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Starr will testify Clinton "misused his power and authority"
Updated November 18, 1998
7:01 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr says
President Clinton "misused his authority and power as president"
to thwart Starr's grand jury investigation and the Paula Jones
lawsuit.
"That is not a private matter," Starr said in remarks prepared
for delivery Thursday at the opening of impeachment hearings. A
copy of his testimony was obtained late Wednesday by The Associated
Press.
"The evidence further suggests that the president, in the
course of these efforts misused his authority and power as
president and contravened his duty to faithfully execute the laws.
That too is not a private matter," Starr said in challenging the
argument that Starr had no right to investigate the president's
consensual sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Starr's testimony reiterated many of the same allegations, in
the same harsh language, that he included in his referral to
Congress in September, accusing Clinton of 11 impeachable offenses.
His testimony laid out a litany of examples that he said show a
"misuse of presidential authority occurred."
Starr said Clinton "made a series of premeditated false
statements under oath" in his Jan. 17 deposition testimony in the
Jones lawsuit, and "participated in a scheme" at the deposition
to deceive the trial judge in the lawsuit by not correcting his
lawyer's false assertion that the president did not have sexual
relations with Ms. Lewinsky.
Starr also said Clinton used his Cabinet as "unwitting
surrogates" to support his false story denying the affair for
months. He charged that the president "concocted false alibis" to
aides who then repeated the inaccurate information to the grand
jury.
Starr eventually subpoenaed Clinton, who testified Aug. 17
before the grand jury. Starr said Clinton lied during that
testimony too, and again when he told the American public in a
speech that night that he had given "legally accurate" testimony
in the Jones case.
Other misuses of power, according to Starr, came when Clinton
and his administration asserted governmental privileges to conceal
information from the grand jury.
Starr is the leadoff witness at the first impeachment hearings
of a president in a quarter century. The House Judiciary Committee
has given Starr two hours to present his evidence on Thursday,
followed by questions from committee investigators and lawmakers.
Then Clinton's private lawyer, David Kendall, will get a chance
to question the independent counsel.
Starr, a former judge not accustomed to the politically charged
atmosphere of congressional hearings, has been holding rehearsal
sessions with his own staff.
Clinton, meanwhile, was visiting Japan and South Korea.
Starr said that in addition to misusing his authority, Clinton
"used government resources and prerogatives to pursue his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky" and used Oval Office secretary
Betty Currie to "facilitate and conceal the relationship."
Clinton also used White House aides and former U.N. ambassador
Bill Richardson in an effort to find Ms. Lewinsky a job "at a time
when it was foreseeable Ä even likely Ä that she would be a witness
in the Jones case," Starr argued. And he used a government
attorney Ä Clinton confidant Bruce Lindsey Ä to assist his personal
legal defense during the Jones case, Starr said.
"The president repeatedly used the machinery of government and
the powers of his office to conceal his relationship with Monica
Lewinsky from the American people, from the judicial process in the
Jones case, and from the grand jury," Starr said in his prepared
statement.
Starr also presented an overview of his four-year criminal
investigation in an effort to give context to the allegations that
gave rise the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
He focused on payments that presidential friends made to former
Justice Department official Webster Hubbell at a time when Hubbell
was under investigation by Starr's office. Starr said those
payments "raise very troubling questions" about whether Clinton,
through his aides, sought to encourage Hubbell's silence. Hubbell
was indicted for a third time by Starr's office last Friday.
Starr noted that many of those who paid Hubbell were Clinton
campaign supporters who were contacted by then-White House chief of
staff Mack McLarty seeking help for Hubbell.
—Larry Margasak
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