Clintons' Request for Legal Reimbursement Denied

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Clintons' Request for Legal Reimbursement Denied

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A US federal appeals court on Tuesday denied a request by former president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton to be reimbursed for millions of dollars in legal fees arising out of an independent counsel's investigation of a failed Arkansas land development known as Whitewater.

The Clintons petitioned the court to have the US government reimburse them 3.58 million dollars in lawyers' fees and costs they paid while Independent Counsel Robert Fiske and his successorKenneth Starr were investigating their roles in the Whitewater land deal.

The special three-judge panel ruled that the Clintons did not meet the standard for reimbursement, except for a small portion oftheir lawyers' work that was in direct response to the independentcounsel's report.

They determined that the Clintons would have been investigated even if an independent counsel had not been appointed, and thus would have incurred the costs anyway.

The judicial panel, chaired by Judge David Sentelle of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the Clintons should be entitled to reimbursement of 85,312 dollars. Sentelle was part of a three judge panel that appointed Starr to the case.

The Clintons had asked to be reimbursed for the costs of defending themselves in the Whitewater probe, which lasted more than seven years, arguing they would never have faced such an expensive, lengthy process if not for their positions as Presidentand First Lady.

David Kendall, a lawyer for the Clintons, criticized the decision and argued that it was politically motivated. In an interview with local news media, he noted that former President Ronald Reagan was reimbursed for 72 percent of his legal costs stemming from the Iran-Contra investigation, and his vice president George H.W. Bush was reimbursed for 59 percent of his costs in the same matter.

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