Robert S. Bennett, one of many nation’s main felony protection legal professionals, who was recognized for his illustration of the highly effective and celebrated caught up in scandals, died on Sunday at his house in Washington. He was 84.
The trigger was kidney failure, his daughter Peggy Bennett stated.
Mr. Bennett most famously represented President Bill Clinton when he was mired in hassle after mendacity about having had an intimate relationship with a younger White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Mr. Bennett was initially the president’s private lawyer in a lawsuit introduced by Paula Jones that triggered the scandal. Ms. Jones, an Arkansas state clerical employee, contended that when Mr. Clinton was the state’s governor, he made undesirable sexual advances to her in a Little Rock lodge room.
In addition to his affiliation with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bennett was wanted by a number of different outstanding political figures ensnared in scandal in Washington.
In September 1992, Mr. Bennett discovered himself shuttling from courtroom to courtroom in Washington’s federal courthouse, generally on the identical day, to defend concurrently two former secretaries of protection, one a Democrat, Clark M. Clifford, and the opposite a Republican, Caspar W. Weinberger.
Mr. Clifford, who had spent greater than a half-century on the pinnacle of affect within the nation’s capital and served as protection secretary below President Lyndon B. Johnson, confronted fraud prices in reference to a banking scandal. Mr. Weinberger, who served below President Ronald Reagan, was charged with mendacity to investigators about his information of the Iran-contra scandal, the administration’s sale of weapons to Tehran and provide of covert support to Nicaraguan rebels.
Mr. Bennett was a sturdy warrior for his shoppers, not least for his capacity to ship an earnest protection of them not solely contained in the courtroom however exterior it as nicely, earlier than tv cameras and reporters.
In the case of President Clinton, whose dalliance with Ms. Lewinsky got here to mild within the Paula Jones lawsuit, Mr. Bennett readily advised reporters that the Jones submitting was “tabloid trash with a legal caption.”
When Ms. Jones asserted via her legal professionals that she may exhibit her credibility by testifying that Mr. Clinton had a pronounced bend in his penis, Mr. Bennett didn’t shrink from participating; he publicly proclaimed the presidential anatomy as that of a standard man.
Mr. Bennett, together with a Clinton administration lawyer, argued earlier than the United States Supreme Court that the president ought to have immunity from civil lawsuits like that of Ms. Jones till after he left workplace. The courtroom rejected that argument 9-0. After that, Mr. Clinton gave the deposition during which he lied about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment. The president paid Ms. Jones $850,000 in damages to settle her lawsuit.
Mr. Bennett efficiently argued that Mr. Clifford was too in poor health to face trial. Mr. Weinberger, who confronted two felony counts, was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Dec. 24, 1992, earlier than Mr. Weinberger’s trial was to start and simply weeks earlier than Mr. Bush left workplace. Mr. Bennett took a number one position in urgent for the pardon.
“Bob is totally in command, both legally and politically,” Mr. Weinberger advised The Times in an interview on the time. “He knows a lot of people, in the press and elsewhere, whom he’s able to talk to. He is a holistic physician. He treats the whole patient.”
Robert Stephen Bennett was born on Aug. 2, 1939, within the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to F. Robert and Nancy (Walsh) Bennett. His father labored for a financial institution; his mom was a homemaker. They divorced when Robert was about 7.
Robert had the advantage of a supporting community of family and friends members headed by a well-connected uncle, William Walsh, a outstanding physician whose sufferers included Jacqueline Kennedy.
Dr. Walsh noticed to it that his nephew attended Brooklyn Preparatory School, a extremely rigorous Jesuit establishment (since closed). Dr. Walsh even noticed to it that his nephew was on the radar of Georgetown University; he had its president, the Rev. Edward Bunn, make encouraging telephone calls to the younger Mr. Bennett.
Mr. Bennett did, in reality, attend Georgetown after which graduated from its regulation faculty. While a regulation pupil, he made an necessary connection when he labored as a private assistant to Thomas G. Corcoran, a prime authorized adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Corcoran went on to develop into the mannequin for the fashionable Washington lawyer-lobbyist.
