Reaching out to Republican moderates who could save his presidency, President Clinton sent his lawyers and a team of prominent defenders to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to admit he misled the American people but assert he did not commit perjury or any other offenses that would justify impeachment.
The White House used a combination of contrition and defiance in its stepped-up campaign to persuade fence-sitting members to join Democratic opponents of impeachment, a strategy that it hopes will result in the defeat of the almost certain articles of impeachment on5 the House floor next week.
White House special counsel Greg Craig told the committee that Clinton’s testimony in the Paula Jones case was “evasive, incomplete, misleading, even maddening,” but not perjury. The president’s lawyers also shipped a 190-page report to the panel denying the president lied under oath, obstructed justice or abused his power in the Monica Lewinsky case.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed Tuesday that if the full House debates articles of impeachment, the historic session will be presided over by GOP Rep. Ray LaHood, a three-term congressman from Peoria.
LaHood, an expert on House rules, said the GOP leadership had asked him to chair the meeting. “(House Speaker Newt) Gingrich made the decision,” he said. “I just have to assume that since I’ve done it (chair House meetings) a lot, they want somebody who knows what’s what and is fair-minded. I am honored.”
The White House rebuttal report amounted to a detailed attack on the evidence in Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s referral to Congress, which the committee has relied upon heavily to justify what is expected to be a vote Friday or Saturday approving one or more articles of impeachment.
Democrats said it contained a solid rebuttal to Starr’s allegations, but Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the committee, said it “appears to contain no new evidence or challenge the truthfulness of any testimony the committee now possesses.”
Hyde also said the report “includes more legal hairsplitting and semantical gymnastics we have come to expect from this White House.” He cited a footnote in which the president was asked about being alone with Lewinsky: “The term alone is vague, unless a particular geographic space is identified.”
The report repeats Clinton’s assertion that he did not commit perjury in the Jones deposition because the definition of sexual relations approved by the judge did not include oral sex.
“Open your mind, open your heart and focus on the record,” Craig said in his opening statement, one clearly designed to appeal not as much to the Judiciary members as to some 20 to 30 House GOP moderates who could halt the impeachment drive on the floor.
Craig urged the committee to “draw a sharp distinction between immoral conduct and illegal acts” and said that while Clinton’s conduct was “sinful,” it was not impeachable.
A former U.S. attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, joined academic experts on impeachment, former prosecutors in the Watergate case and former members of Congress who served on the Judiciary Committee during Watergate with essentially the same message: Clinton’s behavior was reprehensible. But even if he lied under oath about sex, he should not be removed from office.
Former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a New York Democrat who sat on the Judiciary Committee that voted articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, said the allegations against Clinton do not compare with those of Watergate. Another former Watergate-era congressman, Rev. Robert Drinan of Massachusetts, said the nation could be paralyzed for six months by a Senate trial.
The White House took heart from the fact that moderate Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.) plans to announce his opposition to impeachment Wednesday. But the announcement by Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.) that he is now undecided about impeachment–after appearing to oppose it weeks ago–was seen as a victory for pro-impeachment forces.
The behind-the-scenes campaign for undecided members of the House gathered momentum as Democrats pushed their alternative plan to censure the president. While Hyde has not promised that he would permit a censure vote in committee, Democrats said they hoped that they would be able to vote on censure on the floor.
Reps. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Thomas Barrett (D-Wis.) support a straightforward censure resolution that would not impose a fine on the president. Indeed, the proposal for a fine appears to have little support unless Clinton himself offers to pay one. Barrett said he has spoken to some GOP moderates about his censure plan, but conceded, “It’s on the outer edge of the radar screen.”
Democrats continued to talk of the need for the president to make a speech to the country in which he would forthrightly tell Americans that he lied to them about his affair with Lewinsky, even if it meant risking legal liability after he leaves the presidency.
Testimony and statements by members during the hearing made clear that the perjury count against the president is the most serious one, and the one apt to win the most House votes. Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) said that the abuse of power and obstruction of justice counts have less justification but said there is a consensus that the president lied under oath.
The White House and Democrats took sharp issue, saying that Starr’s allegations about perjury have not been proved. Democrats urged the committee to spare the country a sensational trial in the Senate in which the testimony might boil down to the question of which parts of Lewinsky’s body the president touched.
Asked if the president engaged in “intimate touching” with Lewinsky, Craig told the committee that “she says he did it, he says he did not. That is the key to the perjury issue which would be tried on the floor on the U.S. Senate.”
Craig did not accuse Lewinsky of lying in her testimony, but said that “we think that in some areas she provided erroneous testimony” that conflicts with the president’s version of events.
After a grueling 11-hour day, the committee headed toward another long session on Wednesday in which White House counsel Charles Ruff will lay out the evidence that challenges Starr’s allegations and take questions from both sides.
His testimony will be preceded at 7 a.m. CST by a panel of former prosecutors, including former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who served under President Ronald Reagan in the Justice Department and is a former U.S. attorney, and Thomas P. Sullivan, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
Republicans said they were not swayed by the first round of White House witnesses, especially the testimony by Craig. “He gave legalistic answers,” said Rep. George Gekas (R-Pa.). “We’re at great odds on the interpretation of the facts.”
Two witnesses caused a stir. Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, said that House members who believe the allegations rise to the level of impeachable offenses will “take your risks as going down in history with the zealots and fanatics” if they vote for impeachment. Republicans objected strongly to this characterization.
Bruce Ackerman, a law professor at Yale, said that since the current session of Congress ends on Jan. 3, it might require a vote by the new Congress to appoint the House members who would serve as prosecutors in the Senate trial if Clinton is impeached. Democrats have five more members in the House that will take over next year, he noted, and the vote to name the prosecuting team might be extremely close.
Barrett and other Democrats said this could stop the impeachment effort dead in its tracks. But Republicans downplayed the problem and said that in previous impeachment cases involving judges, Congress has voted impeachment in one session and removed judges in another without any procedural hassles.
