[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 559-580]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  The Chaplain, Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie, offered the following prayer:
  Holy God, with awe and wonder we accept our responsibilities and our 
accountability to You. You are Sovereign of this land. When we commit 
our complexities to You, really seek Your guidance, You direct us. Make 
us attentive listeners, dedicated to the search for absolute truth. In 
the cacophony of voices, help us to hear Your voice.
  Dear Father, Your faithfulness never fails. You are consistent, 
reliable, and true. You expect nothing less from us for Your glory and 
for the good of America. To that end, fill this Chamber with Your 
presence and the minds of the Senators with Your gift of discernment. 
You are our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Sergeant at Arms will make the proclamation.
  The Sergeant at Arms, James W. Ziglar, made proclamation as follows:

       Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to 
     keep silent, on pain of imprisonment, while the Senate of the 
     United States is sitting for the trial of the articles of 
     impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives against 
     William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States.

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, there have been a number of inquiries 
from Senators and others about some clarification with regard to the 
approximate times or the times we would be meeting on Saturday and 
Tuesday, and also how the afternoon will proceed, so I will make some 
unanimous consent requests to clarify that and give you a brief rundown 
on what I think the schedule will be this afternoon.


  Orders for Saturday, January 16, 1999 and Tuesday, January 19, 1999

  Mr. Chief Justice, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
that when the Senate completes its business today it stand in 
adjournment until 10 a.m., on Saturday, January 16. I further ask that 
when the Senate reconvenes on Saturday, immediately following the 
prayer, the Senate resume consideration of the articles of impeachment.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. I further ask unanimous consent that when the Senate 
completes its business on Saturday, it then adjourn over until Tuesday, 
January 19, at 9:30 a.m. I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, 
immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be 
approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, and the 
time for the two leaders be reserved for their use. I further ask 
consent that there then be a period for morning business until the hour 
of 11:30 a.m., with 60 minutes under the control of the majority leader 
or his designee, and 60 minutes under the control of the minority 
leader or his designee.
  I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday the Senate recess then from 
the hours of 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. for the weekly policy conferences. 
And I further ask consent that at 1 p.m., on Tuesday, the Senate resume 
consideration of the articles of impeachment.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, 
following the conclusion of the presentation during the Court of 
Impeachment, the Senate recess until the hour of 8:35 p.m., on Tuesday 
evening. And I ask consent that upon reconvening Tuesday evening the 
Senate proceed to the Hall of the House of Representatives in order to 
hear an address by the President regarding the State of the Union.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Order Of Procedure

  Mr. LOTT. For the information of all my colleagues, then, I 
understand today's presentation is expected to continue until 
approximately 6 p.m., and there will be periodic breaks during the day 
to allow all Members to stand and stretch. I want to remind Senators to 
promptly return to their desks at the expiration of those 15-minute 
breaks in order that we can continue and complete at the earliest 
possible hour. I thank all Members for their cooperation.
  This afternoon we will hear from Congressman McCollum, take a 15-
minute break, then hear from Congressmen Gekas, Chabot, and Cannon, and 
then take a break, and then Congressman Barr would complete the 
afternoon's presentations.
  Mr. Chief Justice, I yield the floor.


                              The Journal

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. If there is no objection, the Journal of 
proceedings of the trial are approved to date.
  Pursuant to the provisions of Senate Resolution 16, the managers for 
the House of Representatives have 18 hours 56 minutes remaining to make 
the presentation of their case. The Senate will now hear you.
  The Presiding Officer recognizes Mr. Manager McCollum to resume the 
presentation of the case for the House of Representatives.
  Mr. Manager McCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
  Mr. Chief Justice, and my colleagues in the Senate, I drove in this 
morning to this Capitol. I drove up the George Washington Parkway, and 
I looked at the magnificent display of ice that was all over the trees, 
all over the grass, all over the foliage--a beautiful panorama.
  And just before I got to the 14th Street Bridge, I saw this 
incredible number of geese--I guess in the hundreds--that were lined up 
together between the highway and the Potomac River. It looked like they 
were an invading army. I thought of the awe of this, the awe of the 
beauty of it, the awe of Mother Nature, the awe of God. And I thought, 
also, of the awe of the responsibility we have to our children and our 
grandchildren about what we are commencing today. This is an awesome 
undertaking for all of us.
  I am here today to summarize for you what you heard yesterday. I do 
not want to bore you. I do not intend to do that. I am going to be as 
brief as I can. I am also here to help you digest the voluminous 
quantities of material that you have before you. There is a huge record 
out there. And I am also here to prepare you for the law discussion 
that is going to come after me about the law of the crimes of perjury 
and obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
  First of all, I want you to know I bear no personal animosity toward 
our President. But I happen to believe that if the President--if any 
President--commits the crimes of perjury, obstruction of justice, and 
witness tampering, he should not be allowed to remain in office, for if 
he is allowed to do so, it would undermine our courts and our system of 
justice.
  But that is for you to determine in the end, really, not me. That is 
my opinion. But you will have to weigh the evidence, you are going to 
have to hear the arguments, and ultimately make that decision. In fact, 
the first thing you have to determine is whether or not the President 
committed crimes. It is only if you determine he committed the crimes 
of perjury, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering that you will 
move on to the question of

[[Page 560]]

whether he is removed from office. In fact, no one, none of us, would 
argue to you that the President should be removed from office unless 
you conclude he committed the crimes that he is alleged to have 
committed--not every one of them necessarily, but certainly a good 
quantity, and there are a whole bunch of them that have been charged.
  I would like to call your attention to a couple of things. First of 
all, I don't want to be a schoolteacher; I just want to relate my own 
experience to you so you can understand it. I have been involved with 
this a lot longer than most of you have probably been dealing with the 
details. I constantly have to refer back to things. Every time I read 
something, there is so much detail here, I learn something new.
  While I go over the evidence with you, we will summarize the evidence 
one more time. As you are deliberating, as you are thinking about it, I 
want to call a couple of places to your attention that are the easiest 
places to refer back to, to find the facts and evidence. First of all, 
there is the official report that is in the record of the House's 
consideration of this, the Judiciary Committee report. In that report, 
right in the first couple of pages, there is a table of contents. While 
a couple of the articles did not come over to you that are listed in 
here, there are detailed discussions you can get from this table of 
contents as to every single count and every single part of these 
articles so you can figure out what we are talking about today.
  Secondly, I would like to bring to your attention that there is a 
Starr Report, and I know that has been maligned by some people. This 
thing is so dogeared--I have underlined it, torn it apart, done all 
kind of things with it. It is a good reference source. You can find 
from the footnotes where else to check it out. There are two parts. 
These are the appendices. In the first part, you can find the 
transcript of all the key depositions, all the key testimony, all of 
the evidence that we are talking about, and read it for yourselves.
  I don't want to leave here today having summarized this evidence, as 
long as I may take--and I don't want to take a long time, but I will 
take a little while--and have you go away and think, gosh, what all did 
McCollum or Hutchinson or Rogan or Bryant say yesterday. You can find 
and refresh yourself through that and through whatever information you 
have--trial briefs and all that you have.
  Let's look at what the record shows. President Clinton was sued by 
Paula Jones in a sexual harassment civil rights lawsuit. To bolster her 
case, she was trying to show that the President engaged in a pattern of 
illicit relations with women in his employment, where he rewarded those 
who became involved with him and disadvantaged those who rejected him, 
as Paula Jones did.
  Whatever the merits of that approach, on May 27, 1997, the U.S. 
Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that ``like every other 
citizen''--and that is a quote--``like every other citizen, Paula Jones 
has a right to an orderly disposition of her claims.'' Then on December 
11 of 1997, Judge Susan Webber Wright issued an order that said Paula 
Jones was entitled to information regarding any State or Federal 
employee with whom the President had sexual relations, proposed sexual 
relations, or sought to have sexual relations.
  The record shows that President Clinton was determined to hide his 
relationship with Monica Lewinsky from the Jones court. His lawyers 
will argue to you next week, I am sure, that he did everything to keep 
the relationship hidden and he did it in a legal way. They will say 
that he may have split a few hairs and evaded answers and given 
misleading answers but that it was all within the framework of 
responses and actions that any good lawyer would advise his client to 
do.
  They will also say if he crossed the line technically somewhere, he 
didn't do it knowingly or intentionally. Oh, how I wish that were true. 
We wouldn't be here today. But, alas, that is not so.
  If you believe the sworn testimony of Monica Lewinsky, if you believe 
her testimony that is in the record--and she is very credible--the 
President knowingly, intentionally, and willfully set out on a course 
of conduct in December 1997 to lie to the Jones court, to hide his 
relationship, and to encourage others to lie and hide evidence and to 
conceal the relationship with Monica Lewinsky from the court. He 
engaged in a pattern of obstruction of justice, perjury, and witness 
tampering designed to deny the court what Susan Webber Wright, the 
judge in that court, had determined Paula Jones had the right to 
discover in order to prove her claim. If you believe the testimony of 
Monica Lewinsky, you cannot believe the President or accept the 
argument of his lawyers. You simply can't.
  The record is so clear on this that if you have any significant doubt 
about Monica Lewinsky's credibility or testimony, you should bring her 
in here and let us examine her face to face so you can judge her 
credibility for yourself.
  As you will hear explained later this afternoon, the same acts can 
constitute both the crimes of obstruction of justice and perjury, and 
the same acts can constitute the crimes of obstruction of justice and 
witness tampering. They are all cut from the same cloth. They are all 
crimes that obstruct the administration of justice and keep our courts 
from being able to get the evidence that they need to decide cases. 
Such obstruction is so detrimental to our system of justice that the 
Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide for a greater punishment for 
perjury and obstruction of justice than they do for bribery.
  I want to show that to you. I know everybody can't see the chart. I 
think you have a handout of them. I will not show many charts today, 
but this is one about the sentencing guidelines. The guidelines rate 
these, in fact, in sequence. The most serious sentencing is a higher 
number; the lower number is the lower sentencing: Plain old vanilla 
bribery rights at a 10; other things are 8, 7, 4. Murder is way up 
there, much higher in the numbers. You will see that witness tampering 
is a 12, not a 10. Obstruction of justice is a 12, not a 10. Perjury is 
a 12, not a 10. All of them are the same. Interestingly enough, 
although I didn't put it on this chart, bribing a witness is different 
from plain vanilla bribery. If you try to bribe somebody in a business 
deal, that is one kind; if you go out and bribe a witness, that is 
another. Bribing a witness is also a 12.
  Now, I want to point that out right up front because the most 
important point that makes is that when you read the phrase in the 
Constitution that what is impeachable is treason, bribery, and other 
high crimes and misdemeanors, bribery is not considered by our court 
system. Pure bribery, plain old bribery, is not considered as serious 
in sentencing as perjury, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, 
and of course bribing a witness. They are all of the same cloth. Why? 
Because that interferes with the administration of justice. Because we 
can't have justice if people block the courts from getting at the 
truth. And if you go about doing it intentionally, you have committed 
these crimes.
  It should be pointed out that lies under oath in a court proceeding, 
whether or not they rise to the level of crimes of perjury, can be 
obstruction of justice. So when the President lied in the Jones 
deposition, this was part of the obstruction of justice charged under 
article II that is before you today, even though there is no separate 
count. And he lied a lot in that deposition. We will talk about that a 
little later. The fact that the House did not send you the article of 
impeachment for perjury in the Jones deposition does not keep you from 
considering the lies in that deposition as an obstruction of justice 
crime under article II that is before you. And you know that it is also 
incorporated in article I, because it is one of the four items 
specifically listed as the perjury that he lied about lying in the 
deposition.
  Now, having said that, think about all of this as one big 
obstruction, because perjury can be obstruction. Just plain lying can 
be obstruction. Witness tampering, by the way, is a separate crime 
because it is titled that way, but it is one of two separate 
obstruction of

[[Page 561]]

justice sections in the United States Criminal Code. It is just another 
version of obstruction of justice. So don't be confused. Witness 
tampering is obstruction of justice--literally, figuratively, and in 
every other way. But people think about it separately because it has a 
separate element, a lesser element of proof actually than obstruction 
of justice. But it is all part of the same fabric, again.
  To put the essence of all of this in a nutshell for you, think back 
on the evidence presented yesterday. I would suggest that President 
Clinton thought his scheme out well. He resented the Jones lawsuit. He 
was alarmed when Monica Lewinsky's name appeared on the witness list, 
and he was more alarmed when Judge Wright issued her orders signaling 
that the court would hear the evidence of other relationships. To keep 
his relationship with Monica Lewinsky from the court, once Judge Wright 
issued her ruling, he knew he would have to lie to the court. To 
succeed at this, he decided that he had to get Monica Lewinsky to file 
a false affidavit, to try to avoid having her testify. And he needed to 
get her a job to make her happy, to make sure she executed that false 
affidavit, and then stick with her lies when she was questioned about 
it.
  Then the gifts were subpoenaed and he had to have her hide the 
gifts--the only tangible evidence of his relationship with her that 
would trigger questions. She came up with the idea of giving them to 
Betty Currie, and the President seized on it. Who would think Betty 
Currie should be called to produce the gifts? Nobody would. Then he 
would be free to lie in his deposition, and that is, of course, what he 
did. But after he did this, he realized that he had to make sure that 
Betty would lie and cover for him.
  He got his aides convinced to repeat the lies to the grand jury and 
to the public, and all of this worked--until the dress showed up. Then 
he lied to the grand jury to try to cover up and explain away his prior 
crimes.
  That is the case in a nutshell. That is why we are here today. That 
is what this evidence in the record shows, I believe, in an 
exceptionally compelling way.
  Now, let's review what happened and, as we do, I ask you to think 
back to what Mr. Bryant said to you yesterday. Always ask yourself what 
are the results of the act, and who benefited. I think you will find 
each time that it is the President who benefited. Now we are going to 
go over the facts.
  On December 5, 1997, a year ago, about a week before Judge Wright 
issued her order making it clear that the President's relationship with 
Monica Lewinsky was relevant to the Jones case. Ms. Lewinsky's name 
appeared on the Jones witness list. The President learned this fact the 
next day, December 6. The President telephoned Monica Lewinsky at about 
2 a.m. on December 17 and informed her about her name being on the 
witness list. That was about 10 days after he learned about it and 
about 5 days after Judge Wright's order. It was the order that made it 
clear that his relationship with Monica was discoverable by the Jones 
attorneys in that case.
  Long before this, though, long before the President was called to 
give a deposition or Monica Lewinsky was named on the witness list in 
the Jones case, the evidence shows she and the President had concocted 
cover stories. They had an understanding that she would lie about the 
relationship, and so would he, if anybody asked about it.
  During a telephone conversation on the 17th of December, the 
President told Monica she might be called as a witness, and he at that 
time suggested that she might file an affidavit to avoid being called 
as a witness to testify in person in that case. In the same 
conversation, they reviewed these cover stories that they had concocted 
to conceal their relationship. He brought them up. They went over them 
again.
  Why do you think they did that? In her grand jury testimony, Monica 
said the President didn't tell her to lie, but because of their 
previous understanding she assumed that they both expected that she 
would lie in that affidavit. In this context, the evidence is 
compelling that the President committed both the crimes of obstruction 
of justice and witness tampering right then and there on December 17.
  Now, Monica Lewinsky's testimony is so clear about this that the 
President's lawyers probably won't spend a lot of time with you on 
this; they didn't in the Judiciary Committee. I could be wrong, and 
they probably will just to show me I am wrong.
  I want us to look at this and specifically look at her testimony 
together because it is so compelling. On pages 123 and 124 of her 
testimony--you can find it in Part 1 of the Starr Report. I know you 
can't see all of this that well back there, but you should have the 
charts. I point out in red on this chart the most important part of it. 
This is where she described the December 17 telephone conversation. I 
am going to read you part of it.
  She said here in red:

       At some point in the conversation, and I don't know if it 
     was before or after the subject of the affidavit came up, he 
     sort of said, ``You know, you can always say you were coming 
     to see Betty or that you were bringing me letters,'' which I 
     understood was really a reminder of things that we had 
     discussed before.
       Question: So when you say things you had discussed, sort of 
     ruses that you developed?
       Answer: Right. I mean, this was--this was something that--
     that was instantly familiar to me.
       Question: Right.
       Answer: And I knew exactly what he meant.
       Question: Had you talked with him earlier about these false 
     explanations about what you were doing visiting him on 
     several occasions?
       Answer: Several occasions throughout the entire 
     relationship. Yes. It was the pattern of the relationship, to 
     sort of conceal it.

  Now, let's look at another chart. Monica Lewinsky's August 6 grand 
jury testimony, on pages 233 and 234. Both are from the August 6 grand 
jury testimony, where in the context of the affidavit she makes the now 
famous statement, ``No one asked or encouraged me to lie.'' She did say 
that, but let's look at how she said that:

       For me, the best way to explain how I feel what happened 
     was, you know, no one asked or encouraged me to lie, but no 
     one discouraged me either.

  ``. . . but no one discouraged me either.'' I don't know how many 
times anybody said that to you when they made their arguments, but that 
is what she said and the context.
  Later on, she says in her testimony on the same pages:

     . . . it wasn't as if the President called me and said, ``You 
     know, Monica, you're on the witness list, this is going to be 
     really hard for us, we're going to have to tell the truth and 
     be humiliated in front of the entire world about what we've 
     done,'' which I would have fought him on probably. That was 
     different. And by him not calling me and saying that, you 
     know, I knew what that meant. . . .
       Question: Did you understand all along that he would deny 
     the relationship, also?
       Answer: Mm-hmm. Yes.
       Question: And when you say you understood what it meant 
     when he didn't say, ``Oh, you know, you must tell the 
     truth,'' what did you understand that to mean?
       Answer: That--that--as we had on every other occasion and 
     every other instance of this relationship, we would deny it.

