House managers refute Clinton defense

On their final day of presenting defense arguments to the Senate, President
Clinton’s defense team offered two lines of reasoning why it should not find
their client guilty — facts and common sense.

In his closing remarks, presidential attorney David Kendall said the House
prosecutor’s case rested on “circumstantial evidence” and that they have
attempted to connect unrelated facts to create a “sinister pattern” of
obstruction of justice by the president.

When Kendall finished, former Arkansas Sen. Dale Bumpers took to the Senate well and condemned Clinton’s “moral lapse” with Monica Lewinsky, but added that senators should guard against the “danger to the political system of the country” that Clinton’s impeachment and conviction may pose.

Bumpers is a longtime Clinton friend and ally who has advised him to
forcefully fight the charges. Both Bumpers and Clinton are former governors
of Arkansas.

But House managers refute the defense’s assertion that the charges against
Clinton are frivolous, inconclusive, and petty. Rep. Henry Hyde, the chief
House prosecutor, is continuing to push for witnesses and said that no
matter what many Democrats and other Americans thought about the trial,
“we’re going to see this thing through until they shut the door on us.”

“I think a lot of people wish we would just go away, but we can’t,” Hyde
added.

House managers assert that their case against Clinton is based on the rule
of law, and is strong. For example, the president’s defense team claims that
he never attempted to coach his secretary, Betty Currie, into what to say
when answering investigator’s questions about his relationship with Ms.
Lewinsky.

Regarding his conversation with Ms. Currie shortly after the Lewinsky story
broke, on Aug. 17, 1998, the president told the grand jury, “I was trying
to figure out what the facts were.”

The President’s response as to why he was coaching Betty Currie, a potential
witness, when he said to her right after he perjured himself in his deposition:

* I was never really alone with Monica, right?
* You were always there when Monica was there, right?
* Monica came on to me, and I never touched her, right?
* She wanted to have sex with me, and I cannot do that.

In response to why he let his attorney use a false affidavit that the
president encouraged Monica Lewinsky to file in order to prevent questioning before a federal judge, Clinton said, “I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention” during his deposition in the Jones case when his attorney,
Bennett, argued to Judge Wright that because of Lewinsky’s false
affidavit, the president should not have to answer questions about her.

But testimony videotape shows, and the White House later admitted, that the
president looked at both Bennett and Judge Wright as they discussed
Lewinsky’s affidavit. His eyes shifted between them as the two of them
spoke. They were discussing a matter of crucial importance to the
President — i.e., whether he would have to testify about Ms. Lewinsky.

“The notion that he was simply staring into space rather than paying close
attention to this exchange defies common sense and the President’s actions
on the tape,” House managers said.

White House Counsel Gregory Craig said on Wednesday that the Articles of
Impeachment are unconstitutional because each article contains multiple
charges. But the House managers said the “articles do not improperly charge
multiple offenses in one article” because “Mr. Craig’s arguments are
factually deficient, ignore Senate precedent and procedure, and are
constitutionally flawed.”

“The articles of impeachment are modeled after those adopted by the House
Committee on the Judiciary against President Nixon and were drafted with the rules of the Senate in mind,” managers said. Also, Senate rules
“specifically contemplate that the House may draft articles of impeachment
in this manner and prior rulings of the Senate have held that such drafting
is not deficient and will not sustain a motion to dismiss.”

“The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, after thoroughly
reviewing the impeachment rules and precedents, decided that articles of
impeachment should not be divisible and was aware that the House may combine multiple counts of impeachable conduct in one article of impeachment,” managers said.

On the topic of proving perjury, Craig asserted a false legal proposition that was also made in the White House Trial Memorandum. He stated that a perjury prosecution should not be based on a “oath against an oath,” and in support of this proposition, he cited the Supreme Court case,
United States v. Weiler (323 U.S. 606, 608 (1945)), in which the Court
reaffirmed the applicability of the “two-witness rule” in perjury
prosecutions. Mr. Craig and the Trial Memorandum implied that the “two
witness rule” applies to perjury prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. ß 1623, the
statute which directly addresses grand jury perjury.

But House managers said that Congress passed ß1623 in 1970 (25 years after the Weiler case relied on by Craig) and provides that “Proof beyond a
reasonable doubt under this section is sufficient for conviction. It shall
not be necessary that such proof be made by any particular number of
witnesses or by documentary of other type of evidence. [18 U.S.C. ß
1623(e)]. The legislative history of ß1623 indicates that it was passed
specifically for the purpose of eliminating the strictures of the
two-witness rule, they said.

White House Counsel Greg Craig also asserted that President Clinton should
receive special treatment and that the past conviction of judges under
identical circumstances is not relevant.

But House prosecutors counter that the impeachment clause in the
Constitution applies to “the President, Vice President, and all civil
officers.” It does not establish a lower standard of integrity for the
president because he faces an election or the end of a term.

“It was meant to establish a high standard of conduct for all officers and
to deter officials, especially the one in whom an entire branch is vested,
from corruption,” managers said. “Corruption by the President is not
acceptable because he is limited to two terms or because he faces an
election.”

The Democratic Watergate staff in 1974 agreed.

“Does Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution, which states that judges
“shall hold their Offices during good behavior, “limit the relevance of the
ten impeachments of judges with respect to presidential impeachment
standards as has been argued by some? It does not,” the DNC Watergate staff
wrote.

House prosecutors have repeatedly said that a great deal of their work in
developing impeachment charges against Clinton have come from the 1974
Watergate procedures, which were drafted, in part, by first lady Hillary
Clinton. Period newspaper accounts also show that a young Bill Clinton,
running for state office in Arkansas at the time, also agreed that Nixon
should be impeached “for lying to the American people.”