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Republicans, Democrats and White House argue over hearing format
Updated November 18, 1998
1:00 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Court TV) — Thursday's impeachment hearing may run into Friday, in order to allow a second round of questioning of lead witness Kenneth Starr by members of the Judiciary Committee, according to a spokesman for committee chairman Henry Hyde.
The format of the first impeachment hearing is still being hammered out, as Republicans and Democrats haggle over what limits are and aren't fair, but Hyde may be bending to requests from minority members for more time to question the Independent Counsel.
Tentatively the schedule is as follows: Hyde and ranking Judiciary committee Democrat, John Conyers, Jr., will present opening statements at 10:00 a.m. that will last five to 10 minutes each. Then Starr will testify for no more than two hours. The committee may recess for lunch for 45 minutes.
Then the committee counsels, David Schippers for the Republicans and Abbe Lowell for the Democrats, will cross-examine Starr for 30 minutes each. Democrats had asked Hyde to move up the questioning by the committee counsels; it was originally scheduled more toward the end of the day.
A round of questioning by the members will then take place. Each of the 37 members of the Judiciary committee will get five minutes to question Starr. The questioning will alternate between Democrats and Republicans. The most senior members will speak first.
Finally, the president's lawyer, David Kendall, will question Starr for 30 minutes. Clinton's lawyers agreed to participate in the hearing Wednesday morning, according to a committee spokesman. Kendall will be the final interrogator for the day.
Rep. Henry Hyde, the committee's chairman, rejected White House requests for a total of 90 minutes of cross-examination time, and said the 30 minutes he originally offered must be used by one attorney only.
In a letter faxed to the president's lawyers late Tuesday, Hyde argued that he is under no constitutional obligation to give Clinton's attorneys any cross-examination time and that he is giving Clinton more time than his predecessor gave to Richard Nixon's lawyers in the Watergate hearing.
Clinton's attorneys, wrote Hyde, are appearing as a "courtesy extended by the committee and not as a matter of right."
Hyde addressed charges that he is being unfair and partisan. First of all, he wrote, "This is not a Republican or Democrat issue-it is an issue of the Committee's discharging its constitutional duty," he wrote.
"I don't know how I can be any fairer," Hyde added, pointing out that Democrats in the House have 140 minutes to question Starr, while Republicans have only 135.
"This is not a trial, and it may be that for one time this committee has been bent over backwards in trying to maintain this theoretical bipartisanship that is going on," argued the chairman.
Hyde also warned the administration that questions into Starr's tactics would not be allowed when hearings begin Thursday.
"Efforts to utilize these proceedings as a forum to inquire about nongermane matters, such as investigations into the conduct of the investigation that are pending before other bodies, shall not be permitted," wrote Hyde.
Read the text of Hyde's letter
But the White House said that wasn't fair at all. President Clinton's press secretary, Joe Lockhart, characterized the hearing process Wednesday as a "partisan adventure."
Speaking to reporters moments before Clinton left for Asia, Lockhart complained that Republicans are seeking to muzzle the president's defenders while attempting to broaden their investigation beyond its allegations of perjury about a sexual affair.
"They have rediscovered all of their old bad habits and since they don't like where it's going they're going to try to find something else," Lockhart said.
"There's a certain note of hypocrisy here, which, when it's unmasked, is that `we can talk about anything we want,'" he said. He called it "fundamentally unfair and disturbing."
White House lawyers had insisted they needed 90 minutes to cross-examine Starr. Democrats claim Starr's conservatism has colored his four-year, multifaceted investigation of Clinton and his referral to Congress detailing 11 possibly impeachable offenses, including perjury and obstruction of justice, involving the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.
"It is the guiding principle of our adversarial system that truth emerges most clearly from the interplay of direct and cross-examination," Ruff had written in his letter to Hyde.
Clinton has not yet made a final decision on how to answer 81 questions about his conduct submitted by Hyde, according to a source close to the president. But a consensus appears to be building around the notion of providing answers that refer to the president's previous statements or testimony.
It would be a strategy similar to that used by Clinton during his Aug. 17 grand jury testimony.
However, Hyde appears to be running out of patience. House Judiciary General Counsel and Chief of Staff Thomas Mooney sent Ruff a letter, asking that the president turn over the responses to the 81 questions by Wednesday afternoon.
Read the text of Mooney's letter
Committee Democrats also huddled in private Tuesday about their strategy for the hearing, which has all the makings of a classic Capitol Hill spectacle as Democrats try to limit the proceedings to the Lewinsky matter and none of the other matters Starr has been investigating.
Minority Leader Dick Gephardt had suggested Tuesday that committee Democrats might boycott the hearing because Republicans weren't including them in plans to bring more witnesses before the panel. However, Democrats are expected to attend.
After Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., met with Hyde, Democrats declared they were more concerned with making sure the process ends this year than quarreling over the witnesses.
Though the White House had been rebuffed, Democrats were demanding other changes in the GOP's ambitious logistical plan for Thursday's session. They wanted Starr to speak for less time than the two hours allotted by Republicans, for example, according to a committee official who asked not to be named. They also wanted the committee counsels to question Starr toward the beginning of the session, a request Hyde appears to have granted.
Starr, meanwhile, spent Tuesday preparing for his testimony by reviewing evidence and conducting mock hearings with his staff, his office said. Reportedly, Starr will testify about a pattern of obstruction of justice involving the White House that extends from the Monica Lewinsky matter, back to the Whitewater investigation.
—Aldina Vazao
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