REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Who Is Webster Hubbell?
Originally published in The Wall Street Journal, March 2, 1993.

Sunday, August 13, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT

Well, Webster Hubbell is a close friend of Bill Clinton and a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Little Rock's Rose law firm. During the past five weeks he's taken up an office in the Justice Department; in the absence of an Attorney General, he's described as the department's "liaison" to the White House. Now his intervention in a corruption trial of a Congressman has led to the resignation of a U.S. Attorney and a stinging rebuke from a federal judge.

The case concerns Rep. Harold Ford, who has represented Memphis, Tennessee, for 18 years and sits on the House Ways and Means Committee that will pass on the Clinton economic program. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in 1987 on charges that he accepted $1.2 million in improper payments from the corrupt Butcher banking empire. He launched a successful political campaign to have the trial moved from Knoxville to Memphis, where his family has a machinelike grip. Memphis is a black-majority city, and Rep. Ford is a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus. His brother sits in the State Senate and holds a court post that controls some city pensions. During his trial, Rep. Ford constantly accused prosecutors and witnesses of racism and orchestrated frequent and vocal demonstrations outside the courtroom.

In 1990, after 10 weeks of testimony, the jury deadlocked with eight whites voting to convict Mr. Ford and four blacks voting for acquittal. The trial judge, U.S. District Judge Odell Horton, ruled that the trial had been flawed by Mr. Ford's incendiary appeals to racial solidarity. Judge Horton, a black appointed to the bench by Jimmy Carter, noted that two members of the jury were determined to acquit Mr. Ford regardless of the government's evidence. "Juror misconduct permeated the trial of this case," Judge Horton ruled. He ordered that jurors for the second trial should be selected from a nearby city that is 20% black. He then stepped down from the case due to illness.

Jury selection for the retrial produced a jury of 11 whites and one black. Rep. Ford cried foul and began lobbying the Clinton White House to have it dismissed. Jesse Jackson intervened with White House officials, and Mr. Ford spoke in mid-February with President Clinton himself. A few days later, Mr. Hubbell arranged for the Black Caucus to press Mr. Ford's case with Stuart Gerson, a Bush holdover who is Acting Attorney General. The next day, just before the trial was to begin, Mr. Gerson renounced the Justice Department's longstanding support for Judge Horton's order and demanded the new jury be dismissed.

Court officials in Tennessee went ballistic. Ed Bryant, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, resigned; two Justice lawyers quit the case. The new trial judge, Jerome Turner, denied the department's motion in a blistering statement: "A white man, as three of the defendants are in this case, is not entitled to a white jury. Likewise, a black man, as one of the defendants is, is not entitled to a given number of black jurors." Chastened, Justice reversed itself. Mr. Ford's retrial will now proceed; the issue of biased juries is a real one, but it should be settled at the trial level and not in back-room Washington meetings.

Yet the case stirs doubts about the administration of justice, and indeed about the paths of accountability, in the new administration. While the White House denies that it asked Justice to interfere with the jury-selection process, career Justice officials are outraged at the perception that political muscle led to the reversal of the department's position. William Greenhalgh, a Georgetown University law professor, says he has never heard of such an attempt. "Just bluntly, it's wild," he says. Republicans want an investigation. Before her withdrawal, Zoe Baird said her top priority would be to take politics out of the Justice Department, as if Ed Meese had demanded a new jury for Bob Wallach. No doubt Attorney General-designate Janet Reno will come to her confirmation hearings prepared for the issue.

After all, we seem to have the spectacle of Hillary Clinton's former law partner fixing meetings between Justice officials and demand-waving pols, with the pols getting Justice to do their bidding. And of Webster Hubbell, a temporary appointee not subject to confirmation proceedings, apparently running the Justice Department as a partner of the First Lady. We are left to wonder what kind of Justice Department this will be, and what kind of administration.

Previous article: Who Is Bill Clinton? March 12, 1992

Next article: What Did the President Know and When? July 7, 1997