Dogged lawyer on front lines for the Clintons

WASHINGTON — At first, he had to worry about a remote piece of land in Arkansas that no one wanted. Then there were billing records that went missing before mysteriously reappearing in the White House. And of course there was the blue dress.

Today, the object of concern for David E. Kendall is a tiny thumb drive that sat in a safe at his law firm until a couple weeks ago before attracting the attention of Congress, the FBI and the news media. Once again, the whirlpool of Washington politics has arrived at Mr Kendall’s doorstep as he defends perhaps the world’s most famous client.

For more than 20 years, Mr Kendall has been on the front lines for Mr Bill and Madam Hillary Rodham Clinton as their personal lawyer, battling investigators and litigants in the superheated environment where law and politics meet. From Whitewater to impeachment, he has waged legal warfare to keep the Clintons’ political careers on track. So as Mdm Hillary Clinton faces questions about her use of a personal email server as secretary of state, no one is surprised she turned to Mr Kendall.

The latest furor has put Mr Kendall under a spotlight in a way that discomfits the tight-lipped and camera-shy lawyer.

From Mdm Hillary Clinton’s foes come public questions about why he had the thumb drive containing her email and whether he secured it properly. From her friends come private questions about whether he has managed the situation effectively and whether he should be more outspoken to protect a Democratic presidential candidate leading in the polls.

“They always say, ‘Is Kendall the lawyer to do this or that?’” said James Carville, the former political strategist for Mr Bill Clinton who expresses great admiration for Mr Kendall. “I never saw that there was a huge conflict. But you know, sometimes lawyers are lawyers and spokespeople are spokespeople.”

Mr Kendall, said Mr Carville, is not a public pit bull. “He has no bluster about him,” Mr Carville said. “He’s aggressive, but he doesn’t have an in-your-face kind of thing about him. I don’t think he views that as his role. The chances that he’s going to talk to the press are way beyond remote.”

Unsurprisingly, Mr Kendall declined to comment last week. But he enjoys Mdm Hillary Clinton’s deep confidence.

“He has their complete trust, and he’s earned their complete trust,” said Robert Barnett, another lawyer for the Clintons and a partner with Kendall at Williams & Connolly in Washington. “There’s nobody more dedicated to his clients than David Kendall. There’s nobody who spends more time thinking about how to help his clients than David Kendall.”

To critics, that is the problem. Mr Kendall, who turned over the thumb drive to the Justice Department on Aug 6, has become so integrated into the Clinton apparatus that he risks crossing the line from lawyer to participant, they said. Two Republican senators wrote him letters in recent weeks questioning his handling of the thumb drive.

“The problem with the Clintons is once you begin working with them or acting as their agent you often get caught up in their scandals,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a watchdog group suing over Hillary Clinton’s email. “So now Mr. Kendall is stuck having to explain his handling of the classified information Mrs. Clinton gave him.”

Slender and fastidious, reserved and precise, Mr Kendall, 71, is hardly the picture of the Washington legal powerhouse. He stays off talk shows, turns down book agents and prefers to speak in letters and legal documents. If he gets to court, he does not pound the lectern or point his finger, but lays out a meticulous set of arguments crafted over many hours.

Yet despite his low profile, he has accumulated an extraordinary roster of high-profile clients. In addition to keeping Petraeus out of jail, he has defended The National Enquirer against celebrities, overturned a big libel judgment against The Washington Post and waged intellectual property cases for Sony Pictures Entertainment and Disney, and defended Bechtel in Boston’s “Big Dig” investigation.

“He’s a true Midwestern gentleman, but he’s a true Midwestern gentleman lawyer who will be very prepared and will not shy away from battling when he believes it’s in his client’s interest,” said Lanny A. Breuer, a former White House and Justice Department lawyer who worked alongside Kendall fighting Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

Even Mr Kendall’s antagonist in that episode, Kenneth W. Starr, the former independent counsel, praises him as “one of America’s greatest lawyers,” as he put it in an interview.

Mr Kendall’s biggest moment in the spotlight came during Mr Starr’s long-running investigation into the Clintons’ Whitewater land dealings and later into whether the president lied under oath to cover up his affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky.

Not everyone on the Clinton team was happy with Mr Kendall. Some political advisers complained the lawyers withheld information or even misled them, and some viewed Mr Kendall as more worried about a court of law than the court of public opinion.

But the Clintons leaned on Mr Kendall heavily. “He became an anchor in our lives,” Mdm Hillary Clinton later wrote in a memoir. “David was perfect for the job.”

Now she needs him to be again. THE NEW YORK TIMES