Frank Retains Top Lawyer for Hearings

WASHINGTON--U.S. Rep. Barney Frank '61 (D-Mass.) has hired a high-powered Washington lawyer as ethics hearings on the legislator's relations with a male prostitute are expected to get under way this week.

Frank, meanwhile, is showing no signs of laying low as he takes to the House floor for the first time since scandal broke and has maintained a full schedule of events in his Massachusetts district. And in the past two weeks a legal defense fund set up in the Democrat's name has begun receiving contributions.

Washington attorney Stephen Sachs, a former U.S. attorney in Baltimore and a former Maryland attorney general, said yesterday that his job as Frank's lawyer before the House Ethics Committee will be to separate fact from fiction.

"He's chastened by the events that are true but he's damned if he's going to run from allegations that are garbage," said Sachs. "Barney's been forthcoming about this publicly. He is equally certain that there has been a substantial amount of untruth peddled, or attempted to be peddled, in the public press."

Frank, a five-term House member and a leading liberal in Congress, admitted paying male prostitute Stephen Gobie $80 for sex in 1985 and subsequently hiring Gobie with personal funds to serve as a house-keeper and driver from July 1985 through August 1987. Frank had acknowledged he is gay well before the Gobie scandal.

Gobie has leveled various charges against Frank that the lawmaker has denied. Among those are that Frank knew Gobie was running a prostitution ring out of Frank's Capitol Hill apartment and that Gobie and Frank engaged in sex at the House gymnasium.

The House Ethics Committee investigating the Frank case plans to conclude its deliberations by the end of the year, Sachs said, basing his statement on two meetings with the ethics committee legal counsel and one with the minority counsel.

"They want very much to act promptly and want to conclude the matter this year," Sachs said.

Members of Frank's staff said they expect the case to come up at least in a preliminary from at a committee meeting later this week. A spokesperson for the ethics committee said the schedule for this week was not set as of yesterday and he said committee proceedings and the agenda are kept confidential.

"We're going to be in a position to submit data, and full data, by early next week," Sachs said. He said he and other lawyers with the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering have been interviewing potential witnesses and examining documents associated with the case.

Sachs has prosecuted several legislators during his public career and recently gained attention for his defense of pediatrician Elizabeth Morgan, who went to jail for two years rather than allow her daughter to visit her allegedly abusive husband.

At least some of the legal bill is being paid out of a defense fund set up by Frank's political aides. Doug Cahn, a spokesperson for Frank's congressional office, declined to disclose the current level of contributions to the fund, saying that the first public report on the account is due at year's end.

Sachs described Frank's mood as upbeat going into the hearings. Last week Frank delivered remarks from the House floor for the first time since August, when the Gobie story broke. Frank addressed House members on a Republican budget amendment. That he was asked to speak by members of the Democratic leadership of the House was seen as an indication of his political recovery from the initial allegations and admissions about his conduct.

Over the weekend, Frank attended several events in Massachusetts.