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Invoking the "rule of law" once more, impeachment managers end initial case, urge cleansing of presidency
Updated January 16, 1999
4:04 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) — Insisting their arguments are not rooted in personal hatred of the president or in partisan politics, House prosecutors concluded their opening arguments by urging the Senate to remove President Clinton from office to protect the integrity of the presidency.
Led by lead impeachment manager Henry Hyde, R-Ill., House prosecutors Saturday invoked a passion that rarely surfaced during the first two days of presentation. Hyde told the Senate that Clinton's alleged crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice undermine the justice system he promised to uphold and degrade his office. He insisted the House managers were focused on protecting the Constitution and preventing permanent damage to the presidency, not on a political vendetta against Clinton.
Read Hyde's statement.
"We are convinced in conscience that the president lied under oath, that he obstructed justice," Hyde said. "These is not a trivial matter or a partisan matter; it is a matter of justice. This is not a question of who we hate. This is a question of what we love, and we love the rule of law and equal justice under the law."
Reiterating that lesser punishments, such as a censure resolutions, would not suffice, Hyde stressed that the only way to prevent the presidency from being permanently stained by Clinton's actions was to convict and removed him from office. He reminded the Senate of the many people imprisoned for perjury and asked, "What do we tell those prisoners if we allow the head of our judicial system get away by lying under oath?"
In his summation, Hyde told senators that Clinton's extramarital affairs were a private issue. But, Hyde said in a seemingly heartfelt oration, Clinton's private life became a public and Congressional issue when he used his office to obstruct justice in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and lied repeatedly under oath.
"The president is a trustee of the national conscience," Hyde said. "When President Clinton willfully and deliberately lied under oath and obstructed justice, he corrupted the nation's justice system. He can no longer be trusted, and when he represents the office to the rest of the world, America cannot be trusted."
And in a moment that teetered between maudlin and compelling, Hyde read a letter he received from William Summers, a third grader from Chicago, who was forced to write the Judiciary committee chairman after Summers' father caught the boy lying.
Suggesting that Clinton's punishment be to write a 100-word essay — "by hand," stressed the boy — about his alleged mistruths, after which "I will believe him again."
Read Summers' letter (in Adobe Acrobat format).
Hyde's closing statement summarized a day in which his fellow House prosecutors told the Senate it could not afford to ignore Clinton's alleged crimes. As President Clinton gave his weekly radio address and seemed on the surface not the be preoccupied with the impeachment trial, Reps. Steve Buyer, Lindsey Graham, and Charles Canady President Clinton's alleged crimes must not be ignored and that he must be removed from office to "cleanse" the presidency..
Buyer opened Saturday's arguments, reenforcing the argument that the president is unfit to enforce the laws if he breaks them.
Read Buyer's statement.
"Our Constitution, and the American people, entrust to the president singular responsibility for enforcing the rule of law. Perjury and obstruction of justice strike at the heart of the rule of law," Buyer told a hushed Senate chamber. "A President who has committed these crimes has plainly and directly violated his most important executive duty."
Buyer anticipated the president's upcoming defense as he attacked the White House's claim that Clinton's alleged offenses are not impeachable. Calling it a "so what?" defense, Buyer challenged the president's lawyers to make that argument when they present Clinton's defense during next week's hearings. He almost seemed to ridicule the president's anticipated defense as he stressed that Clinton's alleged crimes were significant.
"Now, you will hear next week, perhaps from the president's lawyers, that the offenses charged by the House are not impeachable," Buyer said. "In other words, that even if the allegations set forth in the articles of impeachment are true, so what? You see, the House managers have began to refer to this as the 'so what?' defense. I'm not offended by the 'so what?' defense, because if that's all you have, then try it."
A military officer who committed the same acts detailed in the Kenneth Starr's report, Buyer pointed out, would face grave consequences. And the Indiana Republican insisted that Clinton had undermined his credibility, a sentiment echoed by fellow impeachment manager Graham.
Read Graham's statement.
In his presentation, Graham, R-S.C., said a high crime occurs when "a high person hurts a person of low means." He said that Clinton's efforts to "fix his case" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit were prime examples of high crimes. While Graham admitted Clinton's crimes did not threaten national security, he stressed that they still could not be ignored.
"These crimes cannot be ignored by anyone who looks at the evidence," Graham said. "The question is not should he stay. It is: what if he stays? He has damaged his office and forsaken the laws he promised to protect. Ladies and gentlemen, we must cleanse this office. Removing a popular president will be a painful process. But we will survive, and we will be better for it."
Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., used Vice President Al Gore's own words when he told the Senate how tax fraud, considered by some a private issue, was enough to remove Judge Harry Claiborne from office.
Read Canady's statement.
"Then-Senator Albert Gore, Jr. summarized the judgment in the Senate that Judge Claiborne should be removed from office," Canady said. "The comments of Senator Gore bear repeating: 'It is incumbent upon the Senate to fulfill its constitutional responsibility and strip this man of his title. An individual who has knowingly falsified tax returns has no business receiving a salary derived from tax dollars of honest citizens.'"
Canady stressed that Gore's comments on Claiborne could be extended to the crimes committed by President Clinton and stressed that a president who has broken the law has no business holding office.
The White House, not surprisingly, remained duly unimpressed with the managers' arguments.
"After three uninterrupted days of presenting that case, they have
failed to meet their burden," said White House special counsel Gregory Craig.
It has yet to be decided if witnesses will be called, but Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott suggested in a letter to Minority Leader Tom Daschle that both parties meet to discuss that possibility.
Lott wrote to Daschle that "a bipartisan group of senators could anticipate and help resolve in advance any complications" brought about by witness testimony.
However Daschle replied that the meeting would contradict the previous Senate procedure agreement. Still, the House managers remained hopeful, as Rep. Buyer maintained after Saturday's presentation, "that the Senate will permit us to bring witnesses."
As the managers reflected on their work over the past few days, Graham said he thought much of their work was "about setting up the motion to dismiss" the case which will be considered by the Senate January 25. Rep. James Rogan, R-Calif., said he was impressed by the senators' increasingly focused attention on the case over the three days of speeches.
"I believe it's because they experienced what many jurors in my court used to experience," said Rogan, who served as a municipal judge in Glendale, Calif. during the early 1990s. "This became a solemn obligation both under law and to their conscience."
Meanwhile, in a reverberation of earlier moments during the Clinton investigation, White House attorneys got their first opportunity earlier this week to confront Linda Tripp.
During a civil deposition this week unrelated to the president's impeachment trial, Clinton lawyer Paul Gaffney got Tripp to acknowledge she was "not complete under oath" in 1995 congressional testimony and that another time she was untruthful in a taped conversation with book agent Lucianne Goldberg.
Tripp frequently clashed with Gaffney, at one point suggesting the first lady was behind an ongoing investigation into whether Mrs. Tripp had violated Maryland's wiretap law with her secretly recorded phone calls of Monica Lewinsky that sparked the impeachment crisis.
"Have you been given any indication by Maryland authorities
that they cleared you of any criminal wrongdoing?" Gaffney asked.
"Oh, certainly not," Tripp retorted. "Mrs. Clinton hasn't allowed them to do that yet."
Court TV's Kim Khan, Bryan Robinson, Jon Bonné and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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