Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [172]
The lawyers gave their client until 12:00 noon Washington time on Tuesday September 2, 1997, to change her mind. Otherwise, they said, they would be forced to quit. In part, according to sources, Davis and Cammarata sensed they were being forced out and wanted to jump ship before that happened; in equal part, they felt a professional obligation to sever ties with Paula if she insisted on taking an unreasonable, intractable position. “Serious differences of opinion have arisen between us,” they wrote. “We believe these differences are so basic as to make it necessary for us to seek the court’s permission to withdraw as your counsel as a consequence of your refusal to agree to a settlement.”
As the final settlement appeared headed for collapse, Judge Susan Webber Wright convened an extraordinary powwow of all the parties, including Paula Jones herself, via conference call. The judge threatened stiff sanctions if any participant leaked the details of this conference to the press. During this highly unusual colloquy, Judge Wright reviewed the motion of Davis and Cammarata to withdraw, concluding that their reasons were well founded. One person on the call recalled that at one point, Judge Wright came within a hair of telling Paula that she was abusing the processes of the federal courts by turning down a settlement that gave her everything that her complaint had demanded. At this dressing-down, Paula began to cry. Still, she did not alter her position. Judge Wright, having led the horse to water, could not make her drink it.
The following day, Judge Wright issued a terse order granting the Virginia attorneys’ motion to withdraw. She added: “Mr. Davis and Mr. Cammarata are both entitled to a reasonable attorney’s fee for their zealous and effective representation of plaintiff to date.” The judge also kept the case on a fast track for trial, ordering Jones to adhere to the existing tight deadlines. It was a game of chicken; now, the federal judge was establishing the rules.
Danny Traylor, Paula’s original lawyer in Arkansas, who had never formally quit as local counsel, took this opportunity to bail out. He called Jones in California and informed her that he could no longer represent her. As Traylor explained his logic, he had a real problem with “that right-wing element out in Los Angeles,” in the person of Susan Carpenter-McMillan, who he felt had “caused the case to go off the track.” He was also miffed that seminude photos of Jones had appeared in Penthouse magazine, after she had assured him that “there was nothing out there.” Traylor felt he had been duped and “misled.”
Jones began to cry some more. Traylor said years later, shaking his head, “You know, I don’t know what was motivating Paula at that time. She was getting hairdos and limousines and new clothes and getting [her nose fixed].”
Years later, President Clinton expressed dismay bordering on disbelief that the plaintiff had brought this lawsuit and then refused to settle it at full value. He concluded that the woman who sued him was no longer driving her own case, if she ever had been. “She was the front,” Clinton said with evident anger. “And they desperately wanted this thing to go on. I have no idea what they said to her or what else they offered her or what representations they made to her or what role her husband, or her ex-husband had in it. I don’t know any of that.” From the moment the settlement fell through, however, Clinton sensed that a new group of lawyers would emerge who would fight this case as fiery political warfare rather than as an ordinary civil matter.
While this premonition may have been accurate, President Clinton himself, it turned out, was adding a potent weapon to his enemy’s arsenal. Even while the Jones case blinked danger,