[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 15 (Wednesday, January 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1030-S1031]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 SUPPORT OF THE MOTION TO DISMISS THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST 
                           PRESIDENT CLINTON

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, each Member of the Senate is 
obligated today to render a judgment, a profound judgment, about the 
conduct of President William Jefferson Clinton and the call of the 
House of Representatives to remove him from office. A motion to dismiss 
the two articles of impeachment lodged against the President has been 
put before us, and so we must now determine whether there are 
sufficient grounds to continue with the impeachment trial, or whether 
we know enough to reach a conclusion and end these proceedings.
  I know enough from the record the House forwarded to us and the 
public record to reach certain conclusions about the President's 
conduct. President Clinton had an extramarital sexual relationship with 
a young White House employee, which, though consensual, was reckless 
and immoral, and thus raised a series of questions about his judgment 
and his respect for the office. He then made false and misleading 
statements about that relationship to the American people, to a Federal 
district court judge in a civil deposition, and to a Federal grand 
jury; in so doing, he betrayed not only his family but the public's 
trust, and undermined his public credibility.
  But the judgment we must now make is not about the rightness or 
wrongness of the President's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his 
efforts to conceal it. Nor is that judgment about whether the President 
is guilty of committing a specific crime. That may be determined by a 
criminal court, which the Senate clearly is not, after he leaves 
office.
  The question before us now is whether the President's wrongdoing--as 
outlined in the two articles of impeachment--was more than 
reprehensible, more than harmful, and in this case, more than strictly 
criminal. We must now decide whether the President's wrongdoing makes 
his continuance in office a threat to our government, our people, and 
the national interest. That to me is the extraordinarily high bar the 
Framers set for removal of a duly-elected President, and it is that 
standard we must apply to the facts to determine whether the President 
is guilty of ``high Crimes and Misdemeanors.''
  This trial has now proceeded for 10 session days. Each side has had 
ample opportunity to present its case, illuminating the voluminous 
record from the House, and we Senators have been able to ask wide-
ranging questions of both parties. I have listened intently throughout, 
and both the House Managers and the counsel for the President have been 
very impressive. The House Managers, for their part, have presented the 
facts and argued the Constitution so effectively that they impelled me 
more than once to seriously consider voting for removal.
  But after much reflection and review of the extensive evidence before 
us, of the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors, and, most 
importantly, of what I believe to be in the best interests of the 
nation, I have concluded that the facts do not meet the high standard 
the Founders established and do not justify removing this President 
from office.
  It was for this reason that I decided today to vote in favor of 
dismissing the articles of impeachment against President Clinton, and 
against the motion to allow for the testimony of live witnesses. I plan 
to submit a more detailed statement explaining exactly how I arrived at 
these decisions when the final votes are taken on the articles of 
impeachment. But I do think it is important at this point to summarize 
my arguments for voting to end the trial now.
  I start from the indisputable premise that the Founders intended 
impeachment to be a measure of extreme last resort, because it would 
disrupt the democratic process they so carefully calibrated and would 
supersede the right of the people to choose their leaders, which was at 
the heart of their vision of the new democracy they were creating. That 
is why I believe that the Constitutional standard in question here--
``high Crimes and Misdemeanors''--demands clear and convincing evidence 
that the President committed offenses that, to borrow from the words of 
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison respectively, proceed from ``the 
abuse or violation of some public trust,'' and that demonstrate a 
``loss of capacity or corruption.'' A review of the constitutional 
history convinces me that impeachment was not meant to supplant the 
criminal justice system but to provide a political remedy for offenses 
so egregious and damaging that the President can no longer be trusted 
to serve the national interest.

  The House Managers therefore had the burden of proving in a clear and 
convincing way that the behavior on which the articles of impeachment 
are based has irreparably compromised the President's capacity to 
govern in the nation's best interest. I conclude that, as unsettling as 
their arguments have been, they have not met that burden.
  I base that conclusion in part on the factual context of the 
President's actions. As the record makes abundantly clear, the 
President's false and misleading statements under oath and his broader 
deception and cover-up stemmed directly from his private sexual 
misconduct, something that no other sitting American president to my 
knowledge has ever been questioned about in a legal setting. On each 
occasion when I came close to the brink of deciding to vote for one of 
the articles of impeachment, I invariably came back to this question of 
context and asked myself: does this sordid story justify, for the first 
time in our nation's history, taking out of office the person the 
American people chose to lead the country? Each time I answered, 
``no.''
  The record shows that the President was not trying to conceal public 
malfeasance or some heinous crime, like murder, and I believe that 
distinction, while not determinative, does matter. The American people, 
according to most public surveys, also think that distinction matters--
which helps us to understand why the overwhelming majority of them can 
simultaneously hold the views that the President has demeaned his 
office and yet should not be evicted from it.
  In noting this, I recognize that it would be a dereliction of our 
duty to substitute public opinion polls for our reasoned judgment in 
resolving this Constitutional crisis. But it would also be a serious 
error to ignore the people's voice, because in exercising our authority 
as a court of impeachment we are standing in the place of the voters 
who re-elected the President two years ago.
  In this case, the prevailing public opposition to impeachment has 
particular relevance, for it provides substantial evidence that the 
President's misconduct, while harmful to his moral authority and his 
personal credibility, has not been so harmful as to shatter the 
public's faith in his ability to fulfill his Presidential duties and 
act in their interest. Nearly two-thirds of them say repeatedly that 
they approve of the job that President Clinton is doing and that they 
oppose his removal, which means that, though they are deeply 
disaffected by his personal behavior, they do not believe that he has 
lost his capacity to govern in the national interest.
  In reaching my conclusion, I first had to determine that the request 
of the House Managers to bring witnesses to the floor would not add to 
the record and the arguments that have been made, or change my 
conclusion or the outcome of this trial, which most Senators and 
observers agree will not end in the President's removal. It is true 
that witnesses may add demeanor evidence, but they will subtract from 
the Senate's demeanor, and unnecessarily extend the trial for some 
time, preventing the Senate from returning to the other pressing 
business of the nation.
  Am I content to have this trial end in the articles failing to 
receive the required two-thirds vote of the Senate for removal? The 
truth is that nothing

[[Page S1031]]

about this terrible national experience leaves me comfortable. But an 
unequivocal, bipartisan statement of censure by Congress would, at 
least, fulfill our responsibility to our children and our posterity to 
speak to the common values the President has violated, and make clear 
what our expectations are for future Presidents. Such a censure would 
bring better closure to this demeaning and divisive episode, and help 
us begin to heal the injuries the President's misconduct and the 
impeachment process's partisanship have done to the American body 
politic, and to the soul of the nation.

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