House Team Makes the Most of Its Evidence

WASHINGTON —  The House prosecutors, in opening arguments that at times were highly effective, appeared to make a strong, if circumstantial, case that President Clinton conspired to hide evidence in the Paula Corbin Jones case.

They also showed that the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, if proved, could justify removing him from office.

“It’s a hard question,” Rep. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) acknowledged Saturday, whether a popular president should be turned out of office for lying to conceal a sexual affair.

But he then turned the question in reverse. What does it say for the nation and its future, he asked, if the Senate decides to keep in the White House a felon and a perjurer?

If nothing else, the House managers went a long way toward assuring their opening arguments are not also their closing arguments.

Determined and confident of their case, the team of 13 Republicans began the week saying they wanted a full trial with a dozen or more witnesses. By Saturday afternoon, they looked to be on the verge of achieving that goal.

It would take a majority vote to end the trial later this month after the first round of arguments. The Senate has 55 Republicans, enough to keep the trial going.

And even some Democrats hinted Saturday that the House prosecutors presented a case that could not be quickly dismissed. “I would reject that motion” to end the trial now, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said. “I feel they have carried the burden sufficiently that it is now upon the White House to argue its case.”

Beginning Tuesday, the White House lawyers face a daunting task. They must make a convincing argument on two fronts. First, they need to cast doubt on the facts and evidence presented by the GOP prosecutors, yet do so in a way that does not bolster the case for calling witnesses.

Doubts Could Lead to Witnesses

For example, if the senators are left in doubt as to whether President Clinton told his secretary Betty Currie to hide the subpoenaed gifts he gave Monica S. Lewinsky, they may decide to call her, and possibly him, as witnesses to resolve the matter. Similarly, if the president’s lawyers challenge the claim that Clinton and his friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. scrambled in December 1997 to find a New York job for Lewinsky, that too could justify calling both as witnesses.

Second, the White House must argue that even if the president lied and obstructed justice in the Lewinsky case, these offenses do not justify removing him from office.

The House Republicans said lying under oath, regardless of the subject, is a grave offense that undermines the rule of law. In his statement summing up the case Saturday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) referred to the battlefields at Lexington and Normandy to argue the “sanctity of the oath” and the nation’s “sacred honor” are at stake.

Where he and his fellow Republicans tried to inflate the case, the president’s lawyers will try to deflate it, to bring it back to a dispute growing out of a secret sexual affair.

All lies are not the same, the president’s lawyers say. If the chief executive secretly sold weapons to North Korea and lied under oath about it, that sort of lie would surely justify his impeachment, they say. By contrast, if a president admits having “improper sexual contact” with an intern but lies to conceal the details, that does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, they say.

For the White House lawyers, their best tactic may be the same one used so well by the House prosecutors: Tell the whole story all over again.

Over their three days, the GOP managers told a tale of lies, evasions and cover-ups, of 2 a.m. phone calls, of a nearly frantic job hunt, of gifts that suddenly took on great significance and then disappeared.

“Think of it as one big obstruction,” said Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), a grand conspiracy that would “undermine our courts and our system of justice” if left unpunished.

The president’s lawyers could tell the same story with a less sinister twist. Yes, Clinton tried to conceal and cover up his affair with Lewinsky, they could admit. But he did so without violating the law, they could add.

Despite the prosecutors’ claim to the contrary, Lewinsky was a peripheral player in the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Jones. If she and Clinton had simply admitted their sexual contacts--a likely outcome for someone who is not the president of the United States--this evidence probably would have had little legal effect on the outcome of Jones’ case. The former Arkansas state clerk had asserted Clinton made a crude advance to her in 1991, for which she sought $700,000 in damages in 1994. The case was later settled for $850,000.

If the case had gone to trial, her lawyers could have said the Clinton-Lewinsky affair suggested a pattern of behavior on his part with female subordinates. In response, Clinton’s lawyers could have argued it proved nothing, since their contacts were entirely consensual. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who was quoted often and approvingly by the House prosecutors, threw Jones’ lawsuit out of court last year.

By this telling, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair looks less like a grand conspiracy or “one big obstruction,” and more like a reckless president caught in an embarrassing spot.

Nonetheless, the GOP prosecutors argued effectively that the impeachment cannot be easily brushed aside now. Many Americans, along with House prosecutors, are convinced the president committed perjury before the grand jury. The president’s lawyers say that, despite his earlier falsehoods, he told the truth under oath in August.

‘No One Is Above the Law’

From the outset, the GOP prosecutors hammered the theme that “no one is above the law.” Clinton “decided to put himself above the law, repeatedly,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) on Thursday. Others stressed “equal justice under law.” The president should not be accorded “special privileges” to escape his legal duties, they said.

They did not explore the point, however, perhaps because it is not clear that the president truly fared better than an average citizen would have.

For example, had Clinton not been elected president in 1992, he would not likely have faced a $700,000 damage suit from Jones in 1994. Had he not been president, he could have simply defaulted on the claim, in which a jury probably would have awarded minimal damages to her.

Moreover, Clinton had been investigated for four years by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr when prosecutors obtained the secret tapes, made by Linda Tripp, revealing Lewinsky’s affair.

After seven more months of investigation, Starr ordered Clinton to answer questions before the grand jury, the question-and-answer session that led to the perjury charge. But in a normal case, a target of investigation is not called before the grand jury. If a prosecutor tried to subpoena an ordinary citizen, his lawyer could simply refuse on his behalf, citing the 5th Amendment.

For a president, however, unlike an average defendant, the demand to answer questions about Lewinsky proved to be an offer he could not refuse.