Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [272]
He shared some of these musings with Monica and her mother as they reluctantly followed him into a conference room at the Ritz-Carlton—the two women were aghast that Ginsburg had decided to stay at the same hotel where OIC prosecutors had braced Monica. It wasn’t the most comfortable environment for them. Yet Ginsburg seemed oblivious to the location. First, the lawyer declared that his meeting with the OIC prosecutors had been a waste of time. He believed Monica should “hold out”: “When the grand jury in Washington, D.C., gets ahold of this, they are going to laugh. They hate the government. They hate the cops. They hate the FBI.”
Monica immediately questioned her lawyer’s analysis: “I’ve heard that the grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, if the prosecutor asks for it.”
Ginsburg allowed that this might be true in some parts of the country. But not in the nation’s capital, from what he had heard. “They’re not going to prosecute you for protecting a confidential relationship,” he said, sharing his gut instincts. “They’re just not going to do it.”
As the subject turned to other matters, Monica revealed that Betty Currie had been trying to page her all day. The messages, appearing in code, were obviously designed to prompt a return call. They read: “Family emergency, please call,” or “Good news, please call!” Ginsburg instructed his client not to respond; the White House would have to prepare for Armageddon on its own.
With her situation becoming more impossible by the minute, Monica asked the lawyer if she should consider checking herself into a psychiatric hospital. “It was all too much for one person to handle,” she would later say. “I just felt I was having a nervous breakdown.” Moreover, Monica thought that going to a psychiatric hospital might be the best way to avoid appearing in public. Her lawyer quickly threw a wet blanket on the idea. “That may create more problems than it solves,” he told the ashen-faced young woman. It was better to evaluate Monica’s options. Was there any way for her to cooperate with Starr’s office and get out of this jam? Ginsburg asked. He, like Lewinsky, opposed the idea of her wearing a wire. Neither of them wanted her to be a wired snitch, no matter what OIC threatened to do to her. As Monica herself later explained, “Coming forward and telling the truth, that’s one thing. But doing something that dirty, I just felt that was so wrong.” She understood that plenty of people would look at her cross-eyed and say, “Oh, what you did [with Clinton] is so wrong.” She took a breath and concluded, “But we all have our own standards.”
Ginsburg next sobered up his clients by informing mother and daughter that if a grand jury did indict Monica and they went to trial, it might cost upward of a half-million dollars, ruining her father’s medical practice. Both Monica and Marcia cried for a few minutes, then indulged themselves in an angry outburst, telling Ginsburg that he was offering them insufficient options.
It was already evident that Ginsburg harbored a strong dislike for Marcia Lewis—she had been on the bad end of a divorce with his good friend, Bernie, which made her the enemy. Yet Monica’s mother would still give Ginsburg credit for assisting them during this time of need, when they were incapable of formulating their own legal strategy.
Marcia Lewis would not disclose this fact until years later, but she had a special reason for valuing Ginsburg’s willingness to suit up and march into battle for her daughter. The truth was that she had attempted to find a different lawyer to represent Monica, a sobering experience that made her more fully appreciate Ginsburg’s fiery defense of her family. A day or two after OIC