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Clinton impeachment trial transcripts — January 21, 1999
The following transcript was provided to Court TV by Federal Document Clearing House:
SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
JANUARY 21, 1999
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SPEAKERS: WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST, CHIEF JUSTICE, U.S. SUPREME COURT
U.S. SENATOR TRENT LOTT, MAJORITY LEADER
LLOYD OGILVIE, SENATE CHAPLAIN
DAVID E. KENDALL, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT CLINTON
FORMER SENATOR DALE BUMPERS (D-AR)
REHNQUIST: The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.
The chaplain will offer a prayer.
OGILVIE: Dear God, you know what we need before we ask you. But
in the asking, our minds and hearts are prepared to receive your
answer.
In this impeachment trial, we've learned again that really
listening over a prolonged period of time is hard work. Often it's
difficult to hear what is said because of differing convictions.
Dissonance causes discordant static. Sometimes our preconceptions
about what we think will be said keep us from hearing what is actually
said.
Thank you for the commitment of the men and women of this Senate
to serve you and our nation by accepting the demanding responsibility
of listening for and evaluating truth.
Grant them renewed energy, sensitive audio nerves and discerning
minds, for your glory and for the good of America.
Amen.
REHNQUIST: Amen.
The sergeant-at-arms will make the proclamation.
SERGEANT-AT-ARMS OF THE SENATE: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. All
persons are commanded to keep silent on pain of imprisonment while the
Senate of the United States is sitting for the trial of the articles
of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives against
William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States.
REHNQUIST: The chair recognizes the majority leader.
LOTT: Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
Today, we'll conclude the presentation of the White House
counsels. And I understand that the presentation will last
approximately four and one-half hours.
As we've done previously, we will take periodic breaks throughout
the proceedings with the first one coming in approximately one hour
and 15 minutes. I believe that would be approximately midway in the
presentation of Mr. Counsel Kendall. And then we would probably take
at least one more break laster on so that the senators and chief
justice would have a chance to stretch and so would have some logical
break in the presentations.
As a reminder, we will convene tomorrow at one p.m. to resume
consideration of the articles. And at this point I would ask the
indulgence of the chief justice and all senators as we would take up
some routine matters before we resume consideration of the articles.
These have been pre-cleared. I understand, though, that I would need
to ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding the consideration of
the articles, that it be order at this time to conduct several routine
legislative matters.
REHNQUIST: Is there objection? Without objection, it is so
ordered.
LOTT: Mr. Chief Justice, there are three bills at the desk, and
I would like to ask that bills be considered as read a third time.
And I further ask that the bills be read a second time en bloc and
would object to my own request.
REHNQUIST: Is there objection? Without objection, it is so
ordered.
LOTT: Then the bills would be read a second time on the next
legislative day, as I understand it.
REHNQUIST: The leader is correct.
LOTT: Mr. Chief Justice, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 28, which would
change the words "handicapped individuals" to "individuals with
disabilities" in Rule 25.
LOTT: I further ask consent the resolution be agreed to and the
motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.
REHNQUIST: Is there objection? Without objection, it's so
ordered.
LOTT: Then that concludes our regular business. I believe that
we are prepared for the concluding presentation by the White House
Counsel and I yield the floor, Mr. Chief Justice.
REHNQUIST: If there's no objection, the journal of proceedings
of the trial are approved to date pursuant to the provisions of Senate
Rule 16, Resolution 16, the counsel for the president have 18 hours
and nine minutes remaining to make the presentation of their case.
The Senate will now hear you. The presiding officer recognizes
Mr. Counsel Kendall.
KENDALL: Mr. Chief Justice, members of the Senate, managers from
the House of Representatives, good afternoon.
I'm David Kendall of the law firm of Williams & Connolly, and
since 1993, it has been my privilege to represent the president in the
torturous and meandering White Water investigation which approximately
a year ago was transformed in a remarkable way into the Lewinsky
investigation.
KENDALL: I want to address this morning -- this afternoon
certain allegations of obstruction of justice contained in Article II
of the Articles of impeachment.
Mr. Manager Sensenbrenner remarked that no prior article alleging
obstruction of justice has ever been -- has ever reached this chamber.
So this is a case of first impression. Deputy Counsel Cheryl Mills
yesterday addressed the parts of Article II pertaining to gifts and
the president's conversations with Ms. Currie, and I will cover this
afternoon the remaining five sub-parts of Article II.
The evidence plainly shows that the president did not obstruct
justice in any way and there is nothing in this article which would
warrant his removal from office.
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KENDALL: As I begin I want to thank you for your open minds, for
your attention, for your withholding judgment until you've heard all
of our evidentiary presentation.
There are a lot of myths about what the evidence is in this case.
Some of them are misunderstandings based upon erroneous media reports.
Some spring from confusion in the evidence itself, and some are the
result of concerted partisan distortion.
I want to talk to you this afternoon about what the record is and
what the evidence actually shows. And I apologize to you in advance
if the process is tedious. What I think I've got to request from you
is your common sense and some uncommon patience.
But the evidence, those stubborn facts, are critically important
to inform your ultimate vote on these articles.
KENDALL: I'll do my best to avoid repetition and lawyer talk,
although I am a lawyer.
In our trial memorandum, we gave you the citations to the
evidence I'm going to be referencing so you can check the facts there.
I want to say that I welcome your scrutiny.
My presentation this morning consists of six parts, and I'd like,
if I could, to give you those as milestones.
I want to make some remarks generally about evidence, and then I
want to consider the specific evidence which is relevant to each of
the five subparts I'm going to be talking about.
I'm going to do them out of numerical order, but what I hope is
in a logical order. I'm going to cover Article I first, then Article
II, then Article V, Article VII and Article IV.
Ms. Mills yesterday has already covered III and VI.
