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Mills argues the full record clears Clinton
Updated January 20, 1999
8:09 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) — The full record of facts show the president did not obstruct justice, Deputy White House Counsel Cheryl Mills told senators Wednesday afternoon. Earlier White House Special Counsel Greg Craig urged senators to examine the "real record."
Read more about Craig and Mills.
"The facts, those stubborn facts, don't support the allegation," of obstruction of justice said Mills.
Using rhetorical touches, Mills weaved together a "story" from grand jury testimony that conflicted with the version of events presented by House managers. Mills says her story uses information from the complete factual record, and reflects "the big picture" whereas she accused House managers of cherry-picking the facts they needed and ignoring information that exonerated the president.
Mills cited a comment made by House manager Bob Barr from Georgia that "the fit between the facts and the law in this case is like the finely tuned mechanism of a swiss watch."
Mills replied, "when you put the facts together they might not even make good sausage."
In Mills' version of the events, Betty Currie is never intimidated or threatened by the president to give false testimony and the president's secretary picks up gifts from intern Monica Lewinsky at Lewinsky's request.
"That is not obstruction of justice," Mills said repeatedly, pausing for effect after each new interpretation of the facts she offered.
Mills said that without intimidation you have no "corrupting influence" and according to the U.S. attorneys' manual, without such influence you have no obstruction of justice.
After Mills presentation, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told CNN that House managers would have liked to rebut the White House presentation before the Senate. When asked if the Senate was likely to vote to dismiss the case next Monday, Sensenbrenner responded that the Senate might opt to do so if senators believed the charges, even if true, are not impeachable.
Mills also said the House managers twisted Betty Currie's testimony, and discredited her by saying her memory was 'fuzzy' because Currie consistently exonerated the president. According to Mills, when the president questioned her about the affair, Currie said unequivocally and repeatedly that she felt no intimidation and felt free to contradict the president's account.
Why did the president ask Currie leading questions about her understanding of his relationship with Lewinsky? Because, said Mills, he was developing a strategy to contain media revelations. The president is in the public eye and spin control was his first concern. The press was on to him, and there was a report, which named Currie, about his relationship with Lewinsky in the media. The Jones case did not factor into his discussion with Currie because there was no way, given the court's timetable for discovery, Currie would be called as a witness, Mills said.
"He was thinking about the media," said Mills, "that is the big picture. That is not obstruction of justice."
Currie was also asked five times who initiated discussion about the transfer of gifts, and every single time, she clearly said it was not the president, Mills told the senators.
Monica Lewinsky offered 10 renditions of how it came to be that Bettie Currie ended up with the gifts the president had given the intern, but Mills said the House managers built their case one version alone. Mills read snippets from various versions, and concluded that even the supposedly most damaging scenario — where Lewinsky says the president responded 'let me think about it' when asked what to do about the gifts— does not support an obstruction of justice charge.
Mills said the House chose to disregard Lewinksy's motivation in order to push their theory that the president intended to prevent the Jones' lawyers from getting the gifts. Lewinsky told Currie that she feared Jones' lawyers would break into her apartment to get the gifts, Mills said, and that's why she contacted Currie.
Currie agreed to get the president's gifts from Lewinsky because the two women were friends, said Mills. Currie helped Lewinsky through a difficult time in her life and had a motherly relationship with the intern, so it was natural for her to agree to help Lewinsky, she added.
Finally, Mills addressed the contention, proposed again by Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-SC last week, that an acquittal would damage the civil rights and women's rights movements.
"I'm not worried about the future of civil rights," said Mills. Jones had her day in court, Mills said, and a judge ruled she had no case.
Mills, who is African American, said "the foundation of the house of civil rights," a term she used repeatedly, was strong and would survive because of the contributions of people working for change and because of people courageous enough to change themselves. She said the cause of civil rights had survived the presidencies of several flawed men, such as Thomas Jefferson, and would survive another one.
Mills countered that the civil rights record of the president was "unimpeachable." She said senators "must not let imagined harms to civil rights" persuade them otherwise.
"I can insure you," Mills said, "your decision to follow the facts and the law and the Constitution to acquit this president will not shake the foundation of the house of civil rights."
"I stand here today because President Clinton believed I could stand here for him," she said passionately.
"The president did not obstruct justice," she concluded. "The president did not commit perjury. The president must not be removed from office."
Earlier in the day, White House special counsel Greg Craig forcefully attacked the first impeachment article accusing President Clinton of perjury before a federal grand jury, asking senators to take the time to "look at the real record" and "see the president is truthful."
Opening a second day of arguments, Craig said his mission was to tell senators how "really bad this article is, legally structurally and constitutionally."
Craig argued that House trial managers had wrongly lumped charges together and failed to identify any specific statement Clinton made before the grand jury that was false.
He said that unlike previous articles of impeachment passed against judges, the articles passed by the 105th House did not stipulate the exact perjurious statements allegedly made by Clinton. Craig then read from the articles impeaching Alcee Hastings and Walter Nixon that referred to specific perjurious
statements.
Craig said Clinton's vindication could be found in the grand jury transcript, and he encouraged senators to read it carefully.
"You will see this president make painful, difficult admissions," he said. "You will see that the president is truthful and after reading, seeing, hearing and studying the evidence for yourself ... we believe you will conclude that what the president did and said in the grand jury was not unlawful and that you must not remove him from office," he said.
