The billing records from Arent Fox show that Mr. Thompson, who charged about $250 an hour, spoke 22 times with Judith DeSarno, who was then president of the family planning group. In addition, he lobbied “administration officials” for a total of 3.3 hours, the records show, although they do not specify which officials he met with or what was said. The billing records, along with meeting minutes from the association, show that Arent Fox was hired to help overturn the ban.
His involvement was token but not negligible. He did in fact lobby for them. He doesn’t strike me as being a poor man and I believe he had the resources to walk out on principle if he felt doing this went against his core beliefs. The lady who made the initial accusations, spoke with him 22 times and I just don’t believe he doesn’t recall that, unless Nixon was right about him.
Instead of being so arrogant and flippant why did he not just say, “yes, I did lobbied for them, although minimally”?
Here are the billing records. You’ll notice that there is no ‘lobbying’ line items listed. They support what Arent Fox said, this was for ‘Legal Services’ not Lobbying.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/THOMPSON_DOCS/thompson_records.pdf
(Note, don’t make the mistake of looking at the ‘timekeeper’ line item. If Thompson directly worked, it is listed in the ‘Professional Services’ column- the ‘timekeeper’ line item, according to Arent Fox was for whos office BU this came from, Thompson or any of his staffers could have been doing research, not a direct indicator of who was actually attending or did any work/research.)
If he worked a total of 20 hours over the course of two years over 15 years ago, it's likely that he didn't remember anything specific about it when he was asked the first time. And I don't remember him being either arrogant or flippant about it.
It is my understanding that he wouldn't be allowed to discuss the specifics of the work because of client confidentiality. That kind of puts him on the spot when the client can say anything they want, but he can't refute it because he's held to the confidentiality agreement.