KENDALL: First of all, a few words about evidence. We've heard
a great deal about the rule of law in the various presentations of the
House managers. But what's at issue here, and I think Mr. Manager
Graham made this point very well, is a solemn obligation which is
constitutionally committed to this body. Your decision, whatever it
is, is not going to have some kind of domino effect that ineluctably
leads to that midnight knock at the door.
The rule of law is more than rhetoric. It means that in
proceedings like these, where important rights are being adjudicated,
that evidence matters. Fairness matters. Rules of procedural
regularity matter. The presumption of innocence matters. And
proportionality matters.
The rule of law is not the monopoly of the House managers, and it
ought to be practiced in these proceedings as well as talked about in
speeches.
We've heard a lot of pejorative rhetoric about legal
hairsplitting that the president and his legal team have engaged in,
and as a member of that legal team I've paid attention to that
rhetoric. But as I sat there listening to the various presentations,
they struck me as somewhat odd, because one of the hallmarks of the
rule of law is careful procedures and explicit laws which try to
define rights for every citizen.
KENDALL: It's not legal hair-splitting to raise available
defenses or to point out gaps in the evidence or to make legal
arguments based upon precedent, however technical and politically
unpopular some of those arguments may be.
And I think it's particularly important in a proceeding like
this, where the charge is an accusation of crime. And Mr. Manager
McCollum was quite explicit in his argument that the first thing you
have to determine here is whether the president committed any crimes.
I'm going to try and focus on the facts and the evidence
concerning obstruction of justice. I don't think there is a need for
me to go into the law. We have set forth the relevant legal
principles in our trial memorandum.
Mr. Ruff and Ms. Mills very ably covered some of the governing
principles and Ms. Mills played some videotape excerpts of experts.
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KENDALL: So I don't think there's any need for me to rehearse
that here. Indeed, our primary disagreement with the very able House
managers concerns the evidence and what it shows.
Now, in December the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives reported four articles of impeachment to the floor.
Two of those -- one involving -- one alleging perjury in the
president's January 17, 1998 deposition in the Paula Jones case; and
one alleging abuse of power were specifically considered by the House
and just as specifically rejected, although the House managers have
very cleverly attempted to weave into their discussion of the two
articles that were adopted, some of the rejected allegations.
KENDALL: Now, on the chart, Article II alleges that the
president has in some way impeded or covered up the existence of
evidence relevant to the Paula Jones case. That's the whole focus of
this article. It focuses on alleged impact on the Paula Jones case.
It's important because when we get to subpart 7, we'll see that
there is no way the allegations there could be a part of this article
or impact the Paula Jones case.
The president supposedly accomplished this obstruction of justice
through -- and here I quote -- "one or more of the following acts."
Now, here I think I should observe that this one or more menu as it
were is plainly defective in a constitutional sense because, as we've
pointed out in our answer and our trial memorandum, and as Mr. Ruff
has made clear in his presentation, such a format makes it impossible
to assure the constitutionally required two-thirds of senators voting
concur on any particular ground that is alleged. Since the Senate's
rules provide that you can't split up this menu, you've got to cover
all seven allegations together, it would be possible for the president
to be convicted without that requisite two-thirds majority, because
you might get nine or ten votes in favor of the article based on each
of the seven different grounds.
KENDALL: The Constitution, of course, gives the House of
Representatives the sole power of impeachment and it's exercised that
power to adopt Article II. However, several of the allegations about
what the president did to obstruct justice, supposedly, in the House
managers' presentation are nowhere contained in these seven sub-parts.
They're simply not there.
For example, you heard repeatedly about the president's use in
his deposition of the term "alone," was he ever alone with Ms.
Lewinsky, and the managers claim that that somehow obstructed justice.
The allegation that this consisted of an impeachable offense, however,
was rejected when the House of Representatives voted down the one of
the four articles alleging deposition perjury.
You've also heard reference to the president's allegedly false
and misleading answers to the 81 interrogatories sent to the president
in November by the House Judiciary Committee.
KENDALL: Again, an article based upon those interrogatory
answers was voted down in the House of Representatives. I'd like you
to bear in mind an image which Mr. Manager Hutchinson and Counsel Ruff
shared in some way. You will see that they didn't share it entirely.
Mr. Manager Hutchinson referred to the seven pillars of
obstruction. Mr. White House Counsel Ruff referred to the seven
shifting sand castles of speculation. Won't surprise you that I agree
with Mr. Ruff's characterization.
But the important point is that there are seven grounds in this
article. There are not eight, there are not 19, there are not seven,
there are seven charges. That's what the House enacted and that's
what we're going to address and rebut.
Before considering the five articles -- the five subparts of
Article II that I'm going to be addressing, I'd like to say a few
words about the different kinds of evidence that you're going to have
to consider.
KENDALL: There is first direct evidence. Now, this is the most
probative kind of evidence because it's the least ambiguous. It comes
directly from the five senses of the witness, and for example when the
witness testifies about something the witness did, that is direct
evidence.
From the House managers' very skillful presentation, you would
not be aware of the large amount of direct evidence which is in the
record which refutes and contradicts the allegations of obstruction of
justice. I'm going to cover that in detail this afternoon.
The second kind of evidence is what the law calls circumstantial.
And this describes any evidence which is probative only if a certain
conclusion or inference is drawn from the evidence. Circumstantial
evidence is admissible, but by definition it is to some degree
ambiguous because it's not direct.
KENDALL: Its probative power, or its value, depends upon the
strength of the inference you can logically draw from it.
Let me give you an example. You walk out of your house in the
morning and you see the sidewalk is completely wet. Now, you might
conclude that it had rained the night before and you might be
reasonably confident in that conclusion.
However, were your sharp eyes to focus further and observe your
neighbor's sprinkler sitting right by the sidewalk dripping from the
sprinkler head, you might want to revise your conclusion.
