Webster Hubbell - Resignation

Resignation

In January 1993, Hubbell's former partners at the Rose Law Firm discovered irregularities in Hubbell's bills to clients. The Independent Counsel later found that Hubbell had billed clients for services he never performed, and that he failed to report that income on his tax returns. Shortly after Independent Counsel Robert Fiske opened a criminal probe into the matter, Hubbell resigned as associate attorney general on March 14, 1994.

The day before Hubbell announced his resignation, there was a meeting of senior White House officials, including President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Chief of Staff Mack McLarty. At the meeting, McLarty told Hillary Clinton that White House employees would "be supportive" of Hubbell. This meeting garnered suspicions that, as a New York Times editorial put it, there had been "a possible effort to obstruct justice by securing Mr. Hubbell's silence on crucial elements of the Whitewater case." During the sixteen months after Hubbell's resignation, he received seventeen consulting contracts totaling over $450,000 from supporters of President Clinton. While the Independent Counsel, found that Hubbell "did little or no work for the money paid by his consulting clients," he determined there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the money was intended to influence Hubbell's cooperation with investigators in the Whitewater investigation.