  After reading this, if you believe Monica Lewinsky, can there be any 
doubt that the President was suggesting that she file an affidavit that 
contains lies and falsehoods that might keep her from ever having to 
testify in the Jones case and give the President the kind of protection 
he needed when he testified?
  And, of course, in that same December 17 conversation, the President 
encouraged Monica to use cover stories and tell the same lies as he 
expected her to do in the affidavit if and when she was called to 
testify live and in person. Both of those would be obstruction of 
justice and witness tampering. Taken together--encouraging her to file 
this false affidavit that she clearly describes here, and the 
encouraging of her to lie if she is ever called as a witness--both of 
these are counts 1 and 2 of the obstruction of justice charge.
  If I don't leave you with any other impression walking away from here 
today, I want you to think about this. This is the clearest, boldest, 
most significant obstruction of justice charge. I don't see how anybody 
can walk away

[[Page 562]]

from it and explain it away. It is a pattern. It should not be looked 
at in isolation. Think about it. It is the kickoff to what really 
happened. It is why we got involved in this in the first place. The 
President had a scheme and he went through this process. And it all 
ties together with the rest of it.
  Two days later, Monica Lewinsky was subpoenaed and contacted Vernon 
Jordan who put her in touch with Attorney Frank Carter. That is the 
attorney he picked out. As we all know, this very false affidavit that 
Frank Carter prepared--and, of course, knowing it was false when he 
prepared it, but Monica knew it and the President knew it--was filed 
just before the President's deposition in the Jones case January 17. 
The record shows that the President was kept abreast of the 
participation by Vernon Jordan and all of its contents, and Jordan 
advised the President when Monica signed the affidavit on January 7. He 
advised the President of that fact. Two days before Monica says in a 
conversation she asked the President if he wanted to see the draft 
affidavit, he replied--you recall from yesterday--he replied that he 
didn't need to see it because he had already seen ``15 others.''
  I doubt seriously he was talking about 15 other affidavits of 
somebody else and didn't like looking at affidavits anymore. I suspect 
and I would suggest to you that he was talking about 15 other drafts of 
this proposed affidavit since it had been around the horn a lot of 
rounds.
  The circumstantial evidence makes it clear the President knew the 
context of the Lewinsky affidavit and he knew it was false.
  During the President's deposition in the Jones case on January 17, 
his attorney, Robert Bennett, at one point tried to stop the Jones 
lawyers from asking the President about his relationship with Monica 
Lewinsky by pointing out the affidavit she had signed.
  I think we all remember that because there was a lot of that on TV up 
here yesterday. Mr. Bennett asserted at the time that the affidavit 
indicated ``there is no sex of any kind, manner, shape or form.'' That 
is what he said. After a warning from Judge Wright, Mr. Bennett stated, 
``I'm not coaching the witness. In preparation of the witness for this 
deposition, the witness is fully aware of Ms. Lewinsky's affidavit, so 
I have not told him a single thing he doesn't know.'' The President did 
not say anything to correct Mr. Bennett, even though he knew the 
affidavit was false. The judge allowed the questioning to proceed and 
later Mr. Bennett read to the President a portion of paragraph 8 of 
Monica Lewinsky's affidavit in which she denied having a ``sexual 
relationship'' with the President and asked him if Ms. Lewinsky's 
statement was true and accurate, to which the President responded, 
``That is absolutely true.''
  I am not going back over and put that on the screen again. But I do 
want to put up here before you what you have in front of you, paragraph 
8 of Monica Lewinsky's affidavit.
  Paragraph 8 of her affidavit was absolutely false and the President 
knew it.
  I want to go over that a little bit. What it says up here at the 
beginning of it is, ``I have never had a sexual relationship with the 
President. He did not propose that we have a sexual relationship,'' and 
so on. And we have a lot about that. But look at what it says down at 
the end of this. What is down at the end of this--you have it in front 
of you. It says down here, ``The occasions that I saw the President 
after I left my employment at the White House in April 1996 were 
official receptions, formal functions, or events related to the United 
States Department of Defense, where I was working at the time. There 
were other people present on those occasions.''
  I just want to point out to you that paragraph 8, which was the 
subject of a lot of discussions, which the President certainly was 
fully aware of--which you watched where he was intensely responding, 
with regard to Mr. Bennett yesterday in that deposition--didn't just 
contain a lie about a sexual relationship where you quibble over a 
word. It is a full-fledged lie and a cover story about this. None of 
that is true. Monica Lewinsky saw him a lot of other times, and the 
President certainly knew that. They weren't all official events or 
anything else. This is a complete falsehood, paragraph 8, and the 
President knew it.
  At that point in time when he allowed his attorney on the day of the 
deposition to make a false and misleading statement to the judge--and 
the attorney didn't know that--but it was a false and misleading 
statement to the judge characterizing this affidavit, he knew better. 
And the President at that point in time committed the crime of 
obstruction of justice. And that is count 5 of article II.
  Now the President's lawyers are going to argue that he sat silent 
because he wasn't paying attention, and he didn't hear or appreciate 
what Mr. Bennett was saying. We have already seen the video. And you 
know that he was looking so intently. Remember he was intensely 
following the conversation with his eyes. I don't know if you watched 
it on TV yesterday and observed that. It was played twice. I don't know 
how anybody can say this man wasn't paying attention. He certainly 
wasn't thinking about anything else. That was very obvious from looking 
at the video.
  The President's other defense also falls apart on its face. During 
his grand jury testimony, the President argued that when Mr. Bennett 
characterized the Lewinsky affidavit as indicating ``there is no sex of 
any kind, in any manner, shape or form'' that it was a completely true 
statement because at that particular time, at that moment, when the 
statement was being made on January 17, 1998, there was no sex going 
on. That was when the President made his famous utterings to the jury, 
``It depends on what the meaning of the word `is' is.'' That is when he 
said that. Of course the President knew perfectly well that the context 
of Mr. Bennett's discussions with the judge and characterization of the 
Lewinsky affidavit was referring to the denial in paragraph 8 of the 
affidavit that there had never been any sexual relationship at any 
time, not that there was no sex or sexual relationship going on on 
January 17, the day of the deposition.
  I implore you not to get hung up on some of the details. It is 
absurd, some of the arguments that are being made and have been made by 
the President and his attorneys to try to explain this.
  This is a perfect example of that. When we start looking around at 
this, you can't see the forest sometimes for the trees. The big picture 
is what you need to keep in mind, not the compartmentalized portion. 
There will be a lot of effort, I am sure, to try to go and pick at one 
thing or another. But this is an extraordinarily good example of how 
the argument failed when put in that situation. And we shouldn't play 
word games.
  When Monica Lewinsky was subpoenaed to testify, she was also 
subpoenaed to produce any gifts that the President had given her. When 
she met with Vernon Jordan the day she received the subpoena, she told 
him of her concerns about the gifts and she asked him to tell the 
President about the subpoena.
  Early in the morning on December 28, near the end of the year, they 
met, the President and Monica, in his office, and they exchanged gifts 
and discussed the gifts being subpoenaed. According to Ms. Lewinsky, 
she suggested that maybe she should put the gifts away outside of her 
house somewhere or give them to somebody like Betty Currie. She says he 
responded--the President responded--with an ``I don't know,'' or ``let 
me think about that.'' She was very clear that at no point did he ever 
give her the impression that she should turn the gifts over to the 
Jones attorneys.
  That is consistent with their cover stories--the one later and later 
in the perjury where the count discusses his lying to the grand jury. 
Consistent with their cover stories and all the plans for denying the 
relationship, her testimony in this regard is very believable.
  On the other hand, the President's testimony in front of the grand 
jury that encouraged her to turn all of the gifts over to the Jones 
attorneys is not believable. How can nobody believe

[[Page 563]]

that. When he said that to the grand jury, he committed perjury. When a 
few hours later, according to Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie called her 
on the telephone and said, ``I understand you have something to give 
me,'' or maybe she said, ``the President said you have something to 
give me,'' and Betty Currie came over and got the gifts and took them 
back and hid them under her bed. At that moment, the President's crime 
of obstruction of justice as described in count 3 of article II was 
complete.
  Remember by its nature obstruction of justice charges in crimes are 
most frequently proven by circumstantial evidence. As somebody said 
here the other day, we don't tell people we are going to go out under 
the elm tree and lie and obstruct things. Usually it is a lot more 
circuitous than that. In the context of all that was going on at the 
time and the general truthfulness of Monica Lewinsky's testimony, and 
other respects, how can anyone come to any other conclusion than that 
the President collaborated with Monica and Betty to hide these gifts on 
December 28? How can they? The sequence is there.
  The President's lawyers may spend a lot of time attacking this 
particular obstruction of justice charge. They may question why the 
President would have given Monica Lewinsky more gifts on December 28 if 
he was expecting her to hide the gifts. Monica's explanation and her 
testimony is ``from everything he said to me,'' he expected her to 
conceal the gifts, including the ones being given that day. When Ms. 
Currie's call came, wasn't it the logical thing for Monica to conclude 
that this was the result of the President's having thought about what 
to do with the gifts, which he said he was going to do according to 
her, and deciding to have Ms. Currie hide them?
  That is the logical thing.
  The President's attorney's will no doubt also question the veracity 
of Ms. Lewinsky with regard to who made the phone call, since Ms. 
Currie's recollection isn't very good. And at first she says she 
recalls Monica made it. Of course, the phone records indicate that Ms. 
Currie called Ms. Lewinsky. That is the much more logical sequence.
  Also it doesn't make sense that the President's secretary, who is so 
close to him--think about it--that she would have taken the gifts and 
would have hidden them under her bed and never talked with the 
President about doing so before or after she did so. That doesn't make 
sense.
  It is also noteworthy that the President did everything he could in 
his January 17 deposition to conceal the true nature of his 
relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This is consistent with the 
arguments that he never intended the gifts be kept from the Jones 
attorneys. He never intended them to be given to the Jones attorneys. 
If he had intended to give these gifts to the Jones attorneys, or have 
them given, why would he have gone through this elaborate series of 
lies in that deposition? Common sense tells us if he knew these gifts 
were revealed, questions would be raised and his relationship revealed.
  So all the logic is there. I don't know how you refute it.
  Another obstruction count the President's attorneys are likely to 
spend time on is one concerning the job search. There is no question 
that Monica Lewinsky was looking for a job in New York a long time 
before we get to December of 1997 and when the affidavit and all of 
this took place, long before the President had reason to be concerned 
that she would have to testify or he would have to testify in the case. 
There is no question about that. That is not the issue. The question is 
whether or not the President intensified his efforts to get her a job 
and make sure she got one after it became clear to him that he would 
need her to lie, sign a false affidavit, and stick with her lies in any 
questioning. That is what counts. That is what is important. Did he 
intensify his efforts and really go after it? Was it part of that 
pattern I described to you earlier which Mr. Hutchinson described 
yesterday? That is what is important.
  In other words, as count 34 of article II alleges, did she make sure 
she was rewarded with sticking with him in a scheme of concealment in 
anticipation that this reward would keep her happy and keep her from 
turning on him? Did the President make sure Monica Lewinsky signed a 
false affidavit by getting her a job?
  The record shows that while she did give some interviews from earlier 
contacts, including one involving the job with the U.S. Ambassador to 
the United Nations, no one of real influence around the President put 
on a full court press to get her a job and she had not had any success 
as of December 6.
  She had not been able to get in touch with Vernon Jordan in her 
recent efforts. He had met with her once in November, but as you recall 
from yesterday's discussions, something he didn't even have a good 
memory of. He certainly wasn't very focused on it, and she wasn't 
getting where she wanted to get.
  And so on December 6th she mentioned that fact to the President. 
Remember, that is one day after she was named on a witness list. In 
fact, that is the day that he learned or may have learned--we know he 
learned of her being on that witness list. The President met with 
Vernon Jordan the next day, but he apparently didn't mention Ms. 
Lewinsky, according to Jordan's testimony. The record shows that not 
only on December 11th did Mr. Jordan act to help Ms. Lewinsky find a 
job when he met with her and gave her a list of contact names on 
December 11th, Mr. Jordan that same day made calls to contacts at 
MacAndrews & Forbes, the parent corporation of Revlon, and two other 
New York companies. He also telephoned the President to keep him 
informed of his efforts.
  Keep in mind that on this day, this very same day, December 11th, 
Judge Wright issued her order in the Jones case entitling Jones' 
lawyers to discover the President's sexual relations. Is that a mere 
coincidence?
  Later in December, Monica Lewinsky interviewed with New York-based 
companies that had been contacted by Mr. Jordan. She discussed her move 
to New York with the President during that meeting on December 28th. On 
January 5th, she declined a United Nations offer. On January 7th, Ms. 
Lewinsky signed the false affidavit. The next day, on January the 8th, 
she interviewed in New York with MacAndrews & Forbes, but the interview 
went very poorly. Learning of this, Vernon Jordan, that very day, 
called Ronald Perelman, the chairman of the board of MacAndrews & 
Forbes. She was interviewed the next morning again, and a few hours 
later she received an informal offer. She told Jordan about it. He 
immediately told Betty Currie about it, and he personally told the 
President about it later.
  On January 13th, her job offer at Revlon was formalized, and within a 
day or so President Clinton told Erskine Bowles that Ms. Lewinsky had 
found a job in the private sector. It was a big relief to him.
  Then her false affidavit was filed, and on January 17th the President 
gave a deposition relying on the false affidavit and using their cover 
stories to conceal their relationship.
  Was this full court press in December and early January to assure 
Monica Lewinsky had a job just a coincidence? Logical common sense says 
no; the President needed her to continue to cooperate in his scheme to 
hide their relationship, keeping her happy so he could control her and 
she would be--he would be assured that she had filed this false 
affidavit and testifying untruthfully if she was called. It is the only 
plausible rationale for this stepped up job assistance effort at this 
particular time. In doing so, the President committed the crimes of 
obstruction of justice and witness tampering as set forth in count 4 of 
article II.
  Well, we have gone through quite a few of these, and I am trying to 
be brief with you, but I think each one of them is important. Each one 
of them entangles the President further in a web that fits together, 
and it is kind of sticky just like the spider weaves.
  During his deposition in the Jones case, the President referred to 
Betty Currie several times and suggested that she might have answers to 
some of

[[Page 564]]

the questions. He used the cover story, the same ones he and Monica 
talked about, and he talked about Betty Currie a good deal because she 
was a part of those cover stories. When he finished the deposition, he 
telephoned Ms. Currie, and he asked her to come to his office the next 
day and talk with him. Betty Currie told the grand jury when she came 
in the next day the President raised his deposition with her and said 
there were several things he wanted to know, then rattled off what you 
heard yesterday in succession: You were always there when she was 
there, right? We never were really alone. You can see and hear 
everything. Monica came on to me, and I never touched her, right? She 
wanted to have sex with me, and I can't do that.
  All of those weren't true. They were all falsehoods. They were all 
declaratory statements. They weren't questions. It is clear from the 
record that Ms. Currie always tried her best to be loyal to the 
President, her boss. That is normal. That is natural.
  In answering the questions in her testimony, she tried to portray the 
events and the President's assertions in the light most favorable to 
him, even though she acknowledges that she could not hear and see 
everything that went on between Monica and the President and that she 
wasn't actually present in the same room with them on any number of 
occasions, so they were alone. And she could not say what they might 
have been doing or saying.
  On January 20th or 21st, the President again met with Ms. Currie and, 
according to her, recapitulated what he said on Sunday, a day or two 
before, right after the deposition. In the context of everything, it 
seems abundantly clear that the President was trying to make sure that 
Betty Currie corroborated his lies and cover stories from the 
deposition if she was ever called to testify in the Jones case or grand 
jury or any other court proceeding. That is what he was doing. In doing 
so, the President committed the crimes of witness tampering and 
obstruction of justice.
  Later, the President testified, rather disingenuously, in my 
judgment, that he was simply trying to refresh his memory when he was 
talking to Ms. Currie. Ms. Currie's confirmation of false statements 
that the President made in his deposition could not in any way remind 
him of the facts. They were patently untrue. The idea that he was 
trying to refresh his recollection is implausible.
  Recognizing the weakness of their client's case on this, the 
President's attorneys have suggested that he was worried about what Ms. 
Currie might say if the press really got after her. That is what we 
heard, at least over in the Judiciary Committee. Of course, it is 
possible the President was worried about the press. I would suspect so. 
But common sense says he was much more worried about what Betty Currie 
might say to a court, after he had just named her several times and 
talked about her, if she were called as a witness.
  As those who follow me will tell you, the arguments by the 
President's lawyers that Betty Currie wasn't on the Jones witness list 
at the time and the window of opportunity to call her as a witness in 
that case closed shortly thereafter is irrelevant. They are going to 
argue--they argued to us that Betty Currie's name wasn't on the witness 
list. That is a big deal, they say. They say. But it is irrelevant. It 
doesn't matter; witness tampering law doesn't even require that a 
pending judicial proceeding be going on for it to be a crime. So 
whether her name was on the witness list or not makes no difference.
  There are two types of obstruction of justice. One does require a 
pending proceeding. I submit--and you will hear more about this later 
in the law--that in this instance the President committed both of them. 
He certainly should have anticipated that she would be called in the 
pending proceeding that was going on in the Jones case, but even if 
there was no pending proceeding--and you will, again, hear more about 
this later--for the witness tampering part of the obstruction of 
justice, it doesn't require there to have been an ongoing judicial 
proceeding.
  Within 4 or 5 days of his Jones deposition, the President not only 
explicitly denied the true nature of his relationship with Monica 
Lewinsky to key White House aides, he also embellished the story when 
he talked with Sidney Blumenthal. To Sidney Blumenthal, he portrayed 
Monica Lewinsky as the aggressor, attacked her reputation by portraying 
her as a stalker and presented himself as the innocent victim being 
attacked by the forces of evil. Certainly he wanted his denial and his 
assertions to be spread to the public by these aides, but at the same 
time he knew that the Office of Independent Counsel had recently been 
appointed to investigate the Monica Lewinsky matter. He knew that at 
the time.
  In the context of everything else that he was doing to hide his 
relationship, it seems readily apparent that his false and misleading 
statements to his staff members, whom he knew were potential witnesses 
before any grand jury proceeding, were designed in part to corruptly 
influence their testimony as witnesses. In fact, the President actually 
acknowledged this in his grand jury testimony, that he knew his aides 
might be called before the grand jury. And one of the aides testified 
he expected to be called. Sure enough, they were, and they repeated the 
false and misleading information he had given them. In this, the 
President committed the crimes of witness tampering and obstruction of 
justice as set forth in count 7 of article II.
  Now, that is the obstruction of justice. Let's briefly review the 
grand jury perjury for a minute.
  If you believe Monica Lewinsky, the President lied to the grand jury 
and committed perjury. If you believe her--and I think this one is very 
important, not that they all aren't. There was the web of the 
obstruction that I just described and then there is the grand jury 
perjury on top of it. I told you earlier, perjury and just plain lying 
can be all obstruction of justice as well. But the grand jury part is 
much later. It is after the President had time to really reflect on all 
of this, a long time later.
  If you believe Monica Lewinsky, the President lied to the grand jury 
and committed perjury in denying he had sexual relations with Monica 
Lewinsky even if you accept his interpretation of the Jones court's 
definition of sexual relations. That is really important. There isn't 
anything clearer in the whole darned matter than that. Just look at the 
President's grand jury testimony. And I am not going to go over all of 
that, but it is on pages 93 and 96 of his grand jury testimony. It is 
laid out in this chart which you have in front of you, and I encourage 
you to read every page of it carefully. Specifically, I call your 
attention to the fact--again, I am not going to read all of this--but 
they asked him about touching certain parts of the body that are 
defined in the definition that you have had repeated many times, 
publicly and otherwise. And two of those body parts he acknowledges, 
the breast and genitalia, were in fact part of the definition. And at 
the end of this, and I think this is very important and I am going to 
read it because it is part of his testimony, he answers the question 
that is the compelling bottom line crime. This is where he perjured 
himself above all else.