Craig added that the managers went beyond the Starr referral, alleging perjurious statements in their brief that were not even alleged by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and his attorneys.
Craig said that the House, in violation of the constitution, surrendered its duty to impeach to the 13 managers, who were making up charges as they went along — charges that had not been debated by the Judiciary committee nor the full House, let alone approved by either body.
He stated that the managers were trying to prosecute charges that were explicitly rejected by the House, charges dealing with the Paula Jones deposition that were rejected when the second of the four proposed articles voted down.
Craig had said the managers's mischaracterization of the president's grand jury testimony could not be allowed to stand. Clinton admitted before the grand jury that he was alone with Lewinsky and he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with her, Craig said, and read salient passages from the grand jury transcript to make his point.
Managers were confusing his Jones deposition testimony with his grand jury testimony, he said. "Please look at the real record," urged Craig. If the 100 senators do so, said Craig, then they could not remove the president.
Craig also said that, in perjury cases involving only one witness, there must be corroborating evidence, which the prosecutors had not provided. No responsible prosecutor would bring a case this weak, said Craig and he showed clips of two prosecutors, Thomas Sullivan and Richard Davis, called by the Clinton team during its House defense presentation to back him up. Both explained the complexities and difficulties of proving perjury in general and in Clinton's case in particular.
By the end of his statement, Craig said the senators will have received "100% of the minimum daily requirement for lawyering." He apologized for all the legalistic arguments being made, but added that if the House prosecutors are going to charge the president with a crime, then White House counsel had an obligation to use all legal means available to defend the president.
Bill McCollum, R-Fla., one of the managers, immediately refuted Craig's characterization of his presentation. McCollum told CNN the president said he didn't touch two specific body parts belonging to Lewinsky with the intent to arouse — which the Congressman declined to specify — and therefore Clinton lied. Lewinsky confirmed the president lied, he said, and there is corroborating evidence, despite Craig's statement to the contrary.
McCollum said that if the president engaged in a scheme to hide the nature of his relationship from the attorneys for Paula Jones, then he should be removed. His scheme to "defeat the Jones folk" rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, he said.
Shortly after the close of the White House presentation, the House managers issued a rebuttal of specific points made by Craig. First, the managers asserted the House did not improperly charge multiple offenses in one article.
"Mr. Craig's arguments are factually deficient, ignore Senate precedent and procedure, and are constitutionally flawed," wrote the managers.
The articles of impeachment, they wrote, are modeled after those adopted by the House Committee on the Judiciary against President Nixon and were drafted with the rules of the Senate in mind. Furthermore, Senate Rules specifically contemplate that the House may draft articles of impeachment in this manner
and prior rulings of the Senate have held that such drafting is not deficient and will not sustain a motion to dismiss.
Unlike the judicial impeachments of the 1980s, House managers argued that President Clinton has not committed a handful of specific misdeeds that can easily be listed in separate articles of impeachment. "President Clinton knows exactly what he is being charged with," managers countered, "as is acknowledged in the president's trial memorandum."
Furthermore, prosecutors argue article one, which was approved by the full House, explicitly states the Jones testimony is relevant.
According to the managers, "article I states that the President 'willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following... (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him.' Additionally, the President's perjurious, false and misleading deposition testimony is important evidence of other attempts to obstruct justice in Jones v. Clinton."
House managers argue Craig also attempted to convey that the definitions used in the Jones suit were confusing to all,
including Judge Susan Webber Wright and President Clinton. However, prosecutors said that the record shows there was no confusion regarding the first definition of sexual relations presented by Jones' attorneys. The confusion arose regarding definition two.
Prosecutors say White House lawyers played a portion of the President's deposition having to do with both definitions, but characterized the entire exchange as relating solely to definition one — the definition of sexual relations.
Furthermore, they argue, the President was asked after the
Court's ruling if he fully understood the definition for "sexual relations" during the deposition, and he testified that he fully
understood that it was only paragraph 1 of Exhibit 1, or the first definition.
Prosecutors point out that the President has yet to assert that Lewinsky lied when she testified that the President touched her in the intimate manner described in the definition of "sexual relations" in the Jones case. Given the intimate nature of their relationship, the variance between their testimony on this point cannot be dismissed as a difference of opinion, they argue. The only possible conclusion is that one of them lied to the grand jury.
Given the President's avoidance of the truth about his relationship with Lewinsky throughout the Jones case and before the grand jury, and his eventual admission to the public that he misled them about it, the President's story is simply not believable, conclude the managers. The president's denial was material, they argue, and therefore it was perjury.
Before Wednesday's White House presentation, senators held separate party meetings and Republicans emerged sounding more sure they will seek to call at least some witnesses during the trial to resolve conflicts in testimony.
"This all doesn't need to go beyond mid-February, even with the deposition of witnesses," said John Czwartacki, the spokesman for Majority Leader Trent Lott.
The White House arguments at the trial a day earlier showed "there are conflicts in testimony that witnesses might resolve," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Wednesday. He speculated that most of those who might be called could be helpful to Clinton's case.
"I don't know why the White House is so panic-stricken about it," he said on NBC's "Today."
Hatch, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he doubts Clinton wants to call any witnesses in his behalf. "I think he would be nuts if he did."
An invitation to the president to testify was still under discussion. At a meeting of Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he thought Clinton could be compelled to testify under Senate rules and court decisions.
Court TV's Aldina Vazao Kennedy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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