Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [170]
Word around the White House suggested that First Lady Hillary Clinton—who had been adamantly opposed to her husband’s paying money to Jones—was now prepared to accept this settlement deal. With everything in place, President Clinton gave the go-ahead to his lawyer. Clinton would later acknowledge, “Yes. I mean, once they [the Supreme Court] decided it, I was willing to settle. Even if it cost, you know, half of all the money we had saved for thirty years.” It still made him angry to think about paying this exorbitant amount of money to the likes of Paula Jones, who he believed was making an industry out of “clearing her name.” But his advisers convinced him that it was time to end this gargantuan diversion. “I decided I had to do it,” Clinton said, “because I didn’t want to take the time away from the job to deal with it.”
Because this was civil litigation, insurance questions had to be thrashed out. Chubb and State Farm both had issued policies that covered Bill Clinton at various stages: Chubb seemed eager to settle this unseemly claim; State Farm resisted putting money on the table. Ultimately, a compromise was ironed out, with the Clintons personally on the hook for a portion of the settlement dollars. The lawyers had reached a meeting of the minds. The most significant civil lawsuit ever filed against a sitting president was resolved—or so both sides’ lawyers thought—with a handshake inside a windowless conference room at the Skadden Arps law firm.
Getting the final approval from Paula Jones, the Virginia lawyers believed, was simply a pro forma step. Their client was getting everything she had asked for in the complaint. It was a grand slam by any litigator’s measure. As Gil Davis said candidly, “Yes, we had a deal. I mean if she [Paula] accepted it, there was a deal.”
There were several impediments, it soon became apparent, to clinching the agreement. One was Paula’s husband, who was becoming increasingly bellicose. More and more, Steve Jones was playing the part of a “tough guy,” at times threatening to “beat up” Bob Bennett and Bill Clinton. Paula’s husband would say words like “let me at that guy,” requiring the lawyers to calm him down. After one gathering in a hotel room, the lawyers had nearly duked it out with him. Steve got up on his high horse and declared, “I don’t care if we have to live in a pup tent… this case is going forward.” Hearing this, Joe Cammarata moved up close to Steve Jones and said: “Let me tell you something. If you want to live in a pup tent, you can live in a pup tent. But I’m not living in any pup tent. Do you understand me? You haven’t put dime one into this case.” It was not helping their settlement efforts, the Virginia lawyers worried, to have Steve Jones whispering in their client’s ear every day and night.
There was also Susan Carpenter-McMillan. The California PR coordinator was increasingly steering Paula Jones away from settlement, persuading her client “that she could get more money by squeezing Clinton.” Additionally, Carpenter-McMillan was complaining that the lawyers would walk away with most of the money in fees, and Paula would get “nothing except a dirty, muddy name.” Both Steve Jones and Carpenter-McMillan were advising Paula that she needed to fight to the death until she “got an apology” from Clinton, even though there was no such remedy available under Arkansas or federal law. Carpenter-McMillan later acknowledged her own position: “Twenty-million-dollar settlement, no apologies. Two-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement, a big apology. My motive always was the victimization of Paula,” she said. “Now, were there fringe benefits on the side like hurting the Dems? Absolutely.” Steve Jones was even more adamant.