       You are free to infer that my testimony is that I did not 
     have sexual relations, as I understood this term to be 
     defined.
       Question: Including touching her breasts, kissing her 
     breasts, or touching her genitalia?
       Answer: That's correct.

  In her sworn testimony, Monica Lewinsky described nine incidents of 
which the President touched and kissed her breasts and four incidents 
involving contact with her genitalia. On these matters, Lewinsky's 
testimony is corroborated by the sworn testimony of at least six 
friends and counselors to whom she related these incidents 
contemporaneously.
  Again, if you believe the testimony of Monica Lewinsky, and it 
certainly is credible here--I think it is credible throughout but it is 
certainly credible, with all the corroboration you have got in the 
record--there is nothing clearer in all of this, in all of this you 
have before you, than that the President committed the crime of perjury 
in testifying before the grand jury regarding

[[Page 565]]

the nature and details of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
  On the other hand, there is plenty here to indicate the President 
cleverly created his own narrow definition of sexual relations to 
include only sexual intercourse, absent the explicit definition of the 
court, after he had already lied in responding to the interrogatories 
and other pleadings and perhaps even in the depositions themselves in 
the Jones case. In other words, you are free to deduce that he knew 
full well what most people would include as sexual relations, oral sex 
and the other intimate activities that he was engaged in with Ms. 
Lewinsky, before he contrived his own definition. In that case, you 
don't even have to rely on Monica Lewinsky's testimony to conclude that 
he committed the crime of perjury in testifying before the grand jury 
on the nature of his relationship with her.
  There are other perjurious lies the President's grand jury testimony 
contains regarding the nature and details of his relationship with her. 
I am not going to outline all of those. I want to call your attention 
to one. The President's prepared statement, given under oath, said, ``I 
regret that what began as a friendship came to include this conduct.'' 
You may remember that from Mr. Rogan, I think, yesterday. ``I regret 
that what began as a friendship came to include this conduct.'' That is 
what he said in the grand jury. The evidence indicates that he lied. As 
Ms. Lewinsky testified, her relationship with the President began with 
flirting, including Ms. Lewinsky showing the President her underwear, 
and just a couple of hours later they were kissing and engaging in 
intimacies. That is a little bit more than friendship. He lied when he 
said that to the grand jury.
  Before the grand jury, the President swore that he testified 
truthfully at his deposition. Remember, I told you I was going to come 
back to this. It is important because the grand jury--I mean the Paula 
Jones deposition testimony is relevant to obstruction of justice but it 
is also relevant to the perjury here, because one of the portions of 
the perjury article that you have before us includes this issue of 
lying in the deposition. The perjury in this case is not the lying in 
the deposition, it is the lying to the grand jury about whether he lied 
in the deposition. He didn't have to have committed perjury. We didn't 
send you the perjury count over from the deposition. But if he lied--
lying can be less than perjury. If he lied in the deposition and then 
he told the grand jury that he didn't lie, he committed perjury in 
front of the grand jury.
  The evidence indicates that he did lie. He testified before the grand 
jury that ``my goal in this deposition was to be truthful, but not 
particularly helpful . . . I was determined to walk through the 
minefield of this deposition without violating the law and I believe I 
did.''
  Contrary to this testimony, the President was alone with Ms. Lewinsky 
when she was not delivering papers, which he even conceded in his grand 
jury statement. So he lied in the deposition then when he said he 
wasn't alone with her.
  In the deposition the President swore he could never recall being in 
the Oval Office hallway with Ms. Lewinsky except when she was perhaps 
delivering pizza. The evidence indicates that he lied.
  The President swore in the Jones deposition that he could not recall 
gifts exchanged between Monica Lewinsky and himself. The evidence 
indicates that he lied.
  He swore in the deposition that he did not know whether Monica 
Lewinsky had been served a subpoena to testify in the Jones case at the 
last time that he saw her in December 1997. The evidence indicates that 
he lied.
  In his deposition, the President swore that the last time he spoke to 
Monica Lewinsky was when she stopped by before Christmas 1997 to see 
Betty Currie at a Christmas party. The evidence indicates that he lied.
  In his deposition in the Jones case, the President swore that he 
didn't know that his personal friend, Vernon Jordan, had met with 
Monica Lewinsky and talked about the case. The evidence indicates that 
he lied.
  The President in his Paula Jones deposition indicated that he was 
``not sure'' whether he had ever talked to Monica Lewinsky about the 
possibility that she might be asked to testify in the Jones case. Can 
anybody doubt the evidence indicates that he lied?
  The President in his deposition swore that the contents of the 
affidavit executed by Monica Lewinsky in the Jones case, in which she 
denied they had a sexual relationship, were ``absolutely true.'' The 
evidence indicates that he lied.
  In other words, when the President swore in the grand jury testimony 
that his goal in the Jones deposition was to be truthful but not 
particularly helpful, the evidence is clear that he lied and committed 
the crime of perjury, inasmuch as he had quite intentionally lied on 
numerous occasions in his deposition testimony in the Jones case. His 
intention in that deposition was to be untruthful. That is what it was 
all about, to be untruthful. So he committed the crime of perjury in 
front of the grand jury--big time.
  The third part of article I concerning grand jury perjury relates to 
his not telling the truth about false and misleading statements his 
attorney, Robert Bennett--unintentionally, Mr. Bennett, by the way, but 
nonetheless false and misleading statements--Robert Bennett made to 
Judge Wright during the President's Jones case deposition. We have been 
on that a lot. I don't want to bore you with going over all those 
details again, but this is the third part of the perjury count as well 
as an obstruction of justice count.
  During the President's deposition in the Jones case, Mr. Bennett, 
however unintentional on his part, misled the court when he said, 
``Counsel [counsel for Ms. Jones] is fully aware that Ms. Lewinsky has 
filed, has an affidavit which they are in possession of saying that 
there is no sex of any kind, of any manner shape or form, with 
President Clinton . . .'' Judge Wright, as you recall again, 
interrupted Mr. Bennett and expressed her concern that he might be 
coaching the President to which Mr. Bennett responded, ``in preparation 
of the witness for this deposition, the witness is fully aware of Ms. 
Lewinsky's affidavit, so I have not told him a single thing he doesn't 
know . . .''
  In his grand jury testimony about these statements by Mr. Bennett to 
the judge in the Jones case, the President testified:

       I'm not even sure I paid attention to what he was saying. . 
     . . I didn't pay much attention to this conversation which is 
     why, when you started asking me about this, I asked to see 
     the deposition . . . I don't believe I ever even focused on 
     what Mr. Bennett said in the exact words he did until I 
     started reading this transcript carefully for this hearing. 
     That moment, the whole argument just passed me by.

  In so testifying before the grand jury, the President lied and 
committed the crime of perjury. As you saw yesterday in the video, 
during this portion of that deposition when Mr. Bennett was discussing 
this matter with Judge Wright, the President directly looked at Mr. 
Bennett, paying close attention to his argument to Judge Wright. He 
lied about that to the grand jury. He committed perjury when he said 
that he wasn't paying attention and he didn't know what Mr. Bennett was 
saying.
  Several of the most blatant examples of grand jury perjury are found 
in that portion of his testimony cited in the fourth part, the last 
part of article I which goes to his efforts, the President's efforts, 
to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of 
evidence in the Jones case. The President swore during the grand jury 
testimony that he told Ms. Lewinsky that if the Jones lawyers requested 
the gifts exchanged between them, she should provide them. If you 
believe Monica Lewinsky's testimony, the President lied and committed 
perjury.
  In her grand jury testimony, Ms. Lewinsky discussed in detail the 
December 28 meeting where gifts were discussed which preceded by a 
couple of hours Ms. Currie coming to her apartment and taking the gifts 
and hiding them under a bed. As you recall, she said she raised with 
the President the idea of removing her gifts from her

[[Page 566]]

house and giving them to somebody like Betty Currie and that his 
response was something to the effect of, ``Let me think about that.''
  She went on to say that from everything he said to her, they were not 
going to do anything but keep these gifts private. In a separate sworn 
statement, she testified she was never under the impression from 
anything the President said that she should turn over the gifts to the 
Jones attorneys, and obviously she didn't have the idea that she should 
do that because she gave them all to Betty Currie to hide under the 
bed.
  When the President told the grand jurors that he was simply trying to 
``refresh'' his recollection when he made a series of statements to 
Betty Currie the day after his deposition, he lied and committed 
perjury. As I have already pointed out to you today, the evidence is 
compelling that those statements, such as ``I was never really alone 
with Monica, right?'' were made to try to influence Betty Currie's 
possible testimony, so that she would corroborate his cover stories and 
other false statements and lies that he had given the previous day in 
the Jones deposition, if she was called as a witness.
  If you conclude that these series of statements constitute witness 
tampering and obstruction of justice, then you must also conclude that 
the President committed perjury when he asserted that the sole purpose 
of these statements to Betty Currie was to ``refresh'' his 
recollection. You have to. Even if you were to buy the President's 
counsel's suggestion these statements might have been made to influence 
her in order for her to corroborate him, not in actual testimony in a 
court case but with the press, which they have said again to us--I 
don't know if they will say it to you--you would still conclude he was 
lying when he said that this was simply only to refresh his own 
recollection.
  In the context of all of this, the idea that he was refreshing his 
recollection by firing off these declarative statements doesn't make 
sense. It just doesn't make sense. If you read the statements and think 
about them on their face, they are inherently inconsistent with 
refreshing his recollection.
  Also, the President told the grand jury that the things he told his 
top aides about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky may have been 
misleading but they were true. If you believe the aides testified 
truthfully to the grand jury about what the President told them about 
his relationship, the President told them many falsehoods, absolute 
falsehoods. So when the President described them under oath to the 
grand jury as truths, he lied and committed the crime of perjury.
  One example of this comes from Deputy Chief John Podesta in his 
testimony before the grand jury on January 23 that the President 
explicitly told him that he and Monica Lewinsky had not had oral sex. 
Another is Sidney Blumenthal. His testimony was that on January 23 the 
President told him that Monica Lewinsky ``came at me and made a sexual 
demand on me'' and that he rebuffed her. And also Blumenthal's 
testimony that the President told him that Lewinsky threatened him and 
said that she would tell people that they had had an affair and that 
she was known as a stalker among her peers.
  In short, the President lied numerous times before the grand jury, my 
colleagues; he lied numerous times under oath last August 17. He 
committed perjury numerous times under oath. He certainly wasn't caught 
by surprise by any of this, by any of the questions that were asked him 
during the grand jury appearance, and he was given a lot of latitude. 
He was given latitude normally that grand jury witnesses don't have--to 
give a prepared statement, to have his counsel present, to refuse to 
answer questions without taking the fifth amendment.
  It is hard to imagine a case where it is clear that the lies meet the 
threshold of the crime of perjury. But I will leave the discussion of 
the elements and the law to the next group that is going to come up 
here.
  The facts are clear that the President lied about having sexual 
relations with Monica Lewinsky even under his understanding of the 
definition of the Jones case if you believe Monica.
  He lied when he said he gave truthful testimony in his Jones 
deposition.
  He lied when he said he wasn't paying attention to his attorney's 
discussion of Monica Lewinsky's false affidavit during his deposition 
in the Jones case.
  He lied when he said he told Monica Lewinsky she should turn over the 
gifts to the Jones lawyers if they asked for them.
  He lied when he told the grand jury that he made the declaratory 
statements to Betty Currie to refresh his recollection.
  And he lied when he told the grand jury that he only told the truth 
to his White House aides, such as John Podesta who testified the 
President told him he had not had oral sex with Lewinsky, and to Sidney 
Blumenthal who testified he told him very exaggerated and highly untrue 
characterizations of Monica Lewinsky's role in all of this.
  These impeachment proceedings aren't before you because of one or two 
lies about a sexual relationship. This is not about sex. This is about 
obstruction of justice. This is about a pattern. This is about a 
scheme. This is about a lot of lies. This is about a lot of perjury. 
They are before you because the President lied again and again in a 
perjurious fashion to a grand jury and tried to get a number of people, 
other people, to lie under oath in the Jones lawsuit and to the grand 
jury and encouraged the concealment of evidence.
  In a couple of days the President's lawyers are going to have their 
chance to talk to you, and I suspect they will try to get you to focus 
on 10, 15, or 20 or 30, maybe even 100 specific little details. They 
are going to argue that these details don't square with some of the 
facts about this presentation. But I would encourage you never to lose 
sight of the totality of this scheme to lie and obstruct justice; never 
lose sight of the big picture. Don't lose sight of the forest for the 
trees. It is easy to do because there are a lot of facts in this case.
  I suggest you avoid considering any of this stuff in isolation and 
treating it separately. The evidence and the testimony needs to be 
viewed as a whole. The weight, we call it in law--and you are going to 
hear that in a few minutes--the weight of the evidence in this case is 
very great, it is huge in its volume, that the President engaged in a 
scheme starting in December 1997 to conceal from the court in the Jones 
case his true relationship with Monica Lewinsky and then cover up his 
acts of concealment which he had to know by that time were serious 
crimes.
  The case against the President rests to a great extent on whether or 
not you believe Monica Lewinsky. But it is also based on the sworn 
testimony of Vernon Jordan, Betty Currie, Sidney Blumenthal, John 
Podesta, and corroborating witnesses. Time and again, the President 
says one thing and they say something entirely different. Time and 
again, somebody is not telling the truth. And time and again, an 
analysis of the context, the motivation, and all of the testimony taken 
together with common sense says it is the President who is not telling 
the truth. But if you have serious doubts about the truthfulness of any 
of these witnesses, I, again, as all my colleagues do, encourage you to 
bring them in here. Let's examine Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan, Betty 
Currie and the other key witnesses, let you examine the testimony, 
invite the President to come, judge for yourself their credibility.
  But on the record, the weight of the evidence, taken from what we 
have given you today, what you can read in all of these books back 
here, everything taken together is huge that the President lied. It is 
refutable, but it is not refutable if somebody doesn't come in here 
besides just making an argument.
  I don't know what the witnesses will say, but I assume if they are 
consistent, they'll say the same that's in here. But you have a chance 
to determine whether they are telling the truth. The only way you will 
ever know that, other than just accepting it if you think the evidence 
and the weight

[[Page 567]]

is that huge--and it may be--is by looking them in the eye and 
determining their credibility.
  I believe that when you finish hearing and weighing all of the 
evidence, you will conclude, as I have, that William Jefferson Clinton 
committed the crimes of obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and 
perjury, that these in this case are high crimes and misdemeanors, that 
he has done grave damage to our system of justice, and leaving him in 
office would do more, and that he should be removed from office as 
President of the United States.
  Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes the majority leader.


