The President on Trial: Sifting Through the Evidence            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 Article I, In Sum...A Man of Honor? On August 17 last year, Clinton described to the Starr grand jury how he acted during the Paula Jones deposition: "I was not trying to be particularly helpful to them, and I didn't think I had an obligation to be particularly helpful to them." But did he take the same tack during his grand jury testimony? And if so, did an attempt to be unhelpful edge into outright lies? Certainly, the president's lawyers will argue that his grand jury testimony was indeed as fully truthful as he could make it. When questioned carefully by Associate Independent Counsel Solomon Wisenberg at the beginning of his testimony, Clinton said, "I have sworn an oath to tell the grand jury the truth, and that's what I intend to do." On the other hand, his tone throughout the grand jury session indicated that he was not pleased with the proceedings or with the lines of questioning. Several of his exchanges with prosecutors became tense. It is probably safe to say he would rather have not been there. The overall message he conveyed in the Jones deposition was: he knew Lewinsky, they'd met before, she might have given him a few gifts, but nothing sexual ever occurred between them. Though the overall impression may have been misleading, he and his lawyers have continued to insist that the individual responses were not false. Even his denial of sexual relations and a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, they have claimed, were not false when considered in light of what he claimed was his understanding of the definition of "sexual relations" provided to him at the time. Expect prosecutors to contend that, when the president's grand jury testimony is viewed as a whole, he treated his grand jury questioners the same way he did the Jones lawyers: offering answers that gave an impression of events very different from how they actually happened. In fact, prosecutors maintained in a pre-trial brief that "[e]vents and words that may seem innocent or even exculpatory in a vacuum may well take on a sinister, or even a criminal connotation when observed in the context of the whole plot." Not only will senators be forced to consider specific bits of testimony, they will also likely consider his testimony as a whole and debate whether it was intended to mislead prosecutors and obfuscate the truth. Their task will be significantly different from a jury deliberating on a perjury charge. As White House lawyers have pointed out, the 1973 Supreme Court Bronston ruling gives witnesses an out to give misleading testimony so long as the individual statements are true. That standard is not uniformly accepted, but it would help make a case that Clinton did not commit perjury. Still, as law professor Charles Black, Jr. pointed out in his 1974 treatise on impeachment, "the limitation of impeachable offenses to those offenses made generally criminal by statute is unwarranted — even absurd." Black, whose words have been invoked by both sides in this case, suggested a better way to define "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," one which would invoke three standards applicable to the defined impeachable crimes of bribery and treason: they could be "offenses (1) which are extremely serious, (2) which in some way corrupt or subvert the political and governmental process, and (3) which are plainly wrong in themselves to a person of honor or to a good citizen, regardless of the words on the statute books." As Black makes clear, even the most deft legal parsing may not help Clinton. Should they choose such a definition of impeachable offenses, all the senators have to do is determine that for a "person of honor" to behave this way in legal proceedings is wrongdoing enough. Introduction Article I Charges 1 & 2: What is Sex? | Charge 3: Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil? | Charge 4: A Man of Influence? | In Sum...A Man of Honor? Article II Charges 1 & 2: Greasing the Wheels? | Charge 3: The Trail of the Gift Horse | Charge 4: Escape to New York | Charge 5: Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil? (Part II) | Charge 6: The Four Questions | Charge 7: An Influential Man (Pt. II) | In Sum...All or Nothing? Version for Printing