WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman appears to be stuck with more than $300,000 in legal bills, despite being cleared in an independent counsel investigation.
A special judges' panel ruled Tuesday that Herman failed to show that she would not have incurred the expenses anyway in a Justice Department investigation, as required for reimbursement under the Ethics in Government Act.
Herman asked for $335,919.52 in attorneys' fees. The panel awarded her $12,625.75.
Tuesday's ruling does not bode well for former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who have asked the same panel for reimbursement of their attorneys' fees.
President Clinton cut a deal at the end of his administration with independent counsel Robert Ray:
Clinton would not to ask for reimbursement in the $10 million Monica Lewinsky investigation. In return, Ray would drop any future investigation into whether Clinton broke the law by denying under oath in the Paula Jones lawsuit that he had "sexual relations" with former White House intern Lewinsky.
However, the new request by the Clintons asks for reimbursement in the separate $60 million Whitewater investigation.
Neither Clinton was charged in the six-year investigation, but Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure form shows the former first couple owes between $1.75 million and $6.5 million in attorney fees, even after paying more than $1 million in legal bills last year.
The massive sums are indicative of why public officials and others so feared independent counsel investigations, not only during the Clinton administration but the Reagan and former Bush administrations as well.
Despite being cleared, targets of investigations have to convince the same three-judge panel that appoints independent counsels that the targets would not have incurred huge legal fees without the independent investigation in order to get reimbursement.
Congress allowed the independent counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act to lapse in 2000, but targets can still ask for reimbursement.
In Herman's case, the Justice Department received an allegation from an African businessman that the then-Labor secretary, when she was a special assistant to Clinton, tried to trade her influence for money for personal use and contributions to the Democratic National Committee.
After conducting a preliminary investigation, Attorney General Janet Reno said there was no evidence Herman had committed a crime. But the attorney general asked the three-judge panel for an independent counsel anyway to clear up pending questions.
Independent counsel Ralph Lancaster conducted a two-year investigation, and brought no charges against Herman. Lancaster filed his final report with the three-judge panel in April 2000.
In evaluating Herman's request for legal fee reimbursement, the three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that the fees were reasonable and incurred in the course of the independent counsel's investigation.
But the panel said Herman could not show that she would not have incurred the expenses "but for" the independent counsel's investigation, as required by law.
"In sum, we agree with both the Department of Justice and the independent counsel that the principal allegations surrounding this matter, i.e., a senior White House official receiving payments for using her influence to further the interests of business clients of a friend and her participation in a conduit scheme to solicit campaign contributions from a foreign national, would have been thoroughly investigated by the DOJ in the absence of the act," the panel ruled Tuesday. "Herman has not satisfied the 'but for' requirement ... because she 'was not subjected to an investigation that [she] would not have been subjected to in the absence of the Act.'"
The panel did award her slightly more than $12,000 -- the cost of her legal fees to respond to the independent counsel's final report, which would not have occurred with a Justice Department investigation.