                                 Recess

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, I ask unanimous consent that there now 
be a recess in the proceedings for 15 minutes. Please return to your 
positions within 15 minutes.
  There being no objection, at 2:11 p.m., the Senate recessed until 
2:30 p.m.; whereupon, the Senate reassembled when called to order by 
the Chief Justice.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes the majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, as all Senators return to the Chamber, I 
believe now we are going to go to a segment where we will hear from 
three of the managers, including Congressmen Gekas, Chabot, and Cannon, 
and then we will take another break shortly after 3:30.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes Mr. Manager Gekas.
  Mr. Manager GEKAS. Mr. Chief Justice, counsel for the President, my 
colleagues from the House, and Members of the Senate, up to now you 
have been fully informed of the state of the record in this case in 
many different ways, in very many different tonalities uttered by the 
managers, who so magnificently, in my judgment, wove the story that 
began in 1997 and has not ended yet.
  But the narrative that the managers were able to produce for you and 
put on the record has met, even as we speak, with commentary in the 
public that ``we have all known all of this before.'' The big 
difference is that now it is part of the history of the country. It is 
lodged in the records of the Senate of the United States. And together 
with the Congressional Record of the proceedings that preceded these in 
the House, we now have the dawning of the final chapters of this 
particular incident involving the President, in which you will have the 
final word. But that is what the importance is of what you have heard 
up until now--the complete record woven together, step by step, so that 
no one in this Chamber at this juncture does not know all the facts 
that are pertinent to this case. That is a magnificent accomplishment 
on the part of the managers.
  But the record is not yet complete, and that is where I and 
Representative Chabot, Representative Cannon, and Representative Barr 
come in, so that now we can take the next step in fulfillment of the 
record, and that is, to try to apply the statutory laws, the laws of 
our Nation as they obtain to the facts that you now have well ingrained 
into your consciences. To do that, we have to repeat some of the facts. 
Some of these matters overlap, and just as you have given your 
attention to the matters at hand up until now, your undivided attention 
is needed continuously.
  For instance, we cannot discuss even the application of these 
statutes to the facts unless we repeat the series of events that 
catapulted us to this moment in history. And we must begin, as you have 
heard countless times now on and off this floor, in my judgment, with 
the Supreme Court of the United States, with all due deference to the 
Chief Justice, because the Supreme Court at one point in this saga 
determined in a suit brought by Paula Jones that indeed an average, 
day-to-day, ordinary citizen of our Nation would have the right to have 
a day in court, as it were, even against the President of the United 
States. It is there that all of this began.
  That fellow American, Paula Jones--no matter how she may have been 
described by commentators and pundits and talking heads, et cetera--did 
have a bundle of rights at her command. Those rights went into the core 
of our system of justice to bring the President into the case as a 
defendant. That is an awesome and grand result of the Supreme Court 
decision at that juncture. This is what is being overlooked, in my 
judgment, as we pursue what we believe. If perjury indeed was 
committed--and the record is replete that it in fact was--and if indeed 
obstruction of justice was finally committed by the President of the 
United States--as the evidence abundantly demonstrates--then we must 
apply the rights of Paula Jones to what has transpired.
  We are not saying that the President--even though the weight of the 
evidence demonstrates it amply--should be convicted of the impeachment 
which has brought us to this floor just because he committed perjury or 
obstructed justice, but because as a result of his actions both in 
rendering falsehoods under oath, as the evidence demonstrates amply, or 
in obstructing justice, that because of his conduct, he attempted to, 
or succeeded in, or almost succeeded in--it doesn't matter which of 
these results finally emerges--and attempted to destroy the rights of a 
fellow American citizen. That is what the gravamen of all that has 
occurred up to now really is.
  In attempting to obstruct justice, we mean by that obstructing the 
justice of whom? It was an attempt, a bold attempt, one that succeeded 
in some respects, to obstruct the justice sought by a fellow American 
citizen. That is heavy. That is soul searching in its quality. That 
goes beyond those who would say, ``He committed perjury about sex. So 
what?'' That goes beyond saying that, ``This is just about sex. So 
what? Everybody lies about sex.'' But when you combine all the features 
of the actions of the President of the United States and you see that 
they are funneled and tunneled and aimed and targeted toward 
obliterating from the landscape the rights of Paula Jones, a fellow 
American citizen, then you must take a second look at your own 
assertion that, ``So what? It's just a question of fact about sex.''
  Many of the Members of this Chamber and others have already 
acknowledged that the President has lied under oath. But then they are 
quick to add, ``So what?'' which is so disturbing in view of the 
results of what has happened in this case.
  Before the House of Representatives, as part of our record, we had a 
group of academicians, professors, testifying. Professor Higgenbotham--
who, sadly I must relate, has passed away since his appearance--was 
trying to show how futile it was for us to even attempt to append 
perjury to an indictable, prosecutable offense, and that nowhere in the 
country is it prosecuted regularly, and that it is so trivial because 
it is based on sex. He went on to give an example of how trivial it is. 
I am paraphrasing it, but he said: Would you expect to indict the 
President of the United States for perjury if he lied about a 55-mile-
an-hour speed limit, even though he was going 56? If he would say, ``I 
was only going 51,'' would you indict him on that?
  In the repertoire that I had with him at that juncture, I asked him 
would he feel the same if as a result of that perjurious testimony 
about only going 51 miles an hour if there was a victim in the case, 
that this might be a tort case, an involuntarily case, a negligence 
case in which someone died as a result of an automobile accident case, 
and the issue at hand would be the speed limit, would he feel the same 
way if as a result of the perjury committed as to the rate of speed, 
that someone's rights were erased in the case by virtue of that 
perjury, the gentleman acknowledged that that made a difference.
  That is what the difference is here. The perjury per se, that being a 
phrase that we lawyers can adopt, the perjury per se is almost a given 
pursuant to the commentaries that we have heard from the people in and 
out of that Chamber. But when you add to it the terrible consequences 
of seeing a fellow citizen pursuing justice thwarted, stopped in her 
tracks as it were by reason of the actions of the President, that is 
what the core issue here is.

[[Page 568]]

  To take it, then, from the status of what consequence it had to that 
fellow American citizen to the next step is, in my judgment, an issue--
to go to the determination of whether or not there was an impeachable 
offense--my colleagues will show you how the law of perjury and the law 
of obstruction of justice relates to this pattern of factual 
circumstance that we bring to you. But in the meantime we must recount, 
even at the risk of overlapping some of the testimony, that following 
the initial recognition by the President that there was going to be a 
witness list and that Monica Lewinsky would eventually appear as she 
did on that witness list. This occurred, which is little examined thus 
far in the world of the scandal in which we are all participants, and 
that is this: The first item of business on the part of the Jones 
lawyers in pursuing the rights of Paula Jones was to issue a set of 
interrogatories, a discovery procedure that is well recognized in our 
courts all over the land, that a set of interrogatories arrived at the 
President's desk.
  At this juncture--this is way before the President appeared at the 
deposition about which you know everything now. The facts have been 
related to you in a hundred different ways and you know that pretty 
well. I know you do. But did you know, can you fasten your attention 
for a moment knowing that this happened at the deposition on a month 
before, on December 23rd, 1997, when the President had in front of him 
interrogatories that asked did he ever have sexual relations with 
anyone other than his spouse during the time that he was Governor of 
Arkansas or President of the United States, and there the President 
answered--or I think that the interrogatory stated, Name any persons 
with whom you have had sexual relations other than your wife. And the 
answer that the President rendered in those interrogatories under oath 
was none.
  I say to the ladies and gentleman of the Senate that this was the 
first falsehood stated under oath which became a chain reaction of 
falsehoods under oath, and even without the oath, all the way to the 
nuclear explosion of falsehoods that were uttered in the grand jury in 
August of 1998.
  This little innocuous piece of paper called interrogatories was 
placed before the President presumably with or without counsel. Let's 
even presume with counsel. And it was a straight question, not with any 
definitions, no confusing colloquy between a judge and a gaggle of 
lawyers, no interpretation being put on any particular word in the 
interrogatories, but whether or not sexual relations had been urged or 
participated in by the President of the United States, and the answer 
was none in naming those persons.
  What does that mean to you? What does that not mean to you, that when 
confronted right at the outset with the phrase ``sexual relations'' 
that the President adopted and determined the common usage, well-
understood definition of sexual relations that everybody in America 
recognizes as being the true meaning of sexual relations, meaning sex 
of any kind. Did not the President answer that under the common 
understanding that all of us entertain when we discuss, more so in the 
last year than ever before in our lives, the phrase ``sexual 
relations''? To me that is a telling feature of this case because when 
you leap over that and get to the depositions and everything that the 
President might have said in those depositions, as his counsel have 
repeatedly asserted to us was true, that he did not lie, that he did 
not commit perjury, that he did not evade the truth, that some of it, 
puzzling to them even, but it did not amount to perjury, can they say 
about that the statement one month before on December 23rd in 
interrogatories?
  That is extremely important. That is my recollection. Yours is the 
one that will have to predominate, of course.
  But the weight that I put on it, I urge you to at least evaluate as 
you begin to level your weight on the evidence that has been presented.
  If that were not enough, on January 15th, again before the 
deposition, another interrogatory--this one a request for documents--
was submitted to the President, and again the question there was--you 
will see it in the record; it is in the record--the request of 
documents says to submit anything that pertained to Monica Lewinsky, 
the intern or employee, Monica Lewinsky, of whatever description--
notes, gifts, whatever, and the President in that particular instance 
again said none. I am willing to give the President a reasonable doubt 
on that and even ask you if you do not place as much weight on it as I 
do to forget all about that. But the point is that these assertions 
under oath were made before the Jones deposition was ever even 
conceived, let alone undertaken on January 17th.
  So he cannot, the President cannot use the lawyer talk and judge 
banter and the descriptions and definitions of sexual relations to 
cloud the answers that he gave at that time, and all of this in the 
continuous effort to destroy the rights of Paula Jones, a fellow 
American citizen.
  That brings up the question. If someone, a member of your family, or 
someone who is a witness to these proceedings has a serious case in 
which one's self, one's property, one's family has been severely 
damaged, would you suffer without a whimper perjurious testimony given 
against you? Would you, knowing down deep that at the end of the day it 
had caused you to lose your chance at retribution and a chance to be 
compensated for damages, to restore your family life?
  Isn't that what our system is all about? Isn't that what the adverse 
consequence is of the attempt to obliterate the Paula Jones civil suit?
  That is what it is, not that he committed perjury. So what? It is 
what the end result of that perjury might be that you should weigh. 
Skip over the fact that he committed perjury. We all acknowledge that 
it is said. But now tell me what that does to Paula Jones, or 
potentially could do to Paula Jones, or to one of you, or to one of 
your spouses, or to one of the members of your community who wants to 
have justice done in the courts.
  Obstruction of justice is obstruction of justice to an individual, to 
a family. You can take it from Paula Jones and telescope it upward to 
every community, in every courthouse, and every State and every 
community in our land, and there is a Paula Jones eager to assert 
certain rights and then confronted with someone who would tear it down 
by false testimony, by lies under oath.
  That is what the gravamen of all this really is.
  One more thing. The counsel for the President have repeatedly and 
very authoritatively, professionally, have asserted, as many of you 
have, that this is not an impeachable offense, for after all, they say, 
an impeachable offense is one in which there is a direct attack on the 
system of government; not perjury, not obstruction of justice.
  So what, on those, they imply. They say it does not--perjury, 
especially about sex--attack the system of Government. I must tell you 
that as an 8- or 9- or 10-year-old, I would accompany my mother to 
naturalization school three or four nights a week where my mother was 
intent on learning the English language and learning about the history 
of the United States, as the teachers for naturalization were preparing 
these prospective citizens, and she was so proud that she learned that 
the first President of the United States was George Washington, was 
prepared to answer that question if it was posed to her in 
naturalization court, and she was so proud when I was testing her, 
preparing. Each time I would say, ``Mom, what are the three branches of 
Government?'' And she would say, ``The `Exec' and the `legislate' and 
the `judish,' '' in her wonderful, lovable accent. She knew the system 
of Government. And she did have to answer that in naturalization court. 
And she knew that one wall of the creed that protects our rights is the 
``judish.'' She knew that the courthouse and the rights of citizens 
which are advanced in that courthouse are the system of Government. Can 
anyone say that purposely attempting to destroy someone's case in the 
courthouse is not an attack on the system of Government of our country?
  Mr. Chabot will elucidate on perjury.

[[Page 569]]

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes Mr. Manager Chabot.
  Mr. Manager CHABOT. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, distinguished 
counsel for the President, I am Steve Chabot. I represent the First 
District of Ohio. Prior to my election to Congress, I practiced law in 
Cincinnati for about 15 years. As I stand before you today, I must 
admit that I feel a long way away from that small neighborhood law 
practice that I had. Though, while this arena may be somewhat foreign 
to me, the law remains the same. As one of the managers who represents 
the House, I am here to summarize the law of perjury. While today's 
discussion of the law may not be as captivating as yesterday's 
discussion of the facts, it is nevertheless essential that we 
thoroughly review the law as we move forward in this historic process. 
I will try to lay out the law of perjury as succinctly as I can without 
using an extraordinary amount of the Senate's time but beg you to 
indulge me.
  In the United States Criminal Code, there are two perjury offenses. 
The offenses are found in sections 1621 and 1623 of title 18 of the 
United States Criminal Code. Section 1621 is the broad perjury statute 
which makes it a Federal offense to knowingly and willfully make a 
false statement about a material matter while under oath. Section 1623 
is the more specific perjury statute which makes it a Federal offense 
to knowingly make a false statement about a material matter while under 
oath before a Federal court or before a Federal grand jury.
  It is a well-settled rule that when two criminal statutes overlap, 
the Government may charge a defendant under either one. As you know, 
the President's false statements covered in the first impeachment 
article were made before a Federal grand jury. Therefore, section 1623 
is the most relevant statute. However, section 1621 is applicable as 
well.
  The elements of perjury. There are four general elements of perjury. 
They are an oath, an intent, falsity, and materiality. I would like to 
walk you through each of those elements at this time.
  First, the oath.
  The oath need not be administered in a particular form, but it must 
be administered by a person or body legally authorized to do so. In 
this case, there has been no serious challenge made about the 
legitimacy of the oath administered to the President either in his 
civil deposition in the Jones v. Clinton case or before the Federal 
grand jury. Let's, once again, witness President Clinton swearing to 
tell the truth before a Federal grand jury.
  (Videotape presentation.)
  The oath element has clearly been satisfied in this case.
  The next element is intent. To this day, the President has refused to 
acknowledge what the vast majority of Americans know to be true--that 
he knowingly lied under oath. The President's continued inability to 
tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has forced 
this body, this jury, to determine the President's true intent.
  The intent element requires that the false testimony was knowingly 
stated and described. This requirement is generally satisfied by proof 
that the defendant knew his testimony was false at the time it was 
provided. As with almost all perjury cases, you will have to make a 
decision regarding the President's knowledge of his own false 
statements based on the surrounding facts and, yes, by circumstantial 
evidence. This does not in any way weaken the case against the 
President. In the absence of an admission by the defendant, relying on 
circumstantial evidence is virtually the only way to prove the crime of 
perjury.
  The Federal jury instructions which Federal courts use in perjury 
cases can provide helpful guidance in understanding what is meant by 
the requirement that the false statement must be made knowingly. Let me 
quote from the Federal jury instructions:

       When the word ``knowingly'' is used, it means that the 
     defendant realized what he was doing and was aware of the 
     nature of his conduct, and did not act through ignorance, 
     mistake or accident.

  So as you reflect on the President's carefully calculated statements, 
remember the Federal jury instructions and ask a few simple questions: 
Did the President realize what he was doing, what he was saying? Was he 
aware of the nature of his conduct or did the President simply act 
through ignorance, mistake or accident?
  The answers to these questions are undeniably clear even to the 
President's own attorneys. In fact, Mr. Ruff and Mr. Craig testified 
before the Judiciary Committee that the President willfully misled the 
court. Let's listen to Mr. Ruff.
  (Text of videotape presentation:)

       Mr. Ruff. I'm going to respond to your question. I have no 
     doubt that he walked up to a line that he thought he 
     understood reasonable people--and you maybe have reached this 
     conclusion--could determine that he crossed over that line 
     and that what for him was truthful but misleading or 
     nonresponsive and misleading or evasive was in fact false.

  In an extraordinary admission, the President's own attorney has 
acknowledged the care, the intention, the will of the President to say 
precisely what he said.
  The President's actions speak volumes about his intent to make false 
statements under oath. For example, the President called his secretary, 
Betty Currie, within hours of concluding his civil deposition and asked 
her to come to the White House the following day. President Clinton 
then recited false characterizations to her about his relationship with 
Ms. Lewinsky. As you have already heard, Ms. Currie testified that the 
President made the following statements to her:

       You were always there when she was there, right? We were 
     never really alone. You could see and hear everything. Monica 
     came on to me, and I never touched her, right? She wanted to 
     have sex with me, and I can't do that.

  This is not the conduct of someone who believed he had testified 
truthfully. It is not the conduct of someone who acted through 
ignorance, mistake or accident. Rather, it is the conduct of someone 
who lied, knew he had lied, and needed others to modify their stories 
accordingly.
  Finally, it is painstakingly clear during the President's grand jury 
testimony that he, again, knows exactly what he is doing. Let's again 
watch the following excerpt from that testimony.
  (Text of videotape presentation:)

       . . . was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?
       A It depends on what the meaning of the word ``is'' is.

