ ”

In contrast, Clinton’s lawyers said that the president, in his own deposition, “does not recall ever meeting [Jones], and denies that he sexually harassed her.”

The judge rejected an earlier dismissal request by Clinton’s lawyers last year, explaining that she was obligated to make her ruling based entirely on what Jones claims in her lawsuit.

But Tuesday’s motion contends that Jones has failed to back up her allegations with hard evidence to prove her claims that her job was jeopardized after the hotel encounter.

“She cannot show a hostile work environment was created by only 20 minutes of contact with Clinton,” a White House legal source said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “there is absolutely no evidence that any woman received any job benefits because of closeness to the governor.”

In the Lewinsky matter, meanwhile, retired Secret Service officer Lewis C. Fox testified before the grand jury for about two hours. Fox did not discuss his testimony afterward, but he told reporters that the questioning was completed and he would not have to return.

White House aide D. Stephen Goodin also testified. Goodin until recently was Clinton’s personal scheduler, a position in which he was privy to last-minute decisions about the president’s daily activities. Goodin left the courthouse without commenting.

Serrano reported from Little Rock and Jackson from Washington. Times staff writers David Willman and Cecilia Balli in Washington also contributed to this story.