Related Links Coverage of Webster L. Hubbell

Associated Press
Wednesday, April 14, 1999; Page A6

A federal judge gave independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr a pretrial victory yesterday, dismissing a defense challenge to the fraud indictment of presidential friend Webster L. Hubbell.

The judge also signaled a likely delay in the June trial date of Hubbell, once an associate attorney general in the Justice Department. The case results from law work Hubbell and his former law partner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, did on an Arkansas land deal.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the indictment did not result from documents produced by Hubbell under an immunity agreement with Starr.

Starr's office also won a halt to much of the pretrial work while the prosecutors pursue an appeal to the judge's dismissal in March of a count accusing Hubbell of scheming to conceal work done by him and Hillary Clinton on the land deal. Robertson agreed that the allegations were too vague.