  In this instance, and in many others that have been presented to you 
over the last 2 days, the facts and the law speak plainly.
  The President's actions and demeanor make the case that President 
Clinton knowingly and willfully lied under oath in a grand jury 
proceeding and in a civil deposition. The compelling evidence in this 
case satisfies the intent element required under both sections 1621 and 
1623 of the Federal Criminal Code.
  The next element, falsity. The next element of perjury is falsity. In 
order for perjury to occur in this case, the President must have made 
one or more false statements. Yesterday my colleagues went through the 
evidence on this matter in great detail and clearly demonstrated that 
the President did, in fact, make false statements while under oath. 
Because of the evidence that was presented to date, without question 
the President's falsity and his false statements have been shown, so I 
am going to move forward to the final element of perjury, which is 
materiality.
  The test for whether a statement is material, as stated by the 
Supreme Court in Kungys v. United States, is simply whether it had a 
``natural tendency to influence'' or was ``capable of influencing'' the 
official proceeding. The law also makes clear that the false statement 
does not have to actually impede the grand jury's investigation for the 
statement to be material.
  The law regarding the materiality of false statements before a grand 
jury is very straightforward. Because a grand jury's authority to 
investigate is broad, the realm of declarations regarded as material is 
broad. The President's false statements to the grand

[[Page 570]]

jury were material because the grand jury was investigating whether the 
President had obstructed justice and committed perjury in a civil 
deposition.
  Now let's look at potential legal smokescreens. The President's 
attorneys will try to distract you from the relevant law and facts in 
this case. To help you stay focused on the law, I would like to preview 
some of the arguments that may be made by the President's attorneys.
  Legal smokescreen No. 1, the Bronston case. You will probably hear 
opposing counsel argue that the President did not technically commit 
perjury, and appeal to the case of Bronston v. United States. This is a 
legal smokescreen. In the Bronston case, the Supreme Court held that 
statements that are literally truthful and nonresponsive cannot by 
themselves form the basis for a perjury conviction. This is the 
cornerstone of the President's defense. However, the Court also held 
that the unresponsive statements must be technically true in order to 
prevent a perjury conviction; such statements must not be capable of 
being conclusively proven false.
  As we have seen, none of the President's perjurious statements before 
the grand jury, covered in the first impeachment article, are 
technically true. So, when the President's counsel cites the Bronston 
case, remember the facts. Ask yourselves, are the President's answers 
literally true? And remember, to be literally true they must actually 
be true.
  It is also important to note that, consistent with the Bronston case, 
the response, ``I don't recall,'' is not technically true if the 
President actually could recall. The factual record in the case, 
consisting of multiple sworn statements contradicting the President's 
testimony and highly specific corroborating evidence, demonstrates that 
the President's statements were not literally true or legally accurate. 
On the contrary, the record establishes that the President repeatedly 
lied, he repeatedly deceived, he repeatedly feigned forgetfulness.
  There are other clear and important limitations on the Bronston 
case's scope. In United States v. DeZarn, handed down just 3 months ago 
by the 6th circuit court of appeals, the court made an important ruling 
that is directly on point in this case. The court of appeals stated:

       Because we believe that the crime of perjury depends not 
     only upon the clarity of the questioning itself, but also 
     upon the knowledge and reasonable understanding of the 
     testifier [President Clinton] as to what is meant by the 
     questioning, we hold that a defendant may be found guilty of 
     perjury if a jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt from 
     the evidence presented that the defendant knew what the 
     question meant and gave knowingly untruthful and materially 
     misleading answers in response.

  The Bronston case has further limitations. For example, in United 
States v. Swindall, the court held that the jury can convict for 
perjury even if the questions or statements involved are capable of 
multiple interpretations where only one interpretation is reasonable 
under the circumstances surrounding their utterances.
  In United States v. Doherty, the court held that the prosecution for 
perjury is not barred under Bronston, ``whenever some ambiguity can be 
found by an implausibly strained reading of the question'' posed. I 
would submit to this body that ``implausibly strained reading of the 
question'' posed is precisely what confronts us time and again in the 
case of the President before the grand jury.
  Legal smokescreen No. 2, the two-witness rule. In the coming days you 
may hear opposing counsel argue that the President did not commit 
perjury by appealing to the so-called two-witness rule. Again, this is 
nothing but a legal smokescreen. This common law rule requires that 
there be either two witnesses to a perjurious statement or, in the 
alternative, that there be one witness and corroborating evidence of 
the perjury. Opposing counsel may suggest that, because there were not 
two witnesses present for some of the President's false statements, he 
did not technically commit perjury. Such an appeal to the two-witness 
rule is wrong for several reasons.
  First, the two-witness rule is not applicable under section 1623, 
only under 1621. The language of 1623 expressly provides, ``it shall 
not be necessary that such proof be made by any particular number of 
witnesses or by documentary or other type of evidence.''
  Congress passed section 1623 back in 1970 to eliminate the two-
witness requirement and to facilitate the prosecution of perjury and 
enhance the reliability of testimony before Federal courts and Federal 
grand juries. The legislative history establishes this as the 
fundamental purpose of the statute.
  Additionally, substantial evidence has been presented over the last 2 
days to satisfy the requirements of the two-witness rule under section 
1621. Remember, when the two-witness rule applies, it does not actually 
require two witnesses. Indeed, it requires either two witnesses or one 
witness and corroborating evidence. As you know, there is a witness to 
each and every one of the President's false statements and there is 
voluminous evidence which corroborates the falsehood of his statements.
  Finally, case law tells us that the two-witness rule is not 
applicable under certain circumstances, when the defendant falsely 
claims an inability to recall a material matter.
  Another possible legal smokescreen, the drafting of article I, 
article I being the first article of impeachment.
  As you know, impeachment article I says:

       Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully 
     provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the 
     grand
     jury . . .

  You may hear opposing counsel argue that section 1621 is the only 
applicable statute because the article of impeachment accuses the 
President of willfully committing perjury. This is another legal 
smokescreen.
  Following that reasoning, one could just as easily make the argument 
that 1623 was contemplated here because the term ``false'' does not 
appear in 1621 but does appear in 1623. However, that is not the point. 
The point is that the language of the impeachment article did not use 
these terms as terms of art as they are defined and used in various 
criminal statutes.
  While the article of impeachment does not draw a distinction between 
the standards, evidence has been presented over the last 2 days that 
demonstrates that the President did knowingly and willfully lie under 
oath regarding material matters before a grand jury, and that satisfies 
both 1623 and 1621.
  Again, in the context of perjury law, the distinction between a 
knowing falsehood and a willful falsehood is almost a distinction 
without a difference. In American Surety Company v. Sullivan, the 
Second Circuit stated that ``the word `willful,' even in a criminal 
statute, means no more than the person charged with the duty knows what 
he is doing.''
  So that, in essence, is the law of perjury.
  Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the Senate, throughout this long and 
difficult process, apologists for the President have maintained that 
his actions might well have been reprehensible but are not necessarily 
worthy of impeachment and removal from office. I submit, however, that 
telling the truth under oath is critically important to our judicial 
system and that perjury, of which I believe a compelling case is being 
made, strikes a terrible blow against the machinery of justice in this 
country.
  The President of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer 
of this land, lied under oath. He raised his right hand and he swore to 
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then he 
lied. Pure and simple.
  Why is perjury such a serious offense? Under the American system of 
justice, our courts are charged with seeking the truth. Every day, 
American citizens raise their right hands in courtrooms across the 
country and take an oath to tell the truth. Breaking that oath cripples 
our justice system. By lying under oath, the President did not just 
commit perjury, an offense punishable under our criminal

[[Page 571]]

code, but he chipped away at the very cornerstone of our judicial 
system.
  The first Chief Justice of the United States of the Supreme Court, 
John Jay, eloquently stated why perjury is so dangerous over 200 years 
ago. On June 25, 1792, in a charge to the grand jury of the Circuit 
Court for the District of Vermont, the Chief Justice said:

       Independent of the abominable Insult which Perjury offers 
     to the divine Being, there is no Crime more extensively 
     pernicious to Society. It discolours and poisons Streams of 
     Justice, and by substituting Falsehood for Truth, saps the 
     Foundations of personal and public Rights--Controversies of 
     various kinds exist at all Times, and in all Communities. To 
     decide them, Courts of Justice are instituted--their 
     Decisions must be regulated by Evidence, and the greater part 
     of Evidence will always consist of the Testimony of 
     witnesses. This Testimony is given under those solemn 
     obligations which an appeal to the God of Truth impose; and 
     if oaths should cease to be held sacred, our dearest and most 
     valuable Rights would become insecure.

  Why has the President been impeached by the U.S. House of 
Representatives? Why is he on trial here today in the U.S. Senate? 
Because he lied under oath. Because he committed perjury. Because if 
the oaths cease to be held sacred, our dearest and most valuable rights 
will become insecure.
  During the course of this trial, Members of this distinguished body, 
the jurors in this case, will have to consider the law and the facts 
very carefully. It is a daunting task and an awesome responsibility, 
one that cannot be taken lightly. I humbly suggest to those sitting in 
judgment of the President that we must all weigh the impact of our 
actions, not only on our beloved Nation today, but on American history. 
It is my belief that if the actions of the President are ultimately 
disregarded or minimized, we will be sending a sorry message to the 
American people that the President of the United States is above the 
law. We will be sending a message to our children, to my children, that 
telling the truth doesn't really matter if you have a good lawyer or 
you are an exceptionally skilled liar. That would be tragic.
  Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, let us instead send a message to the 
American people and to the boys and girls who will be studying American 
history in the years to come that no person is above the law and that 
this great Nation remains an entity governed by the rule of law. Let us 
do what is right. Let us do what is just. Thank you.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes Mr. Manager Cannon.
  Mr. Manager CANNON. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, distinguished 
counsel of the President, my name is Chris Cannon. I represent Utah's 
Third Congressional District.
  John Locke once said, ``Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.'' And 
speaking to our American experience, Teddy Roosevelt added, ``No man is 
above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's 
permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is 
demanded as a right; not as a favor.''
  This case is about the violation of law. My task is to clarify what 
the law states pertaining to obstruction of justice and what legal 
precedent is applicable to the charges against William Jefferson 
Clinton.
  While both the laws and the violations in this case are clear and 
direct, the presentation I am about to make will not be simple. I ask 
your indulgence and attention as I walk you through case history and 
statutory elements. I promise to be brief--probably less than a half-
hour--and direct.
  I will present the legal underpinnings of the law of obstruction of 
justice. You should have before you the full text of this speech, 
including full citations to cases and copies of the charts I will use 
in this presentation.
  Article II of the articles of impeachment alleges that the President 
prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, both 
personally and through his subordinates and agents, and that he did so 
as part of a pattern designed to delay, impede, cover up, and conceal 
the existence of evidence and testimony related to a Federal civil 
rights action brought against him.
  Article II specifies seven separate instances in which the President 
acted to obstruct justice. The House believes the evidence in this case 
proves that each of the seven separate acts which comprise the 
President's scheme constitutes obstruction of justice.
  I would like to draw your attention at this time to the chart on my 
right, and the first page in your packet, which depicts elements of 
section 1503:

       (a) Whoever . . . corruptly . . . influences, obstructs or 
     impedes; or endeavors to influence, obstruct or impede, the 
     due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided 
     in subsection (b).
       (b) The punishment for an offense under this section is . . 
     .
       (3) . . . imprisonment for not more than 10 years, a fine 
     under this title, or both.

  Section 1503 is often referred to as the general obstruction statute. 
It describes obstruction simply as an impact on the due administration 
of justice.
  Section 1503 deems it criminal to use force or threats, or to 
otherwise act corruptly, in order to influence, obstruct, or impede the 
due administration of justice.
  Federal court rulings clarify that it is not necessary for a 
defendant to succeed in obstructing justice. Again, I direct your 
attention to the chart, or the accompanying chart, in your package.
  Russell and Aguilar each ruled that it is not necessary that a 
defendant's endeavor succeed for him to have violated the law. Rather, 
simply attempting to influence, obstruct, or impede the due 
administration of justice violates the statute.
  Maggitt clearly stated, ``it is the endeavor to bring about a 
forbidden result and not the success in actually achieving the result, 
that is forbidden.''
  For the Government to prove a section 1503 crime, it must demonstrate 
that the defendant acted with intent. This can be shown through use of 
force, threats by the defendant, or by simply showing that the 
defendant acted ``corruptly.'' The following chart gives three case 
histories regarding the term ``acting corruptly.''
  Haldeman and Sprecher held that a defendant acts corruptly by having 
an evil or improper purpose or intent.
  Barfield defined ``acting corruptly'' as knowingly and intentionally 
acting in order to encourage obstruction.
  Sprecher also ruled the Government need not prove the actual intent 
of the defendant, but, rather, the intent to act corruptly can be 
inferred from that proof that the defendant knew corrupt actions would 
obstruct the justice being administered.
  Under section 1503, the Government must also prove that the defendant 
endeavored to influence, obstruct or impede the due administration of 
justice. The statute is broadly applicable to all phases of judicial 
proceedings.
  Brenson described due administration of justice as ``providing a 
protective cloak over all judicial proceedings, regardless of the stage 
in which the improper activity occurs.''
  Section 1503 is also intended to protect the discovery phase of a 
judicial proceeding, stating that the phrase ``due administration of 
justice'' is intended to provide a ``free and fair opportunity to every 
litigant in a pending case in Federal court to learn what he may learn 
. . . concerning the material facts and to exercise his option as to 
introducing testimony of such facts.''
  The House believes that the facts of this case make it very clear 
that the President did, corruptly, impair the ability of a litigant in 
Federal court to learn all of the facts that she was entitled to learn. 
In doing so, the President committed obstruction of justice under 
section 1503.
  The other Federal crime which the President committed was witness 
tampering under section 1512 of title 18. Again, I refer you to the 
chart on my right, and to the second page in the package, which depicts 
the elements of the section.

       (b) Whoever knowingly . . . corruptly persuades another 
     person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading 
     conduct toward another person, with intent to--
       (1) influence, delay or prevent the testimony of any person 
     in an official proceeding; or
       (2) cause or induce any person to--
       (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a . . . document . . . 
     or an object . . . from an official proceeding;

[[Page 572]]


       . . . shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for 
     not more than ten years or both.

  Sections 1503 and 1512 differ in an important way. There does not 
need to be a case pending at the time the defendant acts to violate the 
law under section 1512. The statute specifically states that ``for the 
purpose of this section, an official proceeding need not be pending or 
about to be instituted at the time of the offense . . .'' for the crime 
to be committed.
  Putting it another way, a person may attempt to tamper with a witness 
and commit the crime of witness tampering before such a person is 
called as a witness and even before there is a case underway in which 
that person might be called to testify.
  For the Government to prove the crime of witness tampering, it must 
prove that the defendant acted with the intent to cause one of several 
results. The defendant can be convicted if he acted to influence, delay 
or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; or 
the defendant can be convicted if he acted to cause another person to 
withhold an object from an official proceeding.
  In the case before us, the evidence proves that the President 
endeavored to cause both of these results on several occasions. And the 
Government may show intent on the part of the defendant in several 
ways. It may prove the use of intimidation, physical force or threats; 
or it may prove intent by showing the use of corrupt persuasion or 
misleading conduct.
  In this case, the evidence shows that on several occasions the 
President acted corruptly to persuade some witnesses, and engaged in 
misleading conduct toward others, in order to influence their testimony 
and cause them to withhold evidence or give wrongful testimony. In each 
instance, the President violated the witness tampering statute.
  How does acting corruptly to persuade a witness differ from engaging 
in misleading conduct? Section 1515 in title 18 states:

       (a) as used in section 1512 [the witness tampering section] 
     . . . of this title and this section--
       (3) the term ``misleading conduct'' means--
       (A) knowingly making a false statement; or
       (B) intentionally omitting information from a statement and 
     thereby causing a portion of such statement to be misleading, 
     or intentionally concealing a material fact, and thereby 
     creating a false impression by such statement; or
       (C) with intent to mislead, knowingly submitting or 
     inviting reliance on a writing or recording that is false, 
     forged, altered or otherwise lacking in authenticity;

