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Ending the day's arguments, Ruff says House's case is "tenuous extrapolation"
Updated January 19, 1999
4:30 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (Court TV) — In the first day of the White House's defense against the impeachment charges levied at President Clinton, White House chief counsel Charles Ruff said that the House prosecutors had spun their case out of "tenuous extrapolation."
"I was reminded of Iago and Desdemona's handkerchief but let's pass on that," commented Ruff as he dissected one of the prosecutors' claim: that Vernon Jordan helped Monica Lewinsky get a job in New York to buy her silence.
In a calm, matter-of-fact monotone, Ruff opened the case for the defense with an overview of the case and an emphatic refutation of the House's charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He also criticized the legal grounds for the impeachment articles.
Matching the House's prosecutors penchant for detailed chronologies illustrated by large placards, Ruff produced his own chart as he outlined the chronology of Jordan's assistance to Lewinsky.
Ruff said Jordan had been meeting with Lewinsky and placing calls on her behalf before a judge ordered that Lewinsky could be called in the Paula Jones case.
He also attacked the prosecutors' allegation that Clinton must have told Betty Currie to conceal gifts he had given to Lewinsky, even though, Ruff said, no evidence proves that.
Leaving ample breathing room between the impeachment trial and Clinton's State of the Union address to be delivered tonight, Ruff ended his discourse after just two and a half hours.
Tomorrow, White House lawyers will address the charges of perjury before a grand jury, and on Thursday, they will respond to the charge of obstruction of justice.
A plan to use Democrats from the House Judiciary Committee was scrapped after objections from Sen. Robert Byrd.
In concluding his argument, Ruff urged the Senate not to allow impeachment to become a "lever" in the perpetual tug-of-war for power between the legislative and executive branches of government.
To remove Clinton from office, Ruff contended, the Senate must determined that impeachment is the only way not just an acceptable option, to salvage a government put at risk by the president's behavior.
"Are we at that horrific moment in our history?" Ruff asked.
Earlier in his presentation, Ruff said when the House Judiciary Committee took up the issue of impeachment in the wake of President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, it found that impeachment required "serious misconduct" that presented a danger to the very system of government established in the Constitution.
"You can not ignore the circumstances in which the conduct occurred," Ruff said. "Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs." He added the president's conduct did not relate to his official duties or power of office.
Ruff also said that the Senate does not have to remove the president from office if it convicts him on the two articles of impeachment. House prosecutors' recent claims to that effect are wrong, said Ruff, especially considering that the House itself did not discuss that issue at length.
"It's an argument that rings hollow coming from those who did not engage in serious debate about those constitutional standards," he said.
Ruff further chastised the House prosecutors for demanding that the Senate call witnesses when the House itself did not hear any witnesses before handing down its articles of impeachment.
"Yet they appear before you to say they are convinced of the president's guilt," said Ruff. He claimed their insistent requests for witnesses shows the underlying weakness of their case.
On Monday, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said that although calling witnesses will delay the process, the White House will probably call witnesses if the House prosecutors do.
The Senate has said it will defer the decision on calling witnesses until after both sides have completed their opening statements, but Republicans have supported calling them.
With 55 of the 100 Senate seats, Republicans have the required majority of votes to call for witnesses although they do not have the necessary votes (67) to remove the president from office with Democratic support.
Ruff also criticized the House for lumping various charges in each article of impeachment instead of laying out each allegedly perjurious statement or act that obstructed justice. All defendants in our legal system, he said, have the right to know the specifics of the charges against them.
"This is not some mere technicality," said Ruff. "It is the law. These articles are constitutionally defective."
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said Ruff's arguments poked a hole "as big as a barn door" in the case against the president.
But House prosecutor Charles Canady, R-Fla., accused Ruff of again relying on "legal hair-splitting."
After Ruff's presentation, the Senate went into recess until 8:35 p.m., when both the Senate and the House will convene in a joint session to hear President Clinton's State of the Union Address.
The president is expected to discuss child care, Social Security reform, the expansion of Medicare, the minimum wage, and education, plus other items not yet revealed.
"There are some things you haven't heard yet that will knock your socks off," Lockhart promised at a press briefing on Monday.
Court TV's Catherine Heins and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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