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Senators unanimously approve procedure resolution
Updated January 8, 1999
5:03 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) — After much wrangling, the Senate has unanimously approved a general framework of the first impeachment trial in 131 years that leaves open the possibility that witnesses may be called.
The vote was 100-0 for an agreement where the president and the impeachment prosecutors will have 24 hours each to present their case based on evidence already presented to the House of Representatives.
Senators would then have 16 hours to ask questions through Chief Justice William Rehnquist. After that, senators would be able to make motions either to adjourn the trial or to call witnesses and produce evidence not in the House record. There would then be a vote on the motions filed and on whether to call witnesses. Witnesses will be considered in blocks, not individually.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said opening statements will take place next Thursday, January 14 starting at 1 p.m. A summons has been sent to the White House, and Clinton's lawyers will have until Monday to respond and file motions. There will be an opportunity for motions to be made starting Wednesday, January 13, also at 1 p.m.
Before the plan's approval, Lott predicted it would be unanimously agreed upon. Flanked by senators Phil Gramm, Don Nickles and Slade Gorton, Lott said that he believed both Republican and Democratic senators would be satisfied with the general proposed framework of President Clinton's impeachment trial.
"We are very proud of the plan," Gramm said. "Our goal is to be fair and to be bipartisan. We are very proud of it. It follows the ancient rules of the Constitution and it is fair."
Presidential lawyer Greg Craig said the White House respects the senate plan and added that Clinton's legal team plans to mount a vigorous and compelling defense.
Craig said he was "optimistic" the defense would be successful, but did not say whether he would call witnesses.
Rep. Henry Hyde, leader of the House prosecutors, said in a statement that the managers respect the senate's plan and looks forward to the opportunity to call witnesses to support their case.
Lott and his Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle had invited their rank-and-file members to an extraordinary meeting Friday morning to hammer out differences. Each party presented a plan, meeting behind closed doors in the old Senate chamber, the scene of great debates in the first half of the 19th century.
The Republicans, holding 55 out of 100 seats, had the votes to push through their trial proposal, but Lott and Daschle did not want the appearance of partisanship to taint the proceedings. They struggled to forge the bipartisan trial resolution, which is currently being drafted.
Traditionally, the Senate leadership puts together a unanimous consent resolution establishing the terms of debate for important matters. Such a resolution has been elusive. All senators have to agree, and therefore, proposals have fallen in past days under the weight of opposition.
The leadership tried to hold a meeting Thursday, but partisan rancor broke out only moments after the trial officially began. The primary cause of the rupture was a dispute over the need for witnesses which Democrats oppose.
Lott pulled back from the brink and kept negotiating, deciding
senators should "keep calm and cool and dignified."
His move prompted Daschle to proclaim: "I think there is some common ground."
"We don't want the first vote to be a partisan vote, and it came very close to being one," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
While the senators gathered, members of the House prosecution team also met and considered adding Kathleen Willey, the woman who alleges Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance in the White House, to the list of witnesses they would like to call, GOP sources said.
Willey would not be questioned about the alleged sexual advance but about any possible attempts to intimidate her, one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Clinton is charged under two articles of impeachment, both related to his attempts to conceal his extramarital affair with Lewinsky. One article charges the president with perjury before a federal grand jury, the second with obstructing justice.
Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican serving since December 1968, echoed the thoughts of many Democratic senators, commenting he had "serious questions" about calling Lewinsky to testify about her sexual escapades with the president at the White House.
House prosecutors have failed to allay such concerns, despite expressing a willingness to avoid questions to witnesses on explicit sexual material.
At the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters, "We are convinced we can make a compelling case that will lead the United States Senate not to remove the president."
Lockhart added that the president's lawyers were "ready to go" and will agree to limit the evidentiary record to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report in exchange for a ban on witnesses. But, he added, if the House insisted on calling witnesses it would cause a delay, "because bringing witnesses in and not stipulating to a record opens up a whole area of motions, discovery and depositions. And that takes time."
The charges against Clinton were brought in the name of the House of Representatives and "of the people of the United States of America." But as every senator was aware as the trial opened, the articles were approved by a House that voted along mostly partisan lines.
"We are now jurors," Stevens said. "We don't want chaos."
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said, "We've had a couple of rough moments," but he nonetheless saw a willingness "to come together."
While the senators insisted it was solely their prerogative to run the trial, Lott and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., nonetheless met for several hours Thursday evening with the House prosecution team led by Hyde.
"It was a good discussion on some of the options," said Paul McNulty, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee. "The senators listened to us."
Hyde and other Republicans have prepared a list of potential witnesses, including Lewinsky, presidential friend Vernon Jordan and Clinton secretary Betty Currie.
It takes a two-thirds vote to convict a president and remove him. Removal is the only penalty following conviction that the Constitution provides.
No president has ever been ousted from office. The only other president to be impeached, Andrew Johnson, escaped conviction by one vote — despite the fact that the opposition party held more than two-thirds of the seats in the Senate in 1868. Back then seven Republicans broke ranks and voted to acquit.
Court TV's Aldina Vazao Kennedy, Bryan Robinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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