  The difference between corruptly persuading a witness and engaging in 
misleading conduct toward the witness depends on the witness' level of 
knowledge about the truth of the defendant's statement.
  Rodolitz held that misleading conduct involves a situation ``where a 
defendant tells a potential witness a false story as if the story were 
true, intending that the witness believe the story and testify to it 
before the grand jury.''
  Let me clarify this detail: If a defendant simply asks a witness to 
lie and the witness knows that he is being asked to lie, then the 
defendant is corruptly persuading the witness. In contrast, if a 
defendant lies to a witness, hoping the witness will believe his story, 
this is misleading conduct. They are different, but they are both 
criminal.
  Some may ask if it is necessary that the witness who is influenced or 
tampered with know that he or she might be called to testify? The 
answer is no.
  And both sections 1503 and 1512 answer this question:
  The witness tampering statute can be violated even if the victim has 
not been subpoenaed or listed as a potential witness in an ongoing 
proceeding.
  In Shannon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reviewed 
the conviction of a defendant under section 1503 who had attempted to 
influence the testimony of a person who had not yet been subpoenaed or 
placed on a witness list. On appeal, the defendant argued that because 
the target of the obstruction had not yet become an official witness in 
the case, it was impossible for the defendant to have engaged in 
obstruction toward her. The court of appeals rejected that assertion. 
In affirming the conviction, the court held ``neither must the target 
be scheduled to testify at the time of the offense nor must he or she 
actually give testimony at a later time. It is only necessary that 
there is a possibility that the target of the defendant's activities be 
called on to testify in an official proceeding.''
  The witness tampering statute can be violated even when no case is 
pending.
  Therefore, it will not always be clear to whom the defendant intended 
the individual to testify--and the statute does not require proof of 
this.
  In Morrison, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of 
Columbia explained that section 1512 is violated if the defendant asks 
a person to lie ``to anyone who asks.'' The court held that it is not 
necessary that the defendant even use the words ``testify'' or 
``trial'' when he tries to influence the testimony of the other person. 
In such a case, there are no subpoenas, there are no witness lists.
  The mere attempt to influence the person to lie, if asked, is the 
crime.
  So, under either section 1503 or 1512, the fact that the target of a 
defendant's actions is not named as a witness, or whether the person is 
not ever called to be a witness, is immaterial.
  The focus of both statutes is on what the defendant believed.
  If the defendant believes that it is possible that some person might 
some day be called to testify at some later proceeding and then acted 
to influence, delay or prevent his or her testimony, the defendant 
commits the crime.
  Now, some have asserted that an obstruction of justice charge cannot, 
or should not, be made against the President because some of his acts 
occurred in the context of a civil trial. There is simply no merit to 
this view.
  There is no question that the obstruction and witness tampering 
statutes can be violated by acts that occur in civil proceedings. And, 
case law is consistent in upholding that any attempt to influence, 
obstruct or impede the due administration of justice in a civil 
proceeding violates section 1503.
  Lundwall, which I referred to earlier, is a perfect example, as it 
began as a civil case.
  The actual language of the witness tampering statute makes it clear 
that it also applies to civil cases.
  The statute provides for enhanced penalties in criminal proceedings--
a provision that would be unnecessary if the law were only to apply to 
criminal cases.
  In short, the fact that some instances of the President's misconduct 
occurred in the course of a civil proceeding does not absolve him of 
criminal liability.
  As Mr. Barr will demonstrate, the President of the United States 
endeavored and did obstruct justice and tamper with witnesses in 
violation of the law of the United States.
  On numerous occasions he acted with an improper purpose with the 
intent to interfere with the due administration of justice in the 
Federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Paula Jones.
  President Clinton corruptly endeavored to persuade witnesses to lie. 
In some cases, he succeeded. In every case, he violated the law.
  President Clinton engaged in misleading conduct in order to influence 
the testimony of witnesses in judicial proceedings. He succeeded. In 
each case, he violated the law.
  President Clinton acted with an improper purpose to persuade a person 
to withhold objects from a judicial proceeding in which that person was 
required to produce them. He succeeded and in so doing he violated the 
law.
  President Clinton made misleading statements for the purpose of 
deterring a litigant from further discovery that would lead to facts 
which the judge ordered relevant in a Federal civil rights case. In so 
doing, he obstructed the due administration of justice in that case and 
violated the law.
  Whether attempting to persuade a person to testify falsely, or to 
ignore court orders to produce objects; whether suggesting to an 
innocent person a false story in hopes that he or she will repeat it in 
a judicial proceedings; or testifying falsely in the hopes of blocking 
another party's pursuit of the truth--all these acts obstruct justice;

[[Page 573]]

all these acts are Federal felony crimes; all these acts were committed 
by William Jefferson Clinton.
  Thank you.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes the majority leader.


                                 Recess

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, I ask unanimous consent that there now 
be a recess again of the proceedings for 15 minutes. Please return 
promptly to the Chamber.
  There being no objection, at 3:29 p.m., the Senate recessed until 
3:47 p.m.; whereupon, the Senate reassembled when called to order by 
the Chief Justice.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes the majority leader.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. Chief Justice, I believe we are ready for the final 
subject today, from Manager Barr.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes Mr. Manager Barr.
  Mr. Manager BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
  Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, learned counsel for the President, and 
fellow managers, on behalf of the House of Representatives, I thank the 
Senate for the opportunity to appear today and to present this 
argument. The House--and I, especially--greatly appreciate the time and 
effort the Senate has taken on this most important and notable matter.
  You have heard the facts summarized by my colleagues. They have 
described for you the law of perjury and the law of obstruction. I will 
discuss several of the specific instances in which William Jefferson 
Clinton violated these laws as set forth in the articles of impeachment 
presented to you.
  The process facing you as jurors, of fitting the Federal law of 
obstruction of justice and of witness tampering and of perjury into the 
facts of the case against President William Jefferson Clinton, is not a 
case in which there is nor should be a great deal of difficulty. It is 
not a problem of fitting a round peg into a square hole. Quite the 
contrary. We have a case here, you have a case here, for consideration 
in which the fit between fact and law is as precise as the finely tuned 
mechanism of a Swiss watch or as seamless a process as the convergence 
and confluence of two great rivers such as flow through many of the 
cities which you represent. The evidence that President William 
Jefferson Clinton committed perjury and obstruction of justice is 
overwhelming. These are pattern offenses.
  I beg your attention to the following exposition of facts and law, 
but before commencing, I would like to address three issues that have 
come up during the course of the proceedings, which I believe might be 
helpful for all of us to keep in mind as we proceed not only through 
today's final presentations, but tomorrow's and those that will be made 
by learned counsel for the President.
  First, by way of background on the process--that is, the process that 
brings us, the House managers, to the well of this great body and the 
trial of the President of the United States of America--as has been 
indicated previously by one of my colleague House managers, and as 
everyone here knows full well, the responsibilities, the jurisdiction, 
and the process between the House of Representatives and the Senate is 
very different in all three of those respects. Therefore, while coming 
as no surprise to all of you, all of us in this room, but perhaps to 
some in America, the steps that each body takes, and should take and 
must take, are very different.
  Just as one example, one might ask, ``Why were no witnesses called in 
the House of Representatives?'' A valid question. It deserves a valid 
answer. That valid answer can be found not simply in impeachment 
proceedings and the history thereof, but also in the day-in/day-out 
proceedings in our Federal courts and in our State courts. It can be 
found in the difference between the body which has responsibility and 
jurisdiction for charging a crime and the jurisdiction and 
responsibility of the body that has responsibility for trying a crime, 
or an alleged crime. The House of Representatives, though it is not in 
every respect like a grand jury, operates much more like a grand jury 
than a petite jury. As something akin to a grand jury, we had in mind--
and I know you have in mind--being very mindful and knowledgeable about 
the difference in procedure between the House and Senate on matters of 
impeachment, that frequently in court cases presented to Federal grand 
juries--and I suspect similarly to State grand juries--the evidence to 
the grand jurors themselves is not presented through a long array, a 
repetitive array of witnesses themselves--witnesses, that is, with 
firsthand knowledge of each and every fact, which would later be proved 
at trial. Rather, it is the more standard procedure--certainly in 
Federal courts, with which I am more familiar--for the Government to 
present its case to the grand jury by way of summary witnesses. 
Normally, that would mean case agents that have been working with the 
assistant U.S. attorneys, or with the U.S. attorney, in gathering and 
evaluating the evidence that will eventually be brought to bear in the 
trial of the case.
  If one were to be a fly on the wall of a Federal grand jury, one 
would normally see witnesses for the Government that would come in and 
discuss the general parameters and the specific evidence of the case 
that they would present in court, frequently summarizing the actual 
evidence that would be presented in court by the witnesses themselves. 
That is the standard operating procedure. That is not to say that there 
is also not presented voluminous written evidence, documentary 
evidence. That is frequently the case as well. Nor is that to say that 
there are not, from time to time, cases presented to Federal grand 
juries in which there are actual witnesses with firsthand knowledge.
  I will simply make a point of which we are all aware. I think as we 
begin, or in anticipation of your process of sifting through all of 
this procedure, this evidence, all of this law, we should keep in mind 
that our job in the House was to approach it necessarily very different 
from the way you approach your job as jurors, as triers of fact. We, in 
fact, presented to the House of Representatives, through the work on 
our Judiciary Committee, a large volume of evidence presented to us and 
through us to the House of Representatives as the charging body, not 
the trier of fact body. That is, to essentially summarize and discuss 
through the words, through the opinions of the independent counsel, as 
akin to the chief investigative officer in a grand jury in Federal 
district court, through the words of many expert witnesses, as it were, 
who placed all of that in context.
  We did not want to usurp your duty, your responsibility given to you 
by the Constitution as the trier of fact. We are not that presumptuous. 
It is your responsibility, it is your solemn duty to be the trier of 
fact. That is very different from our solemn duty, which I believe the 
House performed admirably in essentially reaching the conclusion that 
there is probable cause to convict the President of perjury and 
obstruction of justice. And we did so in a way that is mindful and 
respectful of your responsibilities, that carried out our 
responsibilities, and that is familiar to citizens all across this 
land, because it is essentially the same process that operates in 
Federal courts where you see also, as here, a very clear distinction 
between the body that charges the crime, the grand jury, and the body 
that tries the crime--that is, the jury, and in this case it is the 
Senate of the United States of America.
  A second point that may very well come up, perhaps, in the 
presentation of the defense by the President's learned counsel, which 
although very familiar to those of us, as there are many in this 
Chamber with a legal background, but which I think also is important to 
keep in mind as you reflect on and later deliberate on the evidence 
itself in this case; and that is that there are, indeed, two types of 
evidence. In virtually every case, whichever finds its way to a court 
of law and results in a trial, both types of evidence are found, used, 
considered, and form the basis, legitimately, for the eventual 
rendering of a decision by a jury. Those two types of evidence are 
direct and circumstantial.
  Frequently--and I know this from actual experience--defense lawyers 
will

[[Page 574]]

attack the Government's case, and one of the standard attacks that they 
level against the Government's case is that it is based on 
circumstantial evidence. You even hear that by the folks out there 
today--not in this room--that are saying, ``Oh, all we are seeing is 
circumstantial evidence and that is not as good as direct evidence.''
  Now, to the lay person who is unfamiliar with the ways of our laws, 
our courts, and the work of this great body, that may have some 
currency, it may have some surface appeal. They may say, ``Well, that 
commentator was right, and that White House spokesman was right. If all 
they are doing is talking about circumstantial evidence, they can't 
have a very strong case, because if they had a strong case, they would 
have direct evidence.''
  Well, the fact of the matter is, it is a principle of long and 
consistent standing in every Federal court in our land, and I suspect 
every State court in our land, and as directed by every Federal judge 
to every Federal jury taking evidence, circumstantial evidence is to 
be, and shall not be afforded any less weight than direct evidence. And 
triers of fact are directed by judges in every case not to accord less 
weight to one type of evidence as opposed to the other. That is, in the 
words of one of my fellow managers, a smokescreen, a red herring if 
somebody raises as a defense in a case--this case or other cases--that 
the case is weakened somehow because there is a reliance on 
circumstantial evidence and it is not found solely on direct evidence.
  That is a very important principle. I would appreciate your 
indulgence in that small foray into some basic precepts that I think 
all of us, certainly most of you included, need to keep in mind.
  Finally, there is one other sort of process argument that one hears 
sort of floating around in the ether out there that I think also is 
important for all of us to keep in mind; that is, facts and the law do 
bear repeating--not endless, not pointless, but appropriate repetition. 
Even today, even yesterday in the first round of presentations to this 
body, there was in fact repetition of certain facts, certain aspects of 
the law. That is not presented to you simply to emphasize a point, 
simply to make it appear stronger because we say it five times instead 
of two. There is a very important reason for appropriate repetition.
  For example, in a case such as this where you have two sets of laws 
alleged to have been violated--perjury laws and obstruction of justice 
laws--each one of those has several different elements. And, in 
addition to that, it is legitimate as presenters of facts in the law 
for managers, for prosecutors, or plaintiff's attorneys to take a 
particular fact, a particular note, and use it to illustrate several 
different points. For example, one particular fact may provide evidence 
of motive. It may also provide one of the substantive elements of 
perjury or obstruction of justice, or it may go to the state of mind of 
a declarant, a witness. It may provide important evidence with regard 
to a course of conduct, prior knowledge, and the list goes on.
  That is why, Senators, frequently in the course of these particular 
presentations--and, again, no different from the course of presentation 
in Federal and, I suspect, State courts throughout the land--in trials 
there necessarily is and should be, in order to responsibly present all 
of the evidence in all of its elements, certain repetition. Our job as 
managers is to make sure we do not abuse that necessity and that we do 
not in fact offer repetitive notion, repetitive references, without 
having a very clear and specific purpose such as I mentioned for that 
process.
  Finally, before turning to that merger of the law and the facts, 
which I believe will illustrate conclusively that this President has 
committed and ought to be convicted on perjury and obstruction of 
justice, I would respectfully ask that you remember that, under the law 
of impeachment based on our Constitution, proof beyond a reasonable 
doubt that the President committed each and every element of one or 
more violations of provisions of the Federal Criminal Code has never 
been required to sustain a conviction in any prior impeachment trial in 
the Senate. However--and I can say confidently that I speak for all 
House managers in relating to you our belief that the record and the 
law applicable to these two articles of impeachment clearly establish 
that President William Jefferson Clinton did in fact violate several 
provisions of title 18 of the United States Code--that is the criminal 
code--including perjury, obstruction, and tampering with witnesses.
  At this point, a lawyer would face, a fortiori--I will not, but I 
will say at this point that it therefore goes without saying that 
indeed exists--under every historical standard, every historical 
benchmark which this Chamber has used, there is more than sufficient 
grounds on which you might face a conviction as to both articles.
  Beginning then in looking at how the facts and the law, both of which 
you have heard through the words and exhibits of my colleagues and the 
evidence that you already have, let us look first at the submission of 
the false affidavit in the Jones case.
  We believe the evidence presented clearly establishes that on 
December 17, 1997, the President encouraged a witness in a Federal 
civil rights action brought against him, that witness being Monica 
Lewinsky, to execute a sworn affidavit in that proceeding which he knew 
to be perjurious, false, and misleading. As other managers have 
outlined, Monica Lewinsky filed a sworn affidavit in the Jones case 
that denied the relationship between her and the President. That 
affidavit was false.
  Ms. Lewinsky testified under oath before the grand jury that the 
scheme to file this false affidavit was devised or hatched during a 
telephone conversation with the President on December 17, 1997, a call 
the President initiated to Ms. Lewinsky at 2 or 2:30 a.m. ostensibly to 
give her the bad news that Betty Currie's brother had been killed in a 
car accident but apparently, since it consumed the vast majority of the 
time of that conversation, more importantly, for the President to tell 
Ms. Lewinsky her name was on the witness list filed in the Jones case 
and to thereafter discuss during that conversation the President's 
suggestion to her that she could file an affidavit in the Jones case in 
order for the purpose of avoiding having to testify in that case--not 
to cover up but in order to avoid having to testify in an ongoing legal 
proceeding in U.S. district court.
  She testified that both she and the President understood from their 
conversation they would continue their pattern of covering up. She 
testified she knew that if she filed a truthful affidavit the Jones 
lawyers would certainly have deposed her in that case.
  The testimony of Mr. Vernon Jordan confirms the President knew Ms. 
Lewinsky planned to file a false affidavit. He stated that, based on 
his conversations with the President, that the President knew in 
advance that Ms. Lewinsky planned to execute an affidavit denying their 
relationship and that he later informed the President Ms. Lewinsky had 
signed in fact that false affidavit.
  For his part, the President denies asking Ms. Lewinsky to execute a 
false affidavit. Instead, as he asserted in his response to the House 
Judiciary Committee's request for admission, he seeks to have you now 
believe he sought simply to have Ms. Lewinsky execute an affidavit that 
will ``get her out of having to testify.''
  While being factually correct, this statement reflects a legal 
impossibility. The President has admitted Ms. Lewinsky was the woman 
with whom he indeed had an improper intimate relationship while 
President. And he has admitted he was very concerned over the great 
personal embarrassment and humiliation he feared would have occurred if 
that relationship had been revealed in the Jones case. Yet, he would 
have you believe he cannot remember a call he made to that woman about 
that case which occurred at 2 o'clock in the morning. His statement is 
not credible, and the reason it is not credible is because it is not 
true.
  As Mr. Jordan's grand jury testimony corroborates, the President knew 
what Ms. Lewinsky planned to allege in her