After commencement, Mr. Bennett was a regulation clerk for Mr. Corcoran’s brother, Howard Corcoran, a federal trial choose within the District of Columbia.
He then labored as a federal prosecutor within the district for greater than three years, adopted by a stint in a standard massive regulation agency earlier than setting out as a protection lawyer.
Mr. Bennett turned one of many early members of a choose group of Washington legal professionals who created their very own authorized specialty, made it extremely profitable and went on to dominate it for many years: a white-collar protection bar for these entangled within the capital’s main political circumstances. Like Mr. Bennett, these legal professionals had been, for essentially the most half, former native federal prosecutors.
Before the Watergate scandals of the Nixon administration, top-tier Washington regulation corporations prevented felony protection work. “Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, most law firms shunned criminal work as being beneath them,” he wrote in his memoir, “In the Ring” (2008).
He first got here to nationwide consideration when he was employed in 1989 as particular counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee for the case of the Keating Five, senators — one Republican and 4 Democrats — who had been accused of doing favors in trade for marketing campaign contributions from Charles H. Keating, a financial savings and mortgage government who can be convicted in an enormous fraud scheme.
Mr. Bennett’s aggressive strategy to the job was extensively described as having saved stress on the Senate to not deal flippantly with the circumstances. Four of the 5 got reprimands, and Senator Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, obtained a extreme rebuke for his habits and later introduced his retirement.
Mr. Bennett, a heavyset man who was jovial with reporters, as soon as advised The Times that the best variety of letters he obtained about his efficiency in the course of the Ethics Committee hearings, which had been televised, had been from individuals who commented on his raveled look. Some provided to promote him custom-tailored shirts or fits.
Years later, one in every of his targets within the Keating investigation, Senator John McCain of Arizona, turned to Mr. Bennett to characterize him in negotiations with The New York Times over an article involving his relationship with a feminine lobbyist.
The Times reported in 2008, when Mr. McCain was operating for president, that in his 2000 presidential marketing campaign, the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, started showing with him at fund-raisers and at his workplace, prompting his advisers to warning Mr. McCain concerning the doable look of a romantic involvement. Ms. Iseman sued the newspaper for libel. The Times didn’t retract its article however printed a word to readers saying it had not supposed to counsel a romantic affair, and the go well with was dropped.
Mr. Bennett additionally represented Marge Schott, the proprietor of the Cincinnati Reds who was going through a lifetime ban by Major League Baseball for having made racial and ethnic slurs. He negotiated a $25,000 superb and a 12 months’s suspension, after which she was allowed to renew her favourite exercise, attending video games together with her canine, Schottzie.
In 2004, Judith Miller, a Times reporter who was in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about one in every of her sources, dismissed her legal professionals who had been related to the newspaper and employed Mr. Bennett. Ms. Miller had maintained that she was standing up for her First Amendment proper as a journalist to guard her confidential sources. But Mr. Bennett helped craft an advanced association that allowed her to testify earlier than the grand jury and get out of jail. Mr. Bennett stated he was capable of accomplish what he did as a result of his responsibility was to characterize his consumer, Ms. Miller, not the First Amendment.
He and his youthful brother, William J. Bennett, made up one of many capital’s odd superstar pairings. Bill Bennett has been a vocal conservative commentator who achieved prominence decrying what he perceived because the lack of ethical values in society. He served as President Ronald Reagan’s training secretary and President George H.W. Bush’s drug czar.
Robert Bennett was, in distinction, scrupulously apolitical; his public positions had been solely about his shoppers. When he was publicly depicting President Clinton because the sufferer of political enemies, his brother was on the Sunday discuss exhibits denouncing Mr. Clinton for bringing about “the trashiest moment in American presidential history.”
One non-public exercise during which they participated collectively was a generally common card sport that included Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Bennett married Ellen Gilbert in 1969. In addition to their daughter Peggy and his brother, his spouse survives him, together with two extra daughters, Catherine and Sarah Bennett; and 6 grandchildren.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com