WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Rep. Bob Barr is trying to revive a $30 million defamation suit against former President Clinton, Democratic political adviser James Carville and pornographer Larry Flynt.
The Georgia Republican alleges the three conspired to smear him by publishing embarrassing information about his private life in Flynt’s Hustler magazine as retaliation for his outspoken role in the impeachment proceedings against Clinton.
The arguments Monday in front of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit focused on whether Barr had met a deadline to file his case. A lower federal court had dismissed the case in March 2003, ruling the alleged conspiracy occurred more than the allowable three years before Barr brought the lawsuit in 2002.
Barr’s attorneys argued the 1999 publication of the article in Hustler was within the three years, but the alleged conspiracy they claim would have occurred earlier. Barr didn’t know everything that was going on until he saw the article in print, they said.
Flynt’s article included allegations by Barr’s former wife that the congressman had an affair in the mid-1980s. Barr alleges Carville gave Flynt his FBI files and other documents as part of a smear campaign, but Flynt denies it. He contends his information came from a private investigator and records from Barr’s divorce.
Barr’s attorneys cited as an indication of Clinton’s involvement a newspaper article that showed Clinton laughing about Flynt’s efforts to gather information about the impeachment managers, but Judge Harry T. Edwards asked for direct proof.
Barr’s attorney, Paul Orfanedes, didn’t offer any but said the former president’s close relationship with Carville suggested a conspiracy. Edwards sounded skeptical.
“If someone is somehow involved with the White House, the president is automatically involved?” he asked. “There are all kinds of folks in the White House, all off doing different things.”
The judges said Orfanedes should have argued the information on Barr was obtained illegally. That would have provided a better answer to the defense’s position that Barr was a public figure and therefore had to prove the information in the magazine was reckless and untrue, they said.
Orfanedes said he tried to make that case, but Judge Raymond Randolph said he couldn’t find such a reference.
Clinton’s attorney, Suzanne Woods, cautioned the judges not to award a defamation prize based on how factual information was obtained, saying it would create a “very large loophole” for public officials to file more defamation claims against media outlets.
Carville’s attorney, William Alden McDaniel Jr., has called the allegations against his client “absolute horse manure.”
“They don’t have one shred of evidence James Carville ever saw any FBI file,” McDaniel said. “These people are delusional.”