KENDALL: As one court has stated, "circumstantial evidence
presents a danger that the trier of fact may leap logical gaps in the
proof offered and draw unwarranted conclusions based on probabilities
of low degree."
If a criminal charge is to be based on conclusions drawn from
circumstantial evidence rather than on direct evidence, those
conclusions have got to be virtually unavoidable. Most of the
obstruction case presented -- and they have recognized this. And Mr.
Manager Hutchinson recognized it on Sunday -- is based on
circumstantial evidence. And that evidence is as at best profoundly
ambiguous.
They told you that they had painted a picture with circumstantial
evidence. I think what they've in fact done is given you a rorschach
test.
I'd like to now turn to the five subparts of Article II which I
intend to cover.
KENDALL: And I want to describe as to each the relevant direct
evidence in the record, the circumstantial evidence, and the portions
of the managers' presentation which do not in fact constitute either
kind of evidence, but in fact represent speculation, theorizing and
hypothesis.
What I believe you will find is that the direct evidence
disproves the charges of obstruction and the managers have had to rely
on contradictory and unpersuasive circumstantial evidence to try to
make their case.
Subpart one of Article II alleges that the president encouraged
Ms. Lewinsky to execute an affidavit in the Paula Jones case that he
knew to be perjurious, false and misleading.
KENDALL: The House managers allege that during a December 17
telephone conversation, Miss Lewinsky asked the president, what she
could do if she were subpoenaed in the Jones' case.
And the president responded, well, maybe you could sign an
affidavit. And that's a statement the president does not dispute
making. It's hard to believe, but this statement of the president to
Miss Lewinsky advising her of the possibility of totally lawful
conduct is the House managers' entire factual basis for supporting the
first allegation in subpart one.
KENDALL: The managers don't claim that the president advised her
to file a false affidavit, that's not what subpart one alleges. And
there's no evidence in the record anywhere to support such an
allegation. Nor do the managers allege he even told her, advised her,
urged her, or suggested to her what to put into her affidavit.
The charge which the managers have spun out of this single
statement by the president is refuted by the direct evidence.
First of all, Ms. Lewinsky has repeatedly and forcefully denied
any and all suggestions that the president ever asked her to lie. In
her proffer, and a proffer of course is an offer made to a prosecutor
to try and get immunity, she made one in her own handwriting on
February the First, 1998, and she stated explicitly that neither the
president nor anyone on his behalf ever told, ever ask or encouraged
Ms. Lewinsky to lie.
KENDALL: In an FBI interview conducted on July 27th, she made
two similar statements. And you see them up here on the chart.
Neither the president or Jordan ever told Lewinsky that she had to
lie. Neither the president nor anyone ever directed Lewinsky to say
anything or to lie. And it was the FBI agent who transcribed those
two comments.
Now, I'd like to focus on the fact that she told the FBI the
president never directed her to say anything or to lie. I think that
is particularly telling as direct evidence in the context of this
allegation that the president supposedly urged her to file an
affidavit that he knew would be false.
KENDALL: Finally, in Miss Lewinsky's August the 20th grand jury
testimony, she stated -- and she had to volunteer to do it-- "no one
ever asked me to lie, and I was never promised a job for my silence."
No one ever asked me to lie, and I was never promised a job for
my silence. Is there something difficult to understand here? It's
interesting to see how the House managers try to establish that
somehow the president asked Miss Lewinsky to file a false affidavit,
but their argument essentially begs the question.
They argue that the president in fact somehow encouraged her to
lie, because both parties knew the affidavit would have to be false
and misleading to accomplish the desired result.
*** Elapsed Time 00:27, Eastern Time 13:27 ***
KENDALL: But again, there's no evidence to support this
conjecture and in fact, the opposite is true. Both Ms. Lewinsky and
the president have testified repeatedly that given the particular
claims being made in the Jones' case, they both honestly believed that
a truthful, albeit limited, affidavit might, might establish that Ms.
Lewinsky had nothing relevant to offer in the way of testimony in the
Jones case.
The president explained in his grand jury testimony on at least
five occasions in response to the prosecutor's questions that he
believed Ms. Lewinsky could execute a truthful, but limited affidavit
that would have established there was no basis for calling her as a
witness to testify in the Jones case.
For example, the president told the grand jury, "But I'm just
telling you that it's certainly true what she says here, that we
didn't have -- there was no employment, no benefit and exchange.
There was nothing having to do with sexual harassment. And if she
defined sexual relationship in the way I think most Americans do, then
she told the truth."
KENDALL: Or, again, the president told the grand jury: "I've
already told you that I felt strongly that she could issue, that she
could execute an affidavit that would be factually truthful that might
get her out of having to testify. And did I hope she'd be able to get
out of testifying on an affidavit? Absolutely. Did I want her to
execute a false affidavit? No, I did not."
It's important to bear in mind that the Paula Jones case was a
sexual harassment case, although it turned out to be legally
groundless, and it involved allegations of non-consensual sexual
solicitation.
Ms. Lewinsky's relationship to the president had been consensual,
she knew nothing whatsoever about the allegations in the Jones case,
there's no evidence in the record that she'd ever been in Arkansas in
her life, and in any event the Jones case arose out of factual
allegations dating from May of 1991 when the president was governor of
Arkansas, long before Ms. Lewinsky had even met the president.
KENDALL: Now, it's not simply the president who believed that in
the circumstances here, Ms. Lewinsky could have filed an affidavit
which could have been truthful and which might have gotten her
released from testifying in a Jones case deposition. Ms. Lewinsky
also has testified that she might have been able to file a truthful
affidavit which have accomplished that purpose.
For example, she told the FBI in an interview after she obtained
immunity on July 29th, that she had told Linda Tripp that the purpose
of an affidavit was to avoid being deposed, and that she thought one
could do this by giving only a portion of the whole story, so the
Jones lawyers would not think the person giving the affidavit had
anything of relevance to their case.
