A federal appeals court panel said yesterday that the federal government is not obligated to pay the legal fees of former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for their defense in the seven-year, $70 million Whitewater investigation.
The three-judge panel, sitting as a "special division of the court" that oversaw the appointment of independent counsels, unanimously ruled that a petition by the Clintons for reimbursement of $3.5 million in attorneys fees and costs "is not well taken" and ordered that the request be denied.
In a 14-page ruling, the panel said the Clintons, who escaped criminal charges in the Whitewater probe after investigators found "insufficient evidence" to take the matter to trial, would have been the target of a federal investigation in the matter with or without the appointment of an independent counsel and, as a result, should pay the overwhelming majority of the legal costs.
"We harbor no doubt that in the absence of the independent counsel statute the allegations surrounding the Clintons, Madison Guaranty, and Whitewater would have been similarly investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice," said the panel, which ordered the government to pay only the $85,312 the Clintons' attorneys charged to review and respond to the independent counsel's final report.
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