Full Coverage Search Clinton in Crisis The Trial Trial Guide Evidence Guide Transcripts Video Discuss the Trial The Starr Report and Rebuttals Video Index Documents Starr Investigation Jones v. Clinton Whitewater Jones v. Clinton Whitewater

WASHINGTON (Court TV) — Entering the sixth week of the second presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, senators are slowly finishing up their secret deliberations and should vote to acquit Bill Clinton by Friday. The big question is whether a majority will vote to convict him?

Conviction requires 67 votes — a simple majority carries no legal weight, but could serve as a symbolic vindication of the efforts of the 13 House prosecutors.

"The drama is going to be whether obstruction gets 50 votes or not," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

The obstruction of justice article cited by Schumer may garner a simple majority, but numerous senators have predicted the perjury article against Clinton will not.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., for example, has disclosed that he will vote to convict Clinton for obstruction but to acquit for perjury.

Majority Leader Trent Lott said 37 senators had yet to speak and his hopes for a vote Thursday had dimmed.

"I don't think that is going to be possible at this time," he told senators before the sergeant-at-arms closed the chamber doors for the debate.

"On or about noon tomorrow, this will come to a final vote," Paul Coverdell of Georgia said after attending a lunch break meeting with other Republican senators.

Three Republicans — James Jeffords of Vermont, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John Chafee of Rhode Island — announced Wednesday they will vote to acquit Clinton. If three more do so and all 45 Democrats vote to acquit, the articles would fall short of a majority.

"I wouldn't be surprised if others would make a similar announcement — how many I don't know," Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., said of anti-conviction Republicans. He declined to speculate, but Maine's Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of whom are among the more moderate Republicans, have yet to declare their intentions.

Mack did not announce his position.

Wednesday's session spanned eight hours with several breaks along the way. More than 30 senators spoke, with most taking the maximum 15 minutes allotted and some reminded by Chief Justice William Rehnquist's gavel that time had expired. The first day of deliberations on Tuesday covered a period of slightly more than four hours.

While the transcript of the deliberations will remain secret unless the Senate changes its mind later, some senators have read to reporters the remarks they prepared for the closed session.

Jeffords told reporters, "The pressure is coming on to get a majority." But a spokesman for Lott said the leadership had not tried to line up votes for conviction.

Lott, R-Miss., issued a statement at mid-afternoon declaring that the evidence "shows that the president has committed perjury and obstructed justice. The only question left is, will the Senate vote to find him guilty of committing these high crimes."

Clinton's actions to conceal his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky were widely condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike, including those opposing conviction.

Jeffords said Clinton "gave misleading statements ... did obstruct justice, but his actions in this case do not reach the high standard of impeachment."

Jeffords said he was concerned that conviction of this president "may establish a low threshold that would make every president subject to removal for the slightest indiscretion or that a vote to convict may imperil every president who faces a Congress controlled by an opposing party."

Specter told reporters he couldn't bring himself to vote for acquittal when the roll is called, but rather would declare the allegations were "not proved."

Chafee said that despite Clinton's "reckless, tawdry behavior," he concluded that House prosecutors presented "circumstantial evidence" that was "rebutted by direct evidence or by confusion."

With Clinton's acquittal assured, Democrats continued their campaign for a formal vote to censure the president after the trial. But Republican opposition seemed to be stiffening. Specter said won't vote for censure, arguing it would violate the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

"There's been very little mention of censure" in the closed-door deliberations, said Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. "To me, the push for censure is losing steam."

Democratic leader Tom Daschle is hoping for at least a procedural vote before lawmakers adjourn for a week-long vacation, a roll call that would allow Democrats to go on record condemning the president's behavior while acquitting him at his trial.

Prosecutors baffled

Resigned to losing their case, the House prosecutors say public opinion won out over their case that President Clinton committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

"Baffled" by polls that showed Americans consistently opposed Clinton's removal no matter what evidence the prosecution team presented, lead manager Rep. Henry Hyde said he had held out hope for a sea change.

"We did feel that if we could get the story out in a coherent fashion, the public might be informed and a change in the public's mind would reach the senators," Hyde said in an interview Wednesday as the Senate moved through its second day of closed deliberations.

"It's essential, for impeachment to prevail, to have bipartisan support. We never had it," the House Judiciary Committee chairman added.

Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. agreed: "The public opinion polls have been the hurdle for us. That is tough, to remove a popular president."

In more than three weeks of arguments before 100 silent senators, the managers insisted that Clinton committed perjury before a grand jury and obstructed justice in his efforts to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky. And they argued strongly that the offenses met the constitutional standards for conviction.

But in poll after poll, constituents of the senator-jurors overwhelmingly opposed Clinton's removal. Surveys indicated that two-thirds of Americans took this stance as the trial wound down.

Post-Trial plans

The president's defenders were already looking ahead to life after impeachment. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said Clinton would campaign vigorously to return the Congress that impeached him to Democratic hands in 2000 but wouldn't specifically target the 13 GOP House managers who prosecuted him.

"I can't think of a worse or more dumb strategy than going after people based on whether they were a House manager or not.... I think we're a little bit smarter than that," Lockhart said.

Lott blasted any White House talk of defeating Republicans on the eve of the vote. "It is deeply troubling that the president views closure of this constitutional process as an opportunity for revenge," he said.

At a Capitol Hill news conference, Utah Republican Christopher Cannon said that there is "something deeply wrong with using the White House to destroy people."

Though impeachment duty endeared the prosecutors to conservatives, evidence began to mount that some of the prosecutors were suffering back home.

A Chicago Tribune poll suggested that three months after Hyde won easy re-election to his Illinois House seat, one-third of the voters in his conservative district said they had a lower opinion of him as a result of impeachment.

Most of the seats held by the 13 House managers are considered safe, but a few of them have been — and will be — vulnerable to Democratic challenges.

House manager Jim Rogan, R-Calif., faced a difficult re-election even before he was appointed to the impeachment team. Though he outspent his Democratic opponent 2-1, Rogan was elected to his second House term last year with only 50.2 percent of the vote. Clinton won Rogan's Pasadena-area district by 49 percent in 1996, compared with 41 percent for Republican nominee Bob Dole.

Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio is in a similar situation, embarking on the impeachment trial after he overcame a tight race to win re-election with 53 percent of the vote.

Canady says he no longer worries about re-election because he has limited himself to eight years in the House, a period that expires next year.

Conservatives predict voters will consider impeachment old news by the time the next Election Day rolls around. The managers point out that they only did the job the Constitution required after the House approved impeachment articles. And Hyde framed the question of political fallout when he told the Senate that "upholding the rule of law" was worth losing one's congressional seat.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright© 1999 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.