Again, in the same interview with the FBI, Ms. Lewinsky stated
that the goal of such an affidavit was to be as benign as possible so
as to avoid being deposed. Again, in her grand jury testimony on
August 6th, Ms. Lewinsky testified that "I thought that signing an
affidavit could range from anywhere.
KENDALL: "The point of it would be to deter or to prevent me
from being deposed, and so that there could range from anywhere
between maybe just something -- somehow mentioning, you know,
innocuous things."
It's not disputed that the president showed no interest in
viewing a draft of Miss Lewinsky's affidavit, did not review it and
according to Miss Lewinsky, said he did not need to see it.
This fact is obviously exculpatory. If the president were truly
concerned about what was going into Miss Lewinsky's affidavit, surely
he would have wanted to review it prior to its summation.
Now, to counter this inference, the House managers offer
speculation. Mr. Manager McCollum tried to downplay the significance
of this fact by asking you to engage in sheer surmise.
KENDALL: He said on Friday, "I doubt seriously the president was
talking about 15 other affidavits that he had supposedly seen of
someone else and didn't like looking at affidavits any more. I
suspect, and I would suggest to you, he was talking about 15 other
drafts of this proposed affidavit since it had been around the horn, a
lot of rounds."
Well, as the able House manager himself stated, this suggestion
is mere suspicion, speculation. It flies in the face of Ms.
Lewinsky's direct testimony. There's evidence of only a few drafts,
and there's no evidence that the president ever saw any draft.
Now, Ms. Lewinsky was under no obligation to volunteer to the
Paula Jones lawyers every last detail about her relationship with the
president.
*** Elapsed Time 00:33, Eastern Time 13:33 ***
KENDALL: And the fact that the president did not advise her or
instruct her to do so is neither wrong nor an obstruction of justice.
The fact is that a limited truthful affidavit might have established
that Ms. Lewinsky's testimony was simply not relevant to the Jones
case.
The president knew and had told Ms. Lewinsky that a great many
other women he knew who had been subpoenaed by the Paula Jones lawyers
had tried to avoid -- had to tried to avoid the burden, the expense,
and the humiliation of a deposition by filing an affidavit in support
of a motion to quash the deposition subpoena and by arguing in the
affidavit that the subpoenaed woman had no relevant evidence for the
Jones case.
The Jones lawyers were casting a very wide net for evidence that
they could use to embarrass the president. The discovery cut-off in
the case was fast approaching.
KENDALL: That's the point at which you can't take anymore
discovery. And there was some chance both Ms. Lewinsky and the
president felt that she could escape deposition through an accurate,
but limited affidavit.
Moreover, there is significant evidence in the record that at the
time she executed her affidavit, Ms. Lewinsky honestly could believe,
honestly believed that she could deny a sexual relationship given what
she believed to be the definition of that term. In an audiotape
conversation which Linda Tripp secretly recorded, Ms. Lewinsky
declared: "I never even came close to sleeping with the president.
We didn't have sex."
Again, I would remind you of Mr. Craig's presentation yesterday
concerning Ms. Lewinsky's understanding of the term "sexual relations"
which was the same as the president's.
Now, there's another part of the chronology here, and a
circumstantial evidence case often rests heavily on chronology, that
the House managers simply ignore in their attempt to fit some of the
facts into a sinister pattern. Ms. Lewinsky's name appeared on the
Paula Jones witness list, which the managers tell us accurately, the
president's lawyers reviewed with him on Saturday, December 6th.
KENDALL: She was one of a great many people named on the witness
list.
Now, if the president's concern was so intense about the
appearance of her name on the list, would he have waited until
December 17th to talk to her? There's no explanation for this delay,
which is consistent with intense concern on the president's part
except that her appearance, with a lot of others, was not particularly
troubling to him.
The main reason for his phone call on December 17th to Ms.
Lewinsky, the unrebutted evidence shows, is that he wanted to tell
Miss Lewinsky that Betty Currie's brother had died. Indeed, three
days after that telephone call, Miss Lewinsky attended the funeral of
Miss Currie's brother on December the 20th.
Now, insofar as you want to draw analogy, or you draw inferences
from the chronology of events in December, this long delay is
circumstantial evidence that the president felt no particular urgency,
either to alert Ms. Lewinsky that her name was on the witness list or
make any suggestions to her about an affidavit.
KENDALL: Remember her repeated testimony, which is direct
evidence, no one ever asked her to lie. Now, subpart two of Article
II alleges that the president obstructed justice by encouraging Ms.
Lewinsky in that same late night telephone call -- two of these
articles rest on this same telephone call -- to give perjurious, false
and misleading testimony, if and when she was called to testify
personally in the Jones litigation.
Now, it was interesting to me that a couple of days ago, the
House managers released a response to our presentation and they
concede here that the president and Ms. Lewinsky did not discuss the
deposition that evening of December 17th because Monica -- they call
her Monica -- had not been subpoenaed. Well, that's true.
KENDALL: There was no deposition subpoena received by Ms.
Lewinsky until two days later.
Now, the lawyers in the room know something about what witness
lists are and what they contain that the civilian part of the world
may not know.
As lawyers get ready to go to trial and the judge requires them
to put their witnesses on the witness list, you put every witness you
can think of who might conceivably be relevant from, Mr. Aardvark to
Ms. Zanzibar, all of them go on the witness list. And that's what had
happened here. It wasn't until you get something like a subpoena for
a deposition that you know a witness is really going to be a
significant player in a trial.
Well, let's look at the allegations here. And remember, these
allegations focus on December 17th, two days before Ms. Lewinsky is
going to receive her subpoena.
I think you logically begin with the direct evidence.
KENDALL: And the direct evidence is the testimony of the two
people involved in the telephone conversation, Ms. Lewinsky and the
president. Ms. Lewinsky has repeatedly stated that no one ever urged
her to lie and that this plainly applies to this December 17
conversation.
