Monica Lewinsky Lawyer Dies
Monica Lewinsky’s first lawyer, William Ginsburg, has passed away after a long battle with cancer, according to the Los Angeles Times. The colorful 70 year old Beverly Hills senior partner in a medical malpractice firm, he was a highly regarded trial attorney who felt comfortable representing unpopular clients.
As the go-to lawyer for doctors under the gun, Ginsburg represented a Whitter physician who was accused of falsifying the cause of death on Liberace’s death certificate. The Riverside County coroner’s office found that the flamboyant showman died of AIDS, but Dr. Ronald Daniels had reported that he died of heart failure.
Monica Lewinsky’s father was a doctor who specialized in oncology, and he recommended Ginsburg to his daughter when she was accused of lying under oath about her relationship with then-president Bill Clinton.
The former White House intern was at the center of the 1998 sex scandal involving Clinton and a cigar. In a complicated chain of events, the smitten Lewinsky confessed to a friend that she’d kept unwashed a dress she wore while providing, erm, personal services to the president. Well, it’s never a good idea to keep souvenirs, is it, ladies? Ultimately, the dress wound up in the hot little hands of Kenneth Starr, allowing the FBI to match the semen stain to the president’s DNA.
The U.S. House of Representatives impeached the president, but he was acquitted of all charges after a 21-day trial in the Senate.
The scandal sparked a national debate about whether or not it’s OK to fib about sex. Monica Lewinsky herself was charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath to protect Clinton.
She ultimately avoided prosecution but not before William Ginsburg had made the most of his time on the stage. According to the Washington Post, Ginsburg’s “political legacy is that he was the first person to appear on all five major Sunday news shows in one morning — a feat known as ‘the full Ginsburg.'”
Although he tried more than 300 cases, many of them involving important or at least expensive medical questions, he will always be remembered as Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer.