[[Page 575]]

affidavit, yet the President took no action to stop her from filing it. 
As you have heard in earlier presentations, the President's lawyer, Mr. 
Robert Bennett, stated in court directly to Judge Wright when he 
presented the false affidavit, ``There is absolutely no sex of any kind 
in any manner, shape or form,'' and that the President was ``fully 
aware of Ms. Lewinsky's affidavit.'' The President took no action to 
correct his lawyer's misstatement.
  As you have also heard, the President, in his grand jury testimony, 
tried to disingenuously dissect the words of his attorney to remove his 
conduct from further examination, even though obviously, and by any 
reasonable interpretation or inference of the definition given the 
President, his conduct with Ms. Lewinsky was covered. And he disavowed 
knowledge of his lawyer's representations by claiming he was not paying 
attention. That canard has been most ably disposed of in prior 
presentations both through the words of the managers and the videotape 
presentations.
  Later in the deposition, when Mr. Bennett read to the President the 
portion of the affidavit in which Ms. Lewinsky denies their 
relationship and asked him ``is that a true and accurate statement as 
far as you know it,'' the President answered, ``That is absolutely 
true.'' This statement is neither credible nor true. It is perjury.
  The inescapable conclusion from this evidence is that the President 
has lied, and continues to lie, about the affidavit. His continued 
false statements and denials about the affidavit bolster the conclusion 
of our managers that, in fact, he was part of the scheme to file the 
false affidavit. The evidence supports Ms. Lewinsky's account that such 
a scheme did in fact exist between them. The evidence and all 
reasonable inferences drawn therefrom do not support the President's 
denial--inferences, I respectfully add, that in your deliberations, as 
in the deliberations of any jury, are to be and should be based on 
common sense and deliberated in terms of the light of your experiences 
in judging human behavior.
  Moreover, in engaging in this course of conduct, referring here to 
the words of the obstruction statute found at section 1503 of the 
Criminal Code, the President's actions constituted an endeavor to 
influence or impede the due administration of justice in that he was 
attempting to prevent the plaintiff in the Jones case from having a 
``free and fair opportunity to learn what she may learn concerning the 
material facts surrounding her claim.'' These acts by the President 
also constituted an endeavor to ``corruptly persuade another person 
with the intent to influence the testimony they might give in an 
official proceeding.'' Such are the elements of tampering with 
witnesses found at section 1512 of the Federal Criminal Code.
  Ms. Lewinsky knew full well her only hope of not having to testify 
was to file an affidavit that did not truthfully reflect her 
relationship with the President. The President also knew that if she 
had filed a true affidavit, without any doubt, it would have caused the 
Jones lawyers to seek her further testimony--something both 
coconspirators desperately sought to avoid.
  In encouraging her to file an affidavit that would prevent her from 
having to testify, President Clinton was, of necessity, asking her to 
testify falsely in an official proceeding. He was attempting to 
prevent, and in fact did prevent, the plaintiff in that case from 
discovering facts which may have had a bearing on her claim against the 
President. His motive was improper in the language of the law, that is, 
corrupt. And his actions did influence the testimony of Ms. Lewinsky as 
a witness in the pending official proceeding in U.S. district court.
  Under both sections of the Federal Criminal Code, that is, 1503, 
obstruction, and 1512, obstruction in the form of witness tampering, 
the President's conduct constituted a Federal crime and satisfies the 
elements of those statutes.
  With regard to the issue of perjury before the grand jury concerning 
the affidavit, we as managers would show that when asked before the 
grand jury whether he had instructed Ms. Lewinsky to file a truthful 
affidavit, President Clinton testified, ``Did I hope she would be able 
to get out of testifying on an affidavit? Absolutely. Did I want her to 
execute a false affidavit? No, I did not.''
  The evidence, however, clearly establishes that the President's 
statement constitutes perjury, in violation of section 1623 of the U.S. 
Federal Criminal Code for the simple reason the only realistic way Ms. 
Lewinsky could get out of having to testify based on her affidavit 
would be to execute a false affidavit. There was no other way it could 
have happened. The President knew this. Ms. Lewinsky knew this. And the 
President's testimony on this point is perjury within the clear meaning 
of the Federal perjury statute. It was willful, it was knowing, it was 
material, and it was false.
  Let us reflect and see also, members of the jury, how the use of 
cover stories and the development thereof ties in the facts and the law 
that constitute a basis on which you might properly find a conviction 
on perjury and obstruction of justice.
  We, as managers, believe that the evidence presented to you also 
establishes that on December 17 the President encouraged a witness in a 
Federal civil rights action brought against him to give perjurious, 
false and misleading testimony when called to testify personally in 
that proceeding. This was, in essence, the conspiracy--18 USC 371--to 
commit both obstruction and perjury.
  Throughout their relationship, the President and Ms. Lewinsky, 
understandably, wished to keep it secret, and they took steps to do 
that, steps that ultimately turned out to be and constitute criminal 
acts. For some time, in fact until Ms. Lewinsky testified under oath 
and under a grant of immunity, their efforts were remarkably 
successful, all things considered --all circumstances considered. 
Associates and employees testified in support of the President's 
stories, and even several Secret Service officers testified to the 
grand jury that they understood Ms. Lewinsky to be in the Oval Office 
to ``pick up papers.'' Yet, as Ms. Lewinsky testified, her White House 
job never required her to deliver papers or obtain the President's 
signature on any documents. It was all a sham. It was all a cover 
story. It was all a conspiracy to obstruct.
  Ms. Lewinsky testified later, after she left the White House job to 
work at the Pentagon, that phase 2 of the coverup went into effect. The 
two coconspirators began to use Ms. Currie as a source of clearance 
into the White House. This was so even though the purpose of Ms. 
Lewinsky's visits were almost always to simply see the President. As my 
colleagues have told you, on December 17, during that 2 a.m., or 
perhaps it was 2:30, telephone conversation placed by the President to 
Ms. Lewinsky, he told her her name appeared on the witness list in the 
Jones case. She testified that at some point in the conversation the 
President told her, ``You know, you can always say you were coming to 
see Betty or that you were bringing me letters.'' Ms. Lewinsky 
testified that she understood this to be ``really a reminder of things 
that they had discussed before.'' She said it was instantly familiar to 
her. He knew, or, ``I knew,'' she says--that is, Ms. Lewinsky knew--
``exactly what he meant.'' And so, I respectfully submit, do all of us 
here know exactly what the President meant.
  When the President, then, was questioned before the Federal grand 
jury if he ever had said something like that to Ms. Lewinsky, he 
admitted that, well, ``I might . . . have said that. Because I 
certainly didn't want this to come out, if I could help it. And I was 
concerned about that.''
  A cover story--which this was--between two teenagers trying to steal 
a date without their parents' knowledge is one thing. Such would not 
constitute a crime. It would be something we might even wink at, as 
long as it didn't happen too often. However, we are not here dealing 
with two love-struck teenagers trying to circumvent their parents' 
watchful eyes. We are dealing here with the President of the United 
States of America and a subservient employee concocting and 
implementing a scheme that, while perhaps not illegal in its 
inception--simply trying to keep the relationship private--

[[Page 576]]

did in fact deteriorate into illegality once it left the realm of 
private life and entered that of public obstruction.
  However--and this is critical in terms of establishing the illegality 
or convictability of the President's actions--the situation at the time 
of that early morning phone call from the President to Ms. Lewinsky was 
very different from that facing the President during any earlier 
discussions of a cover story.
  Now, in early December 1997, Ms. Lewinsky had been officially named 
as a witness in a pending judicial proceeding. She was now under an 
obligation to give complete and truthful testimony and he, the 
President, was under a legal obligation at that time not to tamper with 
her or her possible testimony. This is precisely where private lies 
become public obstruction. This is, in fact, the bright line between 
childlike pranks and deadly serious obstruction of our legal system. 
The President and Ms. Lewinsky at that point entered the big leagues, 
and the President, a highly skilled lawyer, knew it, which is why he 
went to such lengths to continue the coverup for so many months.
  The President knew that if Ms. Lewinsky were to testify that she only 
brought papers to the President or to see the President's secretary, 
her testimony would have been neither complete nor truthful. Yet, the 
President encouraged her to give that untruthful testimony and, in so 
doing, he broke the law of obstruction of justice. And, in lying about 
it, he compounded the problem by breaking the law of perjury.
  As Mr. Cannon made clear, with regard to section 1503, the general 
Federal obstruction statute of the criminal code, a person commits the 
crime of obstruction of justice when he attempts to influence the due 
administration of justice, which includes all aspects of any civil or 
criminal case, including pretrial discovery.
  Mr. Clinton's encouragement to Ms. Lewinsky to tell something other 
than the truth certainly would have influenced the discovery process in 
the Jones case. Courts have consistently held that civil discovery is 
every bit a part of the due administration of justice, protected by the 
obstruction statutes, as any other aspect of any other civil or 
criminal case. And, as Mr. Cannon also made clear with regard to 
section 1512 of the Federal Criminal Code, a person commits witness 
tampering when he attempts to influence another person to give false 
testimony in an official proceeding.
  Mr. Clinton did encourage Ms. Lewinsky to give false testimony about 
her reasons for being in the White House with the President. By 
encouraging her to lie, the President committed the crime of 
obstruction of justice under section 1503 and the crime of witness 
tampering under section 1512 of the Federal Criminal Code.
  You have also, Members of the Senate, heard about the President's 
statements to Ms. Currie on January 18, and then again on the 20th or 
21st. The President spoke with her in what was clearly, demonstrably, 
unavoidably, another potential witness to be influenced in the civil 
rights case. The President did this in this case by relating to Ms. 
Currie false and misleading accounts of events about that case as to 
which he was going to testify, had testified, and, again, with the 
intent that his recitation of the so-called facts would in fact 
corruptly influence her testimony.
  As the managers have previously described to you, the evidence in 
this case shows that on that Saturday, January 17, only 2\1/2\ hours 
after the President had been deposed in the Jones case, he called his 
secretary at home and asked her to come to the White House the next 
day, a Sunday. She testified--Ms. Currie, that is--testified this was 
very unusual. It was rare for the President to call and ask her to come 
in on a weekend, but of course she did--the next day, Sunday, January 
18, 1998, at about 5 p.m.
  She testified to the grand jury that during her meeting with the 
President he said to her, ``There are several things you may want to 
know.'' He then proceeded to ask her a number of questions in 
succession. You were presented evidence of these five statements by 
other managers. I will only emphasize that it was at that time and in 
that way, in that manner, that the President led Ms. Currie through a 
series of statements and determinate questions to establish a set of 
facts describing his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky at the White House 
that supported his false testimony.
  As you have heard, Ms. Currie stated under oath she indicated her 
agreement with each of the President's statements, even though she knew 
that the President and Ms. Lewinsky had, in fact, been alone in the 
Oval Office and in the President's study. Prosecutors frequently see 
this pattern. It is not unknown to prosecutors, Federal or State. You 
frequently see this pattern of agreeing to things that the person knows 
are not true, where you have a dominant person suggesting testimony to 
another person who is in a subordinate relationship. This, I submit, is 
yet another bright line between a private lie and public obstruction.
  During the President's grand jury testimony he was asked about his 
statements to Ms. Currie. He testified he was trying to determine 
whether his recollection was accurate. As he put it, ``I was trying to 
get the facts down. I was trying to understand what the facts were.'' 
This fits the same pattern of a classic obstruction of prosecution, in 
which a defendant suggests a story to someone in the hopes that they 
will later testify consistent with that earlier suggestion. Indeed, 
when defendants in Federal courts defend against obstruction 
prosecutions in those type cases, they frequently rely on the very same 
defense the President raises here--that he was merely and oh-so-
innocently encouraging the other person to tell the truth.
  You may want to see, as an example of an unsuccessful effort at such 
a defense, the case of United States v. O'Keefe, a Fifth Circuit case 
from 1983. In that case, Mr. O'Keefe did not ask someone to lie. He did 
not even say, ``I suggest you lie.'' Rather, as is almost always the 
case in white-collar obstruction prosecutions, his words, along with 
their setting and their context, suggested a certain story--in that 
case as well as this, a false story. Just as Mr. O'Keefe did not 
expressly ask someone to lie, Mr. Clinton never asked someone to lie. 
He didn't have to. He was too smart for that, and he had witnesses who, 
at that time at least, were willing, ready, and able to do his bidding. 
The President lied to the grand jury when he made these statements 
mischaracterizing his earlier statements to Mrs. Currie, just as he 
tampered with her as a likely witness 9 months earlier, in January.
  The President's assertion--that he simply was trying to understand 
what the facts were--lacks even colorable credibility, when one 
considers that he had already testified. It was obviously too late to 
try to recollect what the ``facts'' were. If in fact one accepts that, 
then he is admitting he didn't testify to what the facts were under 
oath at the deposition, because he didn't say, ``I don't know; I have 
to ask Mrs. Currie.'' He testified under oath as to what the facts 
purportedly were. Then he would have us believe that he had to, after 
the fact of the deposition, go back and find out what the facts were 
from somebody else.
  That is an argument that cannot be made with a straight face.
  In any event, Ms. Currie could not have told him what the true facts 
were, because he alone knew what they were.
  The defenses and explanations the President's defenders raise to 
justify why the President would make factual assertions to Ms. Currie 
about the circumstances of his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, right 
after his testimony, are many. For example, one administration witness 
who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee actually suggested 
that such ``coaching'' is proper as a method whereby an attorney 
``prepares'' a client or witness for testimony.
  Of course, such a suggestion in this case would be ludicrous. 
President Clinton obviously did not and could not represent Ms. Currie 
as her attorney. Yet, it is this sort of explanation, straining 
credulity, that illustrates the

[[Page 577]]

lengths to which the President's defenders have gone to try to explain 
away the obvious--that there was no legitimate reason why the President 
made the statements to Ms. Currie after his grand jury testimony, other 
than to ``suggest'' to her what her testimony should be. In Federal 
criminal trials, defendants go to jail for such obstruction. In the 
case before you, we submit this clearly forms a proper basis on which 
to convict this President of obstruction of justice for witness 
tampering and subsequent perjury.
  Please keep in mind also, it is not required that the target of the 
defendant's actions actually testify falsely. In fact, the witness 
tampering statute can be violated even when there is no proceeding 
pending at the time the defendant acted in suggesting testimony. As the 
cases discussed by Manager Cannon demonstrate, for a conviction under 
either section 1503, obstruction, or 1512, obstruction by witness 
tampering, it is necessary only to show it was possible the target of 
the defendant's actions might be called as a witness. That element has 
been more than met under the facts of this case.
  It was not only likely Ms. Currie would be called; the President's 
own testimony, deliberate testimony to the grand jury, pretty much 
guaranteed that she would be called. He wanted her called so she could 
then buttress his false testimony. His actions clearly, we believe, 
violated both the general obstruction statute and the witness tampering 
statute in these particulars in this regard.
  With regard to the obstruction regarding the subpoena for the 
President's gifts to Ms. Lewinsky, let us look at the merger of the 
facts and the law, as has been discussed. While the witness tampering 
statute makes it a crime to attempt to influence the testimony of a 
person, it also makes it a crime to influence a person to withhold an 
object from an official proceeding; in other words, to tamper with 
evidence. The facts of this case, we as House managers believe, clearly 
show the President corruptly engaged in, encouraged, or supported a 
scheme with Monica Lewinsky and possibly others to conceal evidence 
that had been subpoenaed lawfully in the Jones case.
  On December 19 of 1997, Ms. Lewinsky was served with a subpoena in 
the Jones case requiring her to produce each and every gift given to 
her by the President. Then, on December 28, Ms. Lewinsky again met with 
the President in the Oval Office, at which time they exchanged gifts. 
They also discussed the fact that the lawyers in the Jones case had 
subpoenaed all the President's gifts to Ms. Lewinsky and especially a 
hatpin. The hatpin apparently had sentimental significance to both of 
them, in that it was the very first gift the President gave to Ms. 
Lewinsky. During that conversation, Ms. Lewinsky asked the President 
whether she should put the gifts away outside her house or give them to 
someone, maybe Betty.
  At that time, according to Ms. Lewinsky's sworn testimony, the 
President responded, ``Let me think about that.'' Apparently he did, 
because later that day, that very same day, only a few hours after Ms. 
Lewinsky and the President had met to discuss what to do with the 
gifts, Ms. Currie called Ms. Lewinsky, setting in motion the great gift 
exchange.
  According to Ms. Lewinsky, Ms. Currie said, ``I understand that you 
have something to give me,'' or ``[t]he President said you have 
something to give me.'' In her earlier proffer, or offer of evidence, 
to the independent counsel, prior to her testimony before the grand 
jury, Ms. Lewinsky said Ms. Currie had said the President had told 
her--that is, Ms. Currie--that Ms. Lewinsky wanted her to hold on to 
something for her.
  After their conversation at the Oval Office, Ms. Currie drove to Ms. 
Lewinsky's apartment for only the second time in her life. There she 
picked up a box sealed with tape and on which was written ``Please, do 
not throw away.'' Ms. Currie then took the box, drove to her home, and 
placed the box under her bed.
  In her grand jury testimony, Ms. Currie testified that she and Ms. 
Lewinsky did not discuss the content of the box, nor did she open it 
when she got it to her home, but she knew--she ``understood'' what was 
in the box--that it contained the gifts from the President to Ms. 
Lewinsky. In fact, Ms. Lewinsky testified Ms. Currie was not at all 
confused, surprised, or even interested when she handed the box over to 
her.
  The legal impact, the legal import, of this is that there is no 
question that if the gifts had actually been produced to the Jones 
lawyers, they would have established a significant relationship between 
the President and Ms. Lewinsky. Knowledge of the gifts, at a minimum, 
would have caused the Jones lawyers to inquire further as to the nature 
of the relationship between the President and Ms. Lewinsky.
  Her failure to turn over the gifts as required by the lawful subpoena 
served on her was, in the words of the witness tampering statute, the 
withholding of an object from an official proceeding. We believe the 
evidence shows, clearly establishes, that the President corruptly 
persuaded Ms. Lewinsky to withhold these objects from the lawful 
proceedings in the Jones case.
  In his grand jury testimony, the President asserted he encouraged Ms. 
Lewinsky to turn over the gifts. Ms. Lewinsky's testimony directly 
contradicts that. Importantly, all other evidence of subsequent acts 
corroborates her testimony, not the President's. For one thing, the 
gifts were never turned over. In fact, Ms. Lewinsky testified she was 
never under any impression, from anything the President said, that she 
should turn over the gifts to the attorneys for Ms. Jones. Quite the 
opposite.
  While the President asserts he never spoke about this matter with 
Betty Currie, he would have us believe that his personal and 
confidential secretary would, on a Sunday, drive to the home of the 
woman with whom he was having an inappropriate intimate relationship, 
take possession of a sealed box which she believed to contain gifts 
given by the President, hide the box under the bed in her home, never 
question the person giving her the box, and never even mention to the 
President she had received the box of gifts.
  The President's position, as he would have you believe, is not 
credible. It defies the evidence. It defies any reasonable 
interpretation or inference from the evidence. It defies common sense. 
And it stands in defiance of Federal law.
  The only reasonable interpretation of the facts is that, following 
the discussion between the President and Ms. Lewinsky earlier in the 
day on December 28, the President decided Ms. Lewinsky has actually 
come up with a pretty good suggestion: The gifts should be put away 
outside of her home.
  As jurors, you may reasonably presume, based on the evidence and all 
reasonable inferences therefrom, along with common sense, that it was 
the President who directed Ms. Currie to call Ms. Lewinsky to tell her 
she understood she ``had something for her.'' And that happened to be 
evidence under lawful subpoena in a civil proceeding in a U.S. district 
court.
  Ms. Currie would have no independent reason to even consider such a 
course of action on her own. She had never, other than one time in her 
life, ever driven to Ms. Lewinsky's home. She did so on this Sunday not 
because she developed a sudden hankering to do so or because she 
routinely visited interns at their homes--she didn't--or because she 
had a vision; she did it because the President would have asked her to 
do it.
  Now, the President further points out that Ms. Currie has testified 
that Ms. Lewinsky called her to arrange to pick up the gifts, rather 
than the other way around. In fact, although Ms. Currie has testified 
inconsistently as to whether Ms. Lewinsky called her or she called Ms. 
Lewinsky, she actually deferred to Ms. Lewinsky's superior knowledge of 
the facts.
  However, even if one were to accept, for purposes of argument, that 
it was Ms. Lewinsky who initiated the call, the President's avowal that 
he had no knowledge of or involvement with the hiding or the transfer 
of the gifts is