She said in her handwritten proffer that I had on the chart
earlier that the president did not ask her or encourage her to lie.
She made that statement when talking to the independent counsel, when
her fate was in the hands of the independent counsel, when her
immunity agreement could be broken and she could be prosecuted.
She's nevertheless continued to maintain that nobody asked her
ever to lie. She said in the July 27 FBI interview neither the
president nor Mr. Jordan ever told her she had to lie, and she said
that in her grand jury testimony.
KENDALL: It's interesting to hear all the ways that the House
managers, and they are very skillful, try to minimize the importance
of this direct evidence. You'd think Ms. Lewinsky's statements under
oath were irrelevant to this case.
She gave this testimony for the most part when she was subject to
prosecution for perjury. It simply cannot be blandly dismissed
because it was given under this threat. Indeed, Mr. Manager
Hutchinson, and I'd like to quote him, shares this same belief with
me. He told you, standing right here, that Ms. Lewinsky's testimony
is credible and she has the motive to tell the truth because of her
immunity with the independent counsel, where she gets in trouble only
if she lies.
Likewise, the president has consistently insisted he never asked
Ms. Lewinsky to lie. In his grand jury testimony last August, he said
that he and Ms. Lewinsky might have talked about what to do in a non-
legal context at some point in the past if anybody inquired about
their relationship, although he had no specific memory of such a
conversation and he testified that they did not talk about this in
connection with Ms. Lewinsky's testimony in the Jones case.
KENDALL: He was asked by one of the prosecutors: And in that
conversation on December 17 or in any conversation in which you
informed her she was on the witness list, did you tell, you know, you
can always say that you were coming to see Betty or bringing me
letters. Did you tell her anything like that?
The president: I don't remember. She was coming to see Betty, I
can tell you that. I absolutely never asked her to lie. There is,
thus, no direct testimony from anybody that on December 17, the
president asked Ms. Lewinsky to lie if called to testify in the Jones
case.
KENDALL: Here the House managers don't really even rely on
circumstantial evidence to refute the direct testimony of the two
relevant witnesses, they rely instead on what they assert is logic.
They claim that while the president maybe didn't specifically
tell her to lie, he somehow suggested that she give a false account of
the relationship. What you should infer, according to them, is based
upon what they may have said about their relation at other times,
previous times, to this late night December 17th phone call, the
president somehow suggested that she say the same thing at her
deposition, something like, you know, you can always say you were
coming to see Betty, or that you were bringing me letters.
Their claim boils down, however, to the inferences to be drawn
from the uncontested fact that in the past before this time, before
this December 17th phone call, the president and Ms. Lewinsky had had
discussions about what she should say if asked about her visits to the
Oval Office.
*** Elapsed Time 00:46, Eastern Time 13:46 ***
KENDALL: Both have acknowledged that. Not surprisingly, at the
time these conversations occurred, they were both concerned to conceal
their improper relationship from others while it was going on.
Cover stories are an almost inevitable part of every improper
relationship between two human beings. By its very nature the
relationship is one that has to be concealed and therefore misleading
cover stories inevitably accompany that relationship.
Now, to say that is not to excuse it or to exonerate it or
justify it, but rather to emphasize that the testimony about "visiting
Betty" or "bringing me letters" is in the record, but it's not linked
in any way to the December 17 phone call or to any testimony or
affidavit with regard to the Jones case.
KENDALL: Here again, I want to go to the direct evidence that's
relevant on count two because it undercuts the managers' suggestion
that this discussion of the cover stories actually occurred in the
context of the discussion about the Paula Jones case.
Now, here on a chart we have a blowup of Ms. Lewinsky's -- part
of Ms. Lewinsky's handwritten proffer to the independent counsel on
February 1, which makes it clear that she does recall having the
discussion with the president in which he said that if anyone
questioned her about visiting him she should say she was either
bringing him letters or visiting Betty Currie, but Ms. Lewinsky states
there is truth to both of these statements.
KENDALL: It was a cover story, but there was some truth in it.
She also went out of her way in this proffer to emphasize that
while she did not recall precisely when the discussions about cover
stories occurred, they occurred prior to the subpoena in the Paula
Jones case. That's what you see in her paragraph 11.
Her paragraph 11 refers back to paragraph 2, and her point is
that while she and the president did have these discussions, it was
not in the context of her testimony.
In paragraph 4, also, as you see from the chart or from your
handout, as to the contents of any possible testimony, Ms. Lewinsky
wrote that to the best of her recollection, she did not believe she
discussed the content
of any deposition during the December 17th conversation with the
president.
*** Elapsed Time 00:49, Eastern Time 13:49 ***
KENDALL: Now in an FBI interview on July the 31st, after she had
received immunity from the independent counsel, the FBI agent noted
what Ms. Lewinsky had told him. Lewinsky advised, though they did not
discuss the issue in specific relationship to the Jones matter, she
and Clinton had discussed what to say when asked about Lewinsky's
visits to the White House.
This is direct evidence. Nobody denies that there was a
discussion of cover stories early in the relation, but there is no
evidence that it occurred in connection in any way with the Jones
case.
Now again, despite Ms. Lewinsky's direct and unrefuted testimony
about the December 17th telephone call, the House managers ask you to
conclude that the president must have asked her to testify falsely
because she had, by her own account, on prior occasions assured the
president that she would deny the relationship.
KENDALL: Think for a moment about that. They ask you to accept
their speculation in the face of contradictory evidence from both
parties and use that as a basis on which to remove the president.
Again, Ms. Lewinsky never stated that she told the president anything
about denying their relationship in December 17 or at any other time
when she'd been identified as a witness. Indeed, she testified in the
grand jury that that discussion did not take place after she'd learned
she was a witness in the Jones case.
And again we have her grand jury testimony displayed on the
chart. A grand juror's asking her questions.
