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Former senator and president's lawyer prepare to close Clinton defense
Updated January 21, 1999
12:00 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Concluding the first phase of President Clinton's impeachment trial, his lawyers are urging senators to reject partisan allegations of legal wrongdoing and focus on "the big picture" — an attempt by a married man to hide an extramarital affair from the press.
For their third and final day of presentations to rebut perjury and obstruction of justice charges, the Clinton team is combining the methodical arguments of private lawyer David Kendall with the oratory of former senator Dale Bumpers.
Kendall, an attorney with the powerful Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly, questioned Independent Counsel Ken Starr during impeachment hearings before the House Judiciary Committee last year. Like his longtime friend Clinton, Bumpers was a governor of Arkansas and is known as a gifted public speaker.
Once Bumpers finishes, senators who have been forced under trial rules to sit in uncharacteristic silence will have another unfamiliar task — submitting questions in writing to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who as presiding officer will read them and ask the lawyers and House prosecutors to respond.
The questioning period, expected to last through Saturday, may be the phase of the trial conducted in a bipartisan spirit. Subsequent motions to dismiss the case and call witnesses such as former White House intern Monica Lewinsky likely should break down largely along party lines. Senators can make motions Monday.
Republicans have said they oppose dismissal and support the need for limited live testimony from key witnesses, such as Lewinsky, Clinton friend Vernon Jordan and presidential secretary Betty Currie. They should get their way with a 55-45 majority in the Senate.
However, with a two-thirds majority needed to make Clinton the first president removed from office, Democrats hold the votes for acquittal and show no signs of backing a move to remove him from office.
Republicans know the trial is unpopular with Americans. Clinton's job approval ratings rose after his State of the Union address Tuesday night, ranging from 66 percent in an ABC poll to 72 percent in a CBS survey to 76 percent for NBC.
Also, a well-known conservative Republican, evangelist and broadcaster Pat Robertson, said Clinton pulled off such a public relations coup in the address that there is no chance he will be convicted.
"They might as well dismiss this impeachment hearing and get on with something else," he said on a broadcast of "The 700 Club."
Clinton's predecessor, George Bush, in town to attend a Senate lecture series sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., declined a chance to discuss the impeachment trial. But speaking in the Old Senate Chamber Wednesday evening, the former Republican president lamented that, "we are confronted with a deficit of decency — one that deepens by the day."
Dale Bumpers
An alumnus of the exclusive Senate club, Bumpers brings to the closing arguments Thursday the credibility and substance that "only one senator can have talking to another senator," said this adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Bumpers has expressed his dismay at Clinton's conduct and is likely to focus on constitutional issues and the institutional duties that bind senators, said a second White House official close to the legal team.
The former Arkansas senator was keeping mum Wednesday about what he planned to say. His recent statements, though, provide a preview of his likely line of attack.
In a farewell speech to the Senate last fall, Bumpers likened the investigation of Clinton to one of the most unjust government probes in history. "You'd have to go back to the Salem witchcraft trials to find anything comparable," he said then.
Bumpers, 73, is, like Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas, and goes way back with the president. "He knows Bill Clinton from the word go," said Ralph Shelby, sergeant-at-arms of the Arkansas State Senate and Bumpers' childhood friend.
Bumpers was chosen to make the argument that the House case was a "partisan rush to judgment" that doesn't meet with the "higher duty the Senate has always had," an adviser to the White House said Wednesday.
Even Republicans praised Clinton's choice.
"I think the White House couldn't have picked anyone better from an oratory standpoint," said Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., one of the House prosecutors. "Will he have an impact? Sure."
Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, called Bumpers "one of the great orators of our time" but added he was "usually not persuaded by the things he said on the Senate floor. But we'll see."
"One of the things that he likes to say when he talks about this is that Republicans in Congress have often treated the Bill of Rights like a rough draft," said Glen Hooks, executive director of the state Democratic party.
"He would see this as the same type of situation where the Republicans don't have the same type of reverence to the Constitution that they should have — and that Dale Bumpers does have."
Albright speaks out
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cautioned Thursday against a lengthy Senate trial of President Clinton, saying time would be lost in tending to "the people's business."
"What bothers me is we have a huge agenda," Albright said as she outlined foreign policy programs confronting her as she nears the end of two years on the job.
She said Congress has the authority to try Clinton, but it also is a partner of the administration in dealing with such problems as Kosovo, Iraq and the spread of nuclear technology.
"So any time we are not spending on the people's business ultimately is time lost," Albright said following a speech to the Center for National Policy, a private group she once headed.
The House impeachment of the president and his current trial in the Senate is puzzling to foreign leaders, Albright said. "Friends around the world are kind of amazed this is going on."
Read about Wednesday's White House presentation and the House response
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