Word: mcmillans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...news for them too: a case that had been edging toward a settlement for months is now off the rails and careering toward a trial. The lawyers quit because Jones, with the encouragement of her influential "friend and adviser," a glamorous California conservative commentator named Susan Carpenter-McMillan, rejected an apparent offer of $700,000 and a vaguely worded statement from Clinton that Jones did nothing improper. While it's not clear at all that Jones can win, the President has even more to lose, in standing and reputation, if the case proceeds to a jury. A trial would offer...
...about any harm to her reputation--was the best she could do and strongly urged her to take it. But Jones, now married with two young children and living in California, has long said she was in this fight to win an apology, not a payoff. And with Carpenter-McMillan's backing, she rejected her lawyers' advice. The attorneys promptly filed, and were granted, a motion to dump the case. Says Carpenter-McMillan: "This case was never about money. It was always about language...
...though, it's also about Carpenter-McMillan, a striking blond who is a fixture on California talk shows. A self-styled "conservative feminist," she was particularly prominent as an abortion opponent until 1990, when she admitted she'd had one herself as an unmarried college student. She still opposes abortion but has turned her attention to child-abuse issues as head of the Women's Coalition, an organization largely funded by her wealthy husband that operates out of their Los Angeles home...
Carpenter-McMillan is the source of the Jones team turmoil. After a three-year friendship with Jones, she decided the attorneys weren't doing enough to counter damaging publicity about Jones. "Joe [Cammarata] didn't want to say anything, and that's why I got involved," she says. Opponents say Jones has been body-snatched by the Clinton bashers. "This thing was political from the beginning, and now it's gotten more political," says James Carville, Clinton's former campaign manager and Jones' fiercest public critic...
Carpenter-McMillan says she's just encouraging Jones to follow her instincts, but that may not be prudent in such a pressure-cooker case. "Can a nonlawyer steer this vessel to port, or is Paula going to go down with the ship?" asks feminist attorney Gloria Allred. Carpenter-McMillan says she's looking for a new lawyer to take the case, "one that I feel really good with." And who might that lawyer be? Carpenter-McMillan denies that her husband William, a personal-injury attorney, will now take over. But then she chirps, "Wait till my husband demands pictures...