WASHINGTON - The House Judiciary Committee moved yesterday into the final and most dramatic stage of its impeachment inquiry against President Clinton after hearing daylong, passionate closing arguments from lawyers who queued up video clips of the president's own words to push their respective cases for impeachment and a lesser penalty of censure.
The debate by the highly partisan panel over whether Clinton should be impeached got under way after three weeks of testimony from constitutional and legal experts, the independent counsel, and White House defenders and, at last, the panel's own attorneys.
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| AP PHOTO News photographers point their lenses toward members of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday during House Impeachment hearings. |
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), however, urged his colleagues to censure Clinton just as the House punished Frank during his own sex scandal a decade ago.
"I would tell you that having been reprimanded by this House of Representatives, where I'm so proud to serve, was no triviality," Frank said. "It is something that, when people write about me, they still write about. It is not something that's a matter of pride."
The chief impeachment counsel for the Republicans argued that the acts of presidential perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power outlined in the committee's four newly drafted articles of impeachment warrant Clinton's ouster.
"If you don't impeach ..." warned David Schippers, "then no House of Representatives will ever be able to impeach again. The bar will be so high that only a convicted felon or a traitor will need to be concerned."
But the chief investigative counsel for the Democrats, hoping that his words would reach the full House, where a vote on impeachment is still too close to call, stressed that there is no critical constitutional crisis created by Clinton's scandalous sexual affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
"The impeachment process is like that fire extinguisher behind the glass door with a big sign that reads: Break only in case of emergency," said Abbe Lowell. "We are asking you not to break that glass unless there is no other choice."
The lawyers from both parties consumed much of the day pressing their arguments. They souped up video sound bites from Clinton's taped appearances in a deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case and before the grand jury, played audio recordings from the Linda Tripp tapes, and flashed head-high charts and graphs.
Then, starting in late afternoon and continuing into the evening and night, the 37 committee members settled into the rocky task of hashing out four articles of impeachment.
With the opening statements likely to carry over into today, the first votes on recommending impeachment of Clinton are expected this afternoon, although the debate probably will continue into tomorrow. A committee vote on the Democratic censure proposal is expected Tuesday.
Outgoing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), sent a terse "dear colleague" letter to the 435 representatives, advising them that the impeachment matter known officially as House Resolution 581 most likely will be available for review by lawmakers on Wednesday.
"The full House," Gingrich wrote, "would consider the matter beginning on Thursday."
At the White House, Jim Kennedy, spokesman in the counsel's office, said officials there expect the 37 committee members to vote along party lines and approve the four articles of impeachment for consideration by the full House.
"We know where the votes are," he said. "There might be some minor suspense, but the bottom line is that some articles are coming out of this committee."
On the matter of censure as an alternative to impeachment, Kennedy said the White House is being cautious in its reactions, waiting to see how Congress first embraces such an idea.
"You'd first have to see a senior-enough level of bipartisanship on censure in the House," he said.
But White House press secretary Joe Lockhart offered support for the censure proposal.
At the end of the day, Gregory Craig, the White House special counsel on impeachment, said, "We are disappointed and saddened that the committee majority brought this solemn constitutional process down to a level of innuendo, anger and unfair, unsubstantiated charges."
Schippers argued that Clinton had a "very pointed discussion" with Lewinsky to influence her to keep their relationship a secret after she was subpoenaed by the Jones lawyers.
"He did not say specifically, 'Go in and lie,"' Schippers said. "What he did say is, `You know, you can always say you were coming in to see Betty (Currie, presidential secretary) or that you were bringing me letters."
But the truth, Schippers said, was that Clinton and Lewinsky were fully involved in White House sex romps.
"The president and Monica Lewinsky were spending a significant amount of time together in the Oval Office complex," he said. "It was no longer expedient simply to refer to Ms. Lewinsky as a 'groupie,' 'stalker,' 'clutch,' or 'home wrecker,' as the White House first attempted to do."
The lawyer brought up grand jury testimony by Currie, who recalled how Clinton appeared to be coaching her into helping him remember whether he and Lewinsky were ever alone together.
"How could she know if they were ever alone, if they were?" Schippers said. "Ms. Currie wasn't there. So too, how would she know that the president never touched Monica?
"No, this wasn't any attempt by the president to refresh his recollection. It was witness tampering pure and simple."
Trying to show Clinton committing perjury, Schippers played a segment from the Jones deposition video where the president, under oath, stated, "I've never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I've never had an affair with her."
About the many gifts he gave her, Clinton was seen and heard saying, "I don't recall. Do you know what they were?" and "I don't remember."
Lowell, who preceded Schippers, said Clinton's machinations to hide an embarrassing extramarital affair simply did not rise to the level of other questionable past presidential actions.
He cited Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt misleading the public about the Lend-Lease program to help England in World War II, and Ronald Reagan's comments in the Iran-Contra scandal.
"The road to dishonor in office can end in this committee, in this room, on this very day," Lowell said.
Impeachment, he said, "is the political equivalent of the death penalty."
What the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal really amounted to, Lowell asserted, was Clinton falling prey to a political vendetta by Tripp and the Jones lawyers. "He was being set up," Lowell said.
Even still, the Democratic lawyer said, Lewinsky herself told the grand jury that no one sought to buy her silence by helping her find a new job. Lowell recalled that Lewinsky testified that neither Clinton nor presidential pal Vernon Jordan directly urged her to lie.
12-11-98
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