Question: "Is it possible that you also had these discussions
about cover stories or denying the relationship after you learned that
you were a witness in the Paula Jones case?"
Ms. Lewinsky: "I don't believe so."
KENDALL: Juror -- and these jurors were very good at questioning
witnesses throughout this proceeding.
"Can you exclude that possibility?"
Ms. Lewinsky: "I pretty much can't. I really don't remember
it."
Direct testimony given when Ms. Lewinsky was covered by an
immunity agreement that could only be divested by her perjuring
herself.
There's another thing which I think is relevant here, and that is
that Ms. Lewinsky has stated several times that while these were cover
stories, they were not untrue. In her handwritten proffer, as you've
seen, she stated that she asked the president what to say if anyone
asked her about her visits, and he said, you could mention Betty
Currie or bringing me letters. And she added that there was truth to
both of these statements, and that neither of those statements was
untrue.
KENDALL: Indeed, she testified to the grand jury that she did in
fact bring papers to the president. And that on some occasions she
visited the Oval Office only to see Ms. Currie.
Question, the grand jury: Did you actually bring the president
papers at all? Yes.
All right tell us a little about that. It varied. Sometimes it
was just actual copies of letters.
And again in her August 6, 1998 grand jury appearance, Ms.
Lewinsky testified, I saw Betty on every time that I was there. Most
of the time, my purpose was to see the president, but there were some
times when I did just go see Betty, but the president wasn't in the
office.
Ms. Lewinsky and Ms. Currie were friends and they did have a
separate social relationship. Now, the managers assert that these
stories were misleading and the House committee report on the articles
of impeachment declared that these stories about Ms. Currie and
delivering papers was a rouse. It had no legitimate business purpose.
In other words, while the so-called stories were literally true, the
explanations might have been misleading.
*** Elapsed Time 00:53, Eastern Time 13:53 ***
KENDALL: But the literal truth here, while it may appear
legalistic and hairsplitting, is in fact a defense to both the perjury
and the obstruction of justice charges under the rule of law.
While the president and Ms. Currie -- and Ms. Lewinsky had
discussed cover stories while their improper relationship was in
progress, there is simply no evidence that they discussed this at any
time when Ms. Lewinsky was a witness in the Jones case.
The next sub-part I want to consider is sub-part five. Sub-part
five alleges that at the deposition the president allowed his attorney
to make false and misleading statements to a federal judge,
characterizing an affidavit, in order to prevent questioning deemed
relevant by the judge.
KENDALL: It alleges obstruction solely because the president did
not say anything when his attorney, Mr. Bennett, cited Ms. Lewinsky's
affidavit in an unsuccessful argument to Judge Wright that evidence
concerning Ms. Lewinsky should not be admitted at that point because
it was irrelevant to the Jones case.
At one point, Mr. Bennett, the president's lawyer, states that
according to the affidavit there's no sex of any kind in any manner,
shape or form. Now, this claim, which also is presented in the
perjury section, as Mr. Craig pointed out, is deficient as an
allegation of obstruction both as a matter of fact and as a matter of
law.
But I will say one thing. The direct evidence on this point is
uniquely available because there is only one witness who can testify
about what was in his thoughts at a given moment, and the president
has testified at great length in his grand jury testimony about what
he was thinking at this point.
KENDALL: The president told the grand jury that he was simply
not focusing closely on the exchange between the lawyers but was
instead concentrating on his own testimony.
He said, "I'm not even sure I paid much attention to what he [
Mr. Bennett] was saying. I was thinking. I was ready to get on with
my testimony here, and they were having these constant discussions all
through the deposition."
And again the president testifies: "I didn't pay any attention
to this colloquy going on. I was waiting for my instructions as a
witness to go forward. I was worried about my own testimony."
And I think Mr. Craig provided you with a background yesterday
that I won't repeat here, but I would refer you to, about what was on
the president's mind at the time.
Now, Mr. Manager McCollum made a very polished and articulate
presentation to you, and he predicted that the president's lawyers
were going to argue that the president sat in silence because he
wasn't paying attention.
KENDALL: And we have indeed argued this and it is the truth,
based upon what the president has testified he was thinking about.
But Mr. McCollum went on to argue that there was circumstantial
evidence available from the videotape of the president at this
deposition. He stated, I quote him, "We've already seen the video.
And you know that he was looking so intently. Remember, he was
intently following the conversation with his eyes. I don't how
anybody can say this man wasn't paying attention. He certainly wasn't
thinking about anything else. That was very obvious from looking at
the video."
Well, you all saw the video during the House managers'
presentations and we saw a lot of the president at the deposition
yesterday when Mr. Craig played the first part of it.
KENDALL: If you observe the president throughout the time you
see him on the video in the deposition, you will conclude that the
look on his face was no different from when it was during other
discussions or arguments of counsel about evidentiary or procedural
matters.
The videotape does not, fairly considered, indicate that the
president was in fact focusing on the lengthy colloquy among his
lawyers or that he knowingly made a decision not to correct his own
lawyer.
Now the president has received a great deal of criticism because
at one point in his grand jury testimony, when asked about Mr.
Bennett's statement, the president responds to the prosecutor that
whether Mr. Bennett's statement is true depends on what the meaning of
the word "is" is.
KENDALL: That is, there's no sex of any kind. That's gotten its
share of laughs.
But when you read the president's grand jury transcript in
context, this was a serious matter and it's apparent that the
president was not in any way describing what was in his own mind at
the time of the deposition, but he's rather discussing Mr. Bennett's
statement from the vantage of the president's later grand jury
testimony. He's interpreting what his own lawyer was saying, and Mr.
Craig pointed this out yesterday.
That interpretation was not perjury in Article I and it's not
obstruction of justice in Article II.
What the exchange was was that the president in response to one
of the prosecutors explains why on one reading Mr. Bennett's statement
may not be false.
