Legal Bills Put Clintons Deeply In Debt

President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton accumulated so many legal bills that their personal debts outweigh their total assets, according to disclosure forms released Thursday.

The annual report, while documenting presidential finances only in broad terms, makes clear that the costs of defending themselves in the Whitewater case have left the Clintons with a financial burden that could haunt them for years to come.

“If you consider net worth and look at that line that says ‘liabilities,’ (he is worth) considerably less than when he arrived,” said spokesman Michael McCurry.

According to the forms, the Clintons held investments and savings worth between $760,000 and $1.7 million in 1996, mainly in blind trusts managed by a private brokerage firm. Their only significant obligations, the report said, were legal expenses totaling between $1 million and $5 million. Precise figures are impossible to glean from the forms because each asset and liability is reported in a range, such as $50,000 to $100,000.

A separate report released by the Presidential Legal Expense Trust in February pegged the outstanding legal bills at the end of 1996 at $2.25 million.

Donations to the defense fund have slowed to a trickle, though an insurance policy has covered bills resulting from Paula Corbin Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against the president.