Bill Clinton: “No, that's not what I said. I did not say--I said that when my wife did business, when her law firm represented some…”

“No, that's not what I said. I did not say--I said that when my wife did business, when her law firm represented some State agency itself--State agencies all over America use private lawyers--if she did any work for the State, she never took any pay for it. And when the firm got income from State work, she didn't take her partnership share of that income. She gave that up because she wanted to bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of conflict. Was there anything wrong with her representing a client before a State agency? And if you go back and look at the facts, basically the firm wrote the securities commissioner a letter saying, is it permissible under Arkansas law to raise money for this S&L in this way? And it showed that she was one of the contacts on it, and the securities commissioner wrote her back and said it's not against the law. That was basically the extent of her representation. Now, all I can do is tell you that she believed there was nothing unethical about it. And today, in an interview, Professor Steven Geller of New York University, who is a widely respected national expert on legal ethics, once again said there was nothing at all unethical in doing this. These kinds of things happen when you have married couples who have professions. And the most important thing there is disclosure. There was no sneaking around about this. This was full disclosure. Professor Geller--I brought the quote here--said, ``I think this is a bum rap on Mrs. Clinton, and I'm amazed that it keeps getting recirculated.'' Now, there's a person who doesn't work for us whose job it is to know what the code of professional responsibility requires. Yes.”