KENDALL: Now, it may be hairsplitting and it may be professorial
and it may be technical, but the important thing is, it's a
retrospective assessment. The president is not talking about himself,
he's talking about how to construe Mr. Bennett's statement. And what
he says is, there is a way in which Mr. Bennett's statement at the
deposition is accurate. That is, if Mr. Bennett was referring to the
relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky on that date, it
was an accurate statement, because the improper relationship was over
a long time earlier.
Now, the relevant point here is that the president's disquisition
on the word "is" and its meaning was not an attempt to explain his own
thinking at the time of the deposition, but was rather his later
interpretation of what Mr. Bennett had said at the deposition.
In light of the president's direct, unequivocal testimony, the
speculation about what was in his mind is simply baseless, and there
is in fact no evidence to support the charge leveled in subpart 5 of
Article II.
KENDALL: There's another reason to reject the charge and that is
that the law imposes no obligation on the client to monitor his or her
lawyers' every statement and representation.
Particularly in a civil deposition in which the client is being
questioned. Clients are routinely advised to focus on the questions
posed, think carefully about the answer, answer only the question
asked and ignore distractions.
And sometimes, sad to say, the statements of one's own lawyer can
be a distraction. And those of you who are lawyers and have defended
people in depositions know that that's the advice you give the client.
There was good reason for the president to be thinking about his
own testimony and leave the legal fencing to the lawyers.
KENDALL: Because whatever else may be said about it, there can
be no doubt that the Jones case itself was a vehicle for partisan
attack on the president and that he was going to be facing a series of
hostile and difficult questions at the deposition.
Now, Judge Wright ultimately ruled that giving Ms. Jones every
benefit of the doubt, she'd failed both legally and factually to
present allegations that merited going to trial. But while it was
legally meritless, while it was going on the case did impose a
significant toll on the president both personally and politically.
And let's be clear about one other thing while we're looking at
this deposition and while you review the significance of the president
listening in silence to Mr. Bennett's conduct.
KENDALL: As Mr. Craig described yesterday, Judge Wright in fact
interrupted Mr. Bennett in mid-sentence as he was describing Miss
Jones' affidavit. She didn't allow him to complete his objection in
which he cited the Lewinsky affidavit. She quickly interjected -- and
this is sometimes what judges do to the most learned of lawyers -- she
quickly interjected and said no, just a moment. Let me make my
ruling, and then she proceeded to allow the very line of questioning
that Mr. Bennett was trying to prevent.
So the president's silence, whatever motivated it, had absolutely
no impact on the conduct of the Jones deposition.
And also, let's be clear about one other thing. Nothing about
this interchange between Mr. Bennett and Judge Wright blocked the
ability of the Jones lawyers to obtain information about the
president's relationship with Miss Lewinsky, because the Jones lawyers
had been briefed the night before in great detail by Ms. Linda Tripp.
Ms. Tripp had already gotten her own immunity agreement from the
Office of Independent Counsel and had set up a lunch with Ms. Lewinsky
at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, the day before the deposition, Friday,
January 16th.
KENDALL: And at that lunch, of course, Ms. Lewinsky was
apprehended by the office of independent counsel and held for the next
12 hours.
In the meantime, however, Ms. Tripp goes back to her home where
she meets with the Jones lawyers that Friday night before the
deposition, and loads them up with all the information she has
obtained from her illegal secret audiotaping of Ms. Lewinsky.
That's why they were able to ask the questions they did with such
specificity and conviction. Indeed, there is one point in the
examination of the president where he says to the Jones lawyer whose
examining Mr. Fisher, he asks a question and Fisher says, "Sir, I
think this will come" -- he asked a question about "Can you tell me
why you're asking these specific questions?" And Fisher replies,
"Sir, I think this will come to light shortly, and you will
understand."
KENDALL: Well, ironic that I'm making a presentation today on
July 21 because it did come to light just as Mr. Fisher knew it would,
just as Ms. Tripp knew it would. It came to light one year ago
exactly when the story broke in the Washington Post.
This leading exchange between Mr. Bennett and Judge Wright,
before she overruled his objection, couldn't and didn't have any
impact on the Jones lawyers conduct.
Now, I want to look briefly at one other part of subpart five,
because it alleges, it continues to make one other allegation. Such
false and misleading statements at the deposition by Mr. Bennett
allegedly were subsequently acknowledged by Mr. Bennett in a
communication with the judge.
*** Elapsed Time 01:08, Eastern Time 14:08 ***
KENDALL: Now, if you look at Mr. Bennett's letter, however,
that's not at all what the letter says. Mr. Bennett wrote to the
judge on September the 30th of last year, this is after the referral
had come to Congress and after the House of Representatives had seen
fit to release Ms. Lewinsky's grand jury testimony. Mr. Bennett does
not, as the article alleged, acknowledge that he, himself, made false
and misleading statements or that the president, either by his words
or silence, made such statements.
What Mr. Bennett do in this letter, as you can see, is call the
court's attention to the fact that Ms. Lewinsky herself had testified
before a federal grand jury in August and, contrary to her earlier
statement, she stated that portions of her affidavit were, according
to her, false and misleading.
Mr. Bennett's letter bringing this to the judge's attention was a
matter of professional obligation and responsibility. It in no way is
evidence supporting subpart 5.
Could we take a break?
REHNQUIST: Chair recognizes the majority leader.
LOTT: Mr. Chief Justice, is Mr. Kendall indicating that he's
about halfway through his presentation?
KENDALL: That's correct (OFF-MIKE).
LOTT: I would then ask that we have a temporary recess for 15
minutes, Mr. Chief Justice.
REHNQUIST: Without objection, it's so ordered.
REHNQUIST: The Senate will be in order. The chair recognizes
the majority leader.
LOTT: Mr. Chief Justice, I believe that the Senate is ready to
proceed now with the presentation by Mr. Counsel Kendall.
