Donald Trump pictured (L) with then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Sept. 1, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (image via Win McNamee/Getty Images); (R) then-President Bill Clinton denies having “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky in Jan. 1998 (CBS News screengrab)
A high-powered lawyer remembered for his role in the ’90s on former independent counsel Ken Starr’s team investigating the Clintons filed a motion Sunday to be admitted pro hac vice as a defense attorney for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Robert J. Bittman, a partner at the McGuireWoods LLP law firm already representing Meadows, filed the motion on the eve of a key hearing in Meadows’ bid to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ (D) 2020 election racketeering (RICO) case from state court to federal court.
The sprawling RICO indictment over alleged efforts to overturn the election was brought against 19 defendants, including Meadows and his former boss, former President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, Mark Meadows (Fulton County jail mug shots)
Bittman’s attorney bio at McGuireWoods noted that he served as a prosecutor at both the state and federal level and “offers particular experience related to complex frauds.” Bittman also said that he was a deputy independent counsel for Ken Starr and a Whitewater investigator.
A Washington Post article from all the way back in 1998 said that Bittman grilled former President Bill Clinton before a grand jury and opposed an immunity deal for former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, with whom Clinton eventually admitted having “inappropriate intimate contact”:
Robert Bittman, 36, the tough prosecutor who asked many of the questions during Clinton’s testimony before the grand jury, joined the independent counsel’s office soon after Starr’s appointment in 1994. He has investigated first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, run Starr’s Little Rock office and since January had responsibility for the day-to-day oversight of the Lewinsky investigation. Early in the inquiry, Bittman opposed making an immunity deal with Lewinsky, and instead called for an exhaustive examination to test her assertions about an affair with the president, including questioning Secret Service officers and agents.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” Bittman’s questioning began in August of 1998, months after the then-president said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”
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“Mr. President, we are first going to turn to some of the details of your relationship with Monica Lewinsky that follow up on your deposition that you provided in the Paula Jones case, as was referenced, on January 17th, 1998,” Bittman said. “The questions are uncomfortable, and I apologize for that in advance. I will try to be as brief and direct as possible.”
“Mr. President, were you physically intimate with Monica Lewinsky?” he asked.
Then-President Clinton responded by asking if he could read a statement in the interest of saving “you and the grand jurors a lot of time.”
“Absolutely. Please, Mr. President,” Bittman replied.
“When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky on certain occasions in early 1996 and once in early 1997, I engaged in conduct that was wrong. These encounters did not consist of sexual intercourse. They did not constitute sexual relations as I understood that term to be defined at my January 17th, 1998 deposition,” Clinton said. “But they did involve inappropriate intimate contact. These inappropriate encounters ended, at my insistence, in early 1997. I also had occasional telephone conversations with Ms. Lewinsky that included inappropriate sexual banter.”
In 2021, Bittman was a source in an article in The Atlantic about fellow Starr deputy Brett Kavanaugh’s role in drafting a memo containing a sexually graphic line of questioning for Bill Clinton about the Lewinsky scandal. The eventual Supreme Court justice “expressed regret” about the tone of the questioning, Bittman reportedly said, linking it to Kavanaugh’s sleep deprivation.
Bittman’s bio also noted that he is the son of a former federal prosecutor who “in the 1960s convicted Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa and Lyndon B. Johnson’s close friend Bobby Baker.”
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