[[Page 578]]

still not plausible. It is totally unreasonable to presume that the 
private secretary to the President of the United States would drop what 
she was doing, travel to the home of a former intern, pick up a box, 
and hide it in her home simply because the former intern demanded that 
she do so. All of this had to have been done--reasonably, plausibly, 
credibly was done--because of communication directed and an 
understanding between the President and his personal secretary.
  There is one more point on this. Ms. Lewinsky testified she met with 
the President for 45 minutes on December 28, at which time they 
discussed the fact that she had been subpoenaed, along with the need to 
conceal the gifts. The President's testimony directly conflicts with 
hers on this point.
  First, the evidence, however, establishes that his professed 
inability to remember whether she and the gifts had been subpoenaed is 
unbelievable and false.
  Please keep in mind when evaluating the circumstantial evidence to 
determine whether a false statement was made intentionally, the most 
important evidence to consider is the existence of a motive to lie. It 
is the calculated falsehood, combined with a clear motive to lie, that 
leads, day in and day out in Federal court proceedings, to the 
conclusion that a false statement--false statements were intentional.
  Also, we urge you to bear in mind that the law will not allow a 
person to testify, ``I don't recall,'' or, ``I'm not sure,'' when such 
answers are unreasonable under the circumstances.
  Former U.S. Representative Patrick Swindall attempted this course of 
action when he appeared before a Federal grand jury in the Northern 
District of Georgia in 1988. His evasive and false answers to the grand 
jury provided the basis for his subsequent conviction.
  Feigned forgetfulness or feigned assertions that grand jury questions 
are ambiguous and therefore cannot be answered cannot, and in fact in 
Federal proceedings do not, shield defendants from criminal liability 
for perjury or impeding the conduct of a Federal grand jury; nor should 
such efforts be allowed to shield President Clinton from conviction on 
these two articles of impeachment as to these facts.
  The President, a man of considerable intelligence and gifted with an 
exceptional memory--as somebody described, ``a prodigious memory''--can 
and should be inferred to have clearly understood what he was doing, as 
well as the logical and reasonable consequences of his actions, as well 
as the questions put to him by the independent counsel in the grand 
jury questioning.
  And he had a clear motive to falsely state to the grand jury that he 
could not recall that he knew on December 28 that Ms. Lewinsky had been 
subpoenaed and that the subpoena called for her to produce the gifts, 
for to have acknowledged such would have helped establish a motive on 
his part for orchestrating the concealment of the gifts.
  And as we have also seen and understand, there is no doubt the 
President's statement of feigned forgetfulness was material not only to 
the matters before the Jones case but to matters subsequently before 
the grand jury.
  Now, the President's counsel may very well argue the fact that the 
President gave Ms. Lewinsky additional gifts on that same day--that is, 
December 28--as proof of the President's assertions that he didn't know 
there was anything wrong going on here. Their argument, if they make 
it, cannot be sustained in the face of so much evidence to the 
contrary. The evidence in fact points to a much more plausible 
explanation. The additional gifts given that day demonstrate the 
President's continued confidence that Ms. Lewinsky would keep to their 
earlier agreement to conceal their relationship.
  It is also plausible that the additional gifts were intended as a 
further gesture of affection by the President to Ms. Lewinsky to help 
ensure she would not testify against him. Such a fact pattern also 
finds its way to those of us who have a prosecutorial background in 
Federal courts on a regular basis.
  We have heard about the job search and its relationship to perjury 
and obstruction. Let me tie the facts related to job search and the law 
applicable thereto together. We believe, as managers, that the evidence 
shows that, beginning on or about December 7, 1997, and continuing 
through and including January 14 of last year, the President 
intensified and succeeded in an effort to secure job assistance for a 
witness in a Federal civil rights case brought against him in order to 
corruptly prevent the truthful testimony of that witness in that 
proceeding at a time when the truthful testimony of that witness would 
have been harmful to him.
  Monica Lewinsky is, if nothing else, a persistent witness. After she 
was transferred out of the White House, and after being rebuffed 
repeatedly by others to secure assistance from the President in gaining 
a job that met her expectations and wishes, she decided to change tack. 
She wrote directly to the President, asked for, and received a meeting 
in which she asked him to find her a job in New York.
  The day before the President filed his answers to the interrogatories 
in the Jones case, as Manager Gekas discussed, the President asked Ms. 
Currie to set up a meeting for Ms. Lewinsky with Mr. Vernon Jordan. Two 
days after he filed his answers, in which he refused to answer whether 
he had ever had any extramarital relationships in the context of his 
public jobs, that meeting in fact occurred. But Mr. Jordan made no 
particular effort to assist Ms. Lewinsky at that time. In fact, as he 
later testified, he had no recollection of the meeting. There was, of 
course, at that early stage, no urgency.
  The situation, however, changed dramatically in early December, 1997. 
On December 6, the President became aware that Ms. Lewinsky had been 
named as a witness in the Jones case. Early that day, she had thrown a 
tantrum at the White House northwest gate when she was unable to meet 
with the President when she wanted. Despite the President's initial 
anger over Ms. Lewinsky's behavior and over the acts of some of the 
Secret Service officers a mere 5 days later, Ms. Lewinsky, in fact, 
secured a second meeting with Mr. Vernon Jordan. But this time, unlike 
previously, this powerful Washington lawyer jumped for the former 
intern. He immediately placed calls to three major corporations on her 
behalf.
  On December 11, Judge Wright ordered the President to answer Paula 
Jones' interrogatories. On December 17, the President suggested to Ms. 
Lewinsky she file the affidavit and continue to use their cover stories 
in the event she was asked about her relationship with the President. 
The next day she had two interviews in New York City arranged by Mr. 
Jordan. On December 22nd, Ms. Lewinsky met with an attorney at a 
meeting arranged by Mr. Jordan. The following day she had another job 
interview arranged by Mr. Jordan.
  On January 7, Ms. Lewinsky signed the false affidavit and proudly 
showed the executed copy to Mr. Jordan. The next day, Ms. Lewinsky had 
an interview arranged by Mr. Jordan with MacAndrews & Forbes in New 
York City, an interview that apparently went poorly. To remedy this, 
she called Mr. Jordan and so informed him. Mr. Jordan then called the 
CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes, Mr. Ron Perelman to, in Mr. Jordan's words, 
``make things happen, if they could happen.'' After Mr. Jordan's call 
to Mr. Perelman, Ms. Lewinsky was called and told that she would be 
interviewed again the very next morning. That following day she was 
reinterviewed and immediately offered a job. She then called Mr. Jordan 
to tell him and he passed the information on to Ms. Currie. ``Tell the 
President, mission accomplished.''
  Now, what are you as jurors entitled to conclude from all of this as 
a matter of law and of fact? Until it became clear that Ms. Lewinsky 
would be a witness in the Jones case, little was done to help her with 
her job search. Once she was listed as a witness, things changed 
dramatically and rapidly. Just days after she is listed on the Jones 
witness list, she gets a second meeting with one of the most 
influential men in

[[Page 579]]

Washington. But, unlike their first meeting, Mr. Jordan now makes three 
calls on her behalf to get her a job interview. A week later the 
President proposed the affidavit. The next day, Ms. Lewinsky has two 
job interviews in New York. A few days later, Mr. Jordan arranges for 
an attorney to represent her. The next day she has another job 
interview. Two weeks later she signed the affidavit. The next day she 
has another interview.
  ``Mission accomplished.'' Obstruction accomplished. Another 
potentially embarrassing witness in the bag.
  Were Ms. Lewinsky to get a job and move to New York, this would help 
the President substantially in two very important ways. First, it would 
presumably create a happy and probably compliant witness, one willing, 
if not eager, to support the President's false testimony. Second, it 
would make Ms. Lewinsky much more difficult, if not impossible, to 
reach as a witness in the Jones case. In fact, this is precisely what 
the President himself suggested to Ms. Lewinsky during their December 
28 meeting, according to her sworn testimony.
  To put it plainly, but respectfully, if that is not obstruction by 
witness tampering, one would be hard pressed to find a fact pattern 
that was.
  This aspect of the case against the President is extremely important. 
She gets the job. And what did the President get? The key affidavit to 
throw the Jones lawyers off the trail and possibly a witness outside 
the practical reach of the attorneys, much like the absent witnesses we 
have seen in large numbers in the campaign financing investigations.
  The President's efforts were designed to and did obstruct justice and 
tamper with a witness. And his actions, we submit, were criminal under 
both sections 1503 and 1512 of the Federal Criminal Code.
  The President's false statements to his senior aides. Here, too, the 
facts and the law come together and would form the basis, we 
respectfully submit, for a conviction on articles of impeachment. All 
that needs to be shown to prove a violation of the statute is that the 
defendant engaged in misleading conduct with another person to 
influence that testimony. Misleading conduct is not a term of art for 
which there is no definition. It is specifically defined in the Federal 
Criminal Code as section 1515. When you, as jurors, properly apply 
these definitions to the terms of section 1512, the tampering statute, 
and then turn your attention to the facts in this case wherein the 
President repeatedly and deliberately gave false explanations to aides 
he knew or should reasonably have known would be witnesses in Federal 
judicial proceedings, the conclusion he violated this statute is, we 
respectfully submit, unavoidable. I point to one case previously 
mentioned, the O'Keefe case as particularly, perhaps, applicable to 
deliberations on this matter.
  Finally, statements by the President and his lawyer concerning the 
affidavit during the Jones deposition. The obstruction statute may also 
be violated, as you know, by a person who gives false testimony. In the 
Jones case, the President allowed his attorney to make false and 
misleading statements to a Federal judge. This part of the obstruction 
scheme was accomplished by characterizing as true the false affidavit 
filed by Ms. Lewinsky in order to prevent questioning by the Jones 
lawyers, testimony which had already been deemed relevant by the judge 
in that case. The President's lawyer, as you have heard, objected to 
the innuendo of certain questions asked of the President, and at that 
point during the deposition pointed out that Ms. Lewinsky had signed an 
affidavit denying the relationship with the President. He then made the 
famous statement about there being no relationship in any way, shape or 
form or kind.
  Following this statement, Judge Wright warned Mr. Bennett about 
making an assertion of fact in front of the witness--that is, in front 
of the President--in which he replied,

       I am not coaching the witness. In preparation of the 
     witness for this deposition, the witness is fully aware of 
     [the] affidavit, so I have not told him a single thing he 
     doesn't know.

  The President's lawyer did not know what an understatement that was.
  Later on September 30 of 1998, long after the deposition and after 
the full evidence of Ms. Lewinsky's relationship with the President 
became public, Mr. Bennett wrote to Judge Wright to inform her that she 
should not rely upon the statements he made during the President's 
deposition because parts of the affidavit were ``misleading and not 
true.'' ``Misleading and not true.'' Sounds like perjury. Sounds like 
obstruction.
  Which brings us full circle, full circle from a false affidavit 
confirming earlier concocted cover stories, through a web of 
obstruction, to a letter from a distinguished lawyer forced to do what 
no lawyer wants to do, but every honorable lawyer must do when 
confronted with clear evidence their client has misled a court, and 
that is to correct a record of falsity even to the detriment of their 
client.
  What we have before us, Senators and Mr. Chief Justice, is really not 
complex. Critically important, yes, but not essentially complex. 
Virtually every Federal or State prosecutor--and there are many such 
distinguished persons on this jury--has prosecuted such cases of 
obstruction before in their careers--perhaps repeatedly--involving 
patterns of obstruction, compounded by subsequent coverup perjury. The 
President's lawyers may very well try to weave a spell of complexity 
over the facts of this case. They may nitpick over the time of a call 
or parse a specific word or phrase of testimony, much as the President 
has done. We urge you, the distinguished jurors in this case, not to be 
fooled.
  Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. Chief Justice, I object to the use and the continued 
use of the word ``jurors'' when referring to the Senate sitting as 
triers in a trial of the impeachment of the President of the United 
States.
  Mr. Chief Justice, I base my objection on the following:
  First, article I, section 3, of the Constitution says the Senate 
shall have the sole power to try all impeachments--not the courts, but 
the Senate.
  Article III of the Constitution says the trial of all crimes, except 
in the cases of impeachment, shall be by jury--a tremendous exculpatory 
clause when it comes to impeachments.
  Next, Mr. Chief Justice, I base my objection on the writings in ``The 
Federalist Papers,'' especially No. 65 by Alexander Hamilton, in which 
he is outlining the reasons why the framers of the Constitution gave 
the Senate the sole power to try impeachments. I won't read it all, but 
I will read this pertinent sentence:

       There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are 
     to pronounce the sentence of the law and the party who is to 
     receive or suffer it.

  Next, Mr. Chief Justice, I base my objection on the 26 rules of the 
Senate, adopted by the Senate, governing impeachments. Nowhere in any 
of those 26 rules is the word ``juror'' or ``jury'' ever used.
  Next, Mr. Chief Justice, I base my objection on the tremendous 
differences between regular jurors and Senators sitting as triers of an 
impeachment. Regular jurors, of course, are chosen, to the maximum 
extent possible, with no knowledge of the case. Not so when we try 
impeachments. Regular jurors are not supposed to know each other. Not 
so here. Regular jurors cannot overrule the judge. Not so here. Regular 
jurors do not decide what evidence should be heard, the standards of 
evidence, nor do they decide what witnesses shall be called. Not so 
here. Regular jurors do not decide when a trial is to be ended. Not so 
here.
  Now, Mr. Chief Justice, it may seem a small point, but I think a very 
important point. I think the framers of the Constitution meant us, the 
Senate, to be something other than a jury and not jurors. What we do 
here today does not just decide the fate of one man. Since the Senate 
sits on impeachment so rarely, and even more rarely on the impeachment 
of a President of the United States, what we do here sets precedence. 
Future generations will look

[[Page 580]]

back on this trial not just to find out what happened, but to try to 
decide what principles governed our actions. To leave the impression 
for future generations that we somehow are jurors and acting as a 
jury----
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. Chief Justice, I call for the regular order and I ask, 
as a parliamentary point, whether it is appropriate to argue what I 
understand is a statement as to the proper reference relative to 
Members of the Senate. This is not a motion, and if it is a motion, it 
is nondebatable, as I understand it.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Yes. I think you may state your objection, 
certainly, but not argue. The Chair is of the view that you may state 
the objection and some reason for it, but not argue it on ad infinitum.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. Chief Justice, I was stating the reason because of 
the precedents that we set, and I do not believe it would be a valid 
precedent to leave future generations that we would be looked upon 
merely as jurors, but something other than being a juror. That is why I 
raise the objection.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair is of the view that the objection of the 
Senator from Iowa is well taken, that the Senate is not simply a jury; 
it is a court in this case. Therefore, counsel should refrain from 
referring to the Senators as jurors.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. Manager BARR. I thank the Court for his ruling. We urge the 
distinguished Senators who are sitting as triers of fact in this case 
not to be fooled. We urge you to use your common sense, your reasoning, 
your varied and successful career experiences, just as any trier of 
fact and law anywhere in America might do. Just as other triers of fact 
and law do, so, too, have each of you sworn to decide these momentous 
matters impartially. Your oath to look to the law and to our 
Constitution demands this of you. As this great body has done on so 
many occasions in the course of our Nation's history, I and all 
managers are confident you will neither shrink from nor cast aside that 
duty.
  Rather, I urge and fully anticipate that you will look to the volume 
of facts and to the clear and fully applicable statutes and conclude 
that William Jefferson Clinton, in fact and under the law, violated his 
oath and violated the laws of this land and convict him on both 
articles of impeachment. Even though such a high burden--that is, proof 
of criminal violations--is not strictly required of you under the law 
of impeachment, in fact, such evidence is here. That higher burden is 
met.
  Perjury is here; obstruction is here in the facts and the law which 
forms the basis for the articles of impeachment in the House which we 
believe properly would form the basis for conviction in the Senate. 
Perjury and obstruction, we respectfully ask you to strike down these 
insidious cancers that eat at the heart of our system of Government and 
laws. Strike them down with the Constitution so they might not fester 
as a gaping wound poisoning future generations of children, poisoning 
our court system, and perhaps even future generations of political 
leaders.
  Just as Members of both Houses of Congress have unfortunately over 
the years been convicted and removed from office for perjury and 
obstruction, and just as Federal judges have been removed from life 
tenure for perjury and obstruction, so must a President; so sadly 
should this President.
  Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and thank you, Members of the U.S. 
Senate sitting here as jurors of fact and law in the trial of President 
William Jefferson Clinton.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Chair recognizes the majority leader.

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