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House managers, president's lawyer debate motion to call witnesses
Updated January 26, 1999
6:45 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) — House managers told senators Tuesday they must see and hear witnesses live to understand the nuances of the case against Bill Clinton. The president's lawyer David Kendall countered that the current record was exhaustive and managers were simply trying to buy time to "rescue" a weak case.
"Any courtroom where you're going to judge something beyond a reasonable doubt, you need to assess the credibility of the witnesses where you have conflicting testimony," said prosecutor Rep. Bill McCollum of Florida.
After hearing the arguments on both sides during the afternoon, the Senate went into a closed session to debate whether to call witnesses. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, asked to keep the discussion open to the public but his motion was defeated, 58-41 (One senator is hospitalized with the flu).
The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on both the motion to call witnesses and the motion to dismiss the charges, which was presented Monday by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
Over the weekend, after two days of questions, momentum seemed to be moving away from witnesses in favor of a speedy end to the trial. But Tuesday, that tide shifted again as even Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., acknowledged that a few witnesses were probably inevitable.
Daschle said he expected the votes Wednesday to divide along party lines. Since Republicans have the majority of senate seats, 55-45, he said they would probably pass the motion to call witness and reject Byrd's motion to dismiss the case.
The Republicans do not, however, have the 67 votes necessary to convict the president and no Democrats have suggested that they will join the Republicans on an impeachment vote.
Acknowledging the pressure to hasten the unpopular trial, the House prosecutors trimmed their wish list of witnesses from about a dozen down to just three: Monica Lewinsky, Clinton's friend Vernon Jordan, and Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.
Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., told the senate that the hotly-contested truth in this case can only be determined through witnesses, not lawyers.
"It's been an ordeal by lawyers rather than a trial by witnesses," Hutchinson lamented. Although the prosecutors urged the Senate to ask them to testify in person, the motion only asked for depositions.
Lewinsky would be questioned about her relationship with Clinton, his gifts to her, and her job search in New York. McCollum promised that Lewinsky would not be asked to describe any explicit details of her sexual relationship with Clinton.
"Senators, she does have a story to tell," said Rep. Ed Bryant, R-Tenn. "Wouldn't you at least like to see and hear from her on this? As triers of fact, wouldn't you want to observe the demeanor of Ms. Lewinsky and test her credibility?"
Jordan would be questioned about his participation in Lewinsky's job search, and Blumenthal would be asked to testify, as he did before the grand jury, that Clinton, calling Lewinsky a "stalker" told Blumenthal that the intern came on to him and he refused her.
The prosecutors chose to leave Oval Office secretary Betty Currie off the list because they felt her testimony was not clear enough on the retrieval of subpoenaed gifts the president had given Lewinsky, a source told the Associated Press.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's spokesman, John Czwartacki, praised the prosecutors' witness list as "narrow, focused and reasonable" and said passage was "a very good possibility."
In a surprise move, prosecutors also asked senators to "request the appearance" of President Clinton at a deposition for his impeachment trial. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, however, said the president had testified quite enough and would not appear before the Senate.
Because the Fifth Amendment in the Constitution's Bill of Rights says no one can be forced to incriminate themselves, Clinton can not be compelled to testify.
The president's chief lawyer David Kendall dismissed the House managers' requests, calling it the product of the prosecutors' "desire, their hope, their prayer that something will come to rescue their case."
Kendall told senators they don't need witness testimony in order to fairly decide the impeachment case. He also suggested the House managers had worked closely with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and had the benefit of Starr's extensive evidence.
"The manager's case is in no way, no way harmed by being unable to call witnesses at this point," Kendall said. If Starr "could have turned up anything that was negative or prejudicial it would be in those volumes," he said.
"We are not at all afraid of what witnesses would say," Kendall added, since, he said, it's all in the voluminous piles of documents already assembled in the case.
Kendall also warned that the White House will demand extensive time to prepare if witnesses are authorized, prolonging a trial that many senators on both sides of the aisle are eager to bring to a close.
The House prosecutors have been able to review thousands of pages of Starr's evidence that the White House has so far not been allowed to see.
The House prosecutors also asked permission to introduce three pieces of evidence that weren't in the official House impeachment record used so far during the trial:
— An affidavit from Barry Ward, the clerk for U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright who oversaw the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against the president. Prosecutors said Ward attended Clinton's deposition in the Jones case and observed a key moment in the testimony in which presidential lawyers contend Clinton was not paying attention. Ward testified the president was attentive, prosecutors said.
— An affidavit from T. Wesley Holmes, a lawyer for Paula Jones, who testified that the Jones lawyers had subpoenaed Oval Office secretary Betty Currie as a witness in their case in January 1998, around the time Clinton had summoned his secretary to his office and gone over his relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton has said he wasn't tampering with Currie because he had no reason to believe she would be a witness in any proceeding.
— Records of telephone calls between Lewinsky and the president, including a call on Dec. 6, 1997 that lasted 56 minutes. The call occurred at about the same time that Lewinsky was emerging as a possible witness in the Jones case.
Republicans signaled they expected to have the votes to approve witness depositions that would be wrapped up by early next week. White House lawyers would be entitled to attend and ask questions, he said.
Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a member of the GOP leadership, said if senators gave permission to the prosecutors to take depositions, they probably would be required to report back by next Monday.
"There will be time limits, absolutely," he said.
Meanwhile, one Republican senator questioned the quality of the prosecution's overall case.
"If it were an airtight case ... you'd probably have about 70, 75 senators lining up to convict," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. "You don't see that."
Republican leaders are considering another option to outright acquittal or conviction and removal from office: find that Clinton committed perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his affair with Lewinsky but not remove him.
Republican officials said that option, introduced by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is predicated on the widely-held assumption that the 67 votes needed to convict and remove Clinton will never materialize.
This way, Clinton would emerge from the trial formally acquitted of the impeachment charges but irrevocably tarnished — and senators would be afforded some cover with constituents who believe action should be taken.
Other senators have called that option unconstitutional, saying the Senate is obliged to remove the president from office if it convicts him of the two articles of impeachment.
The Associated Press and Court TV's Aldina Vazao Kennedy and Catherine Heins contributed to this report.
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