REHNQUIST: The chair recognizes Mr. Counsel Kendall.
KENDALL: Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.
Subpart 7 -- we have two more subparts to go, I want to take them
out of order. Subpart 7 of Article II alleges that the president
obstructed justice when he relayed, told certain White House officials
things about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that were false and
misleading.
Now, this is another example of double billing in the two
articles. This charge is leveled in Article I and it appears here in
Article II.
Yesterday, Mr. Craig explained why these statements didn't
constitute perjury, and I'd like to take just a few minutes this
afternoon to explain why they don't constitute an obstruction of
justice either.
First of all, and most obviously, there is no way -- I said this
in the beginning -- there is no way that the statements of the aides
could be in any way part of a scheme to deny Ms. Jones evidence. I
think on this ground alone subpart 7 fails.
KENDALL: Because if you look at what is alleged in Article II,
it is that the president obstructed justice in order to delay, impede
et cetera existence of evidence and testimony related to Ms. Jones'
lawsuit. There's no way here that whatever the president said to his
aides could have done that.
The statements which this sub-part seven addresses were
statements that the president made very shortly after the Paula Jones
-- or the Lewinsky publicity had broken to Mr. Bowles, Mr. Podesta,
Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Ickes -- none of whom were witnesses in the
Paula Jones case.
They were on none of the witness lists and they had no evidence
at all relevant to the Paula Jones case since they'd been working for
the president. They weren't working for the president when he was
governor of Arkansas in May of 1991, and since they weren't
individuals subject to discovery. So these four aides just had
evidence whatsoever that they could contribute to the Paula Jones
case.
But there is another more fundamental reason why this article is
flawed as a matter both of the evidence and the law. The president
has admitted misleading his family, his staff and the nation about his
conduct with Ms. Lewinsky.
KENDALL: And he has expressed profound regret for that conduct.
Subpart 7, however, alleges that he should be impeached and
removed from office simply because he failed to be candid with these
particular four White House aides and misled them about the nature of
his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.
Now, these allegedly impeachable denials to the four aides
occurred, as I said, right after the publicity broke. Indeed, one of
them occurred on January the 21st last year, and then also on the 23rd
and the 26th.
This was at the very time the president was denying he'd had
sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky in nearly identical terms on
national television to whoever across the United States happened to be
watching at that time.
Now, having made this denial to the entire country, it's simply
absurd to regard it any differently when made to four aides in the
White House directly and person to person rather than through the
medium of television.
The president talked to these individuals about the Lewinsky
matter because of his personal relationship and his direct
professional exposure to them on a daily basis.
KENDALL: He spoke to them, however misleadingly, in an attempt
to ally their concerns once the allegations about Miss Lewinsky became
public.
Now no discovery here -- we haven't yet found a place in which a
discovery would benefit the case for either side -- but no discovery
here is going to illuminate the record in any way. These four
witnesses have testified before the independent counsel's grand jury
on several occasions.
I think it's important to observe also that there is no way this
interchange between the president and his aides could have affected
evidence, because his statements to them were hearsay, which they
would have reported accurately to the grand jury when asked. And by
hearsay, all they could testify to is what the president told them.
And they could do that accurately.
But their own testimony, based on whatever knowledge or
observation or direct sensory evidence they might have, was not
affected in any way by the president's statements.
KENDALL: None of these aides had any independent knowledge of
the relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky, and therefore
the only evidence they could offer would be a hearsay repetition of
what the president had told them. And that was the same public denial
that he had told everyone, including, presumably, any member of the
grand jury who had his or her television set on that Monday, January
26.
But under the strained theory -- and you really have to focus on
this -- under this theory, any citizen of the United States who heard
that denial could form the basis for an allegation of impeachable
conduct and removal of the president from office.
I think this subpart of article VII fails for a number of
reasons. It's not related to the Paula Jones case and it violates
common sense.
Let me turn to subpart 4. This subpart alleges that the
president obstructed justice when he intensified and succeeded in an
effort to secure job assistance to Ms. Lewinsky in order to corruptly
prevent her truthful testimony.
*** Eastern Time 14:37 ***
KENDALL: The claim here is of a quid pro quo -- a this for that.
This job assistance was allegedly in order to prevent her truthful
testimony. Now I want to not a couple of things here. First of all,
this word "intensified." This word "intensified" is a pretty slippery
word. It doesn't say "originated" or "began." It says "intensified."
And that allegation implicitly recognizes -- it tries to avoid
the thrust of its own logic. It recognizes that the job search Ms.
Lewinsky was conducting had begun long before there was any connection
to the Paula Jones case, and the undisputed facts are going to reveal
that Vernon Jordan and others were trying to help her long before she
appeared on the list of witnesses Ms. Jones was considering calling.
The second thing I want to emphasize is the quid pro quo nature
of the allegation.
KENDALL: Quid pro quo. One of those good Latin terms meaning
this for that. In order to is the allegation of subpart 4. The job
assistance was in order to prevent Miss Lewinsky's truthful testimony.
Well, I want to review the evidence of this, because there is not
only no evidence in the record, there's a lot of contradictory
evidence, both direct and circumstantial.
We've heard a great deal in the various presentations about Mr.
Jordan's assistance to Miss Lewinsky. But I was surprised to sit
right over there through 11 hours and 52 minutes by my watch of the
House managers' very able presentation, and I heard almost nothing
about what actually happened in New York City as a result of Mr.
Jordan's efforts.
But when we review the evidence -- and it's all right here, don't
worry, I'm not going to review every page of it, but it is all here --
when we review this evidence, which is available, all you got to do is
read it, we get a very different picture from what we got from the
able House managers.
KENDALL: There's no secret about it, nor is there any conflict
in the testimony of these witnesses. There's no need for further
discovery here, as I'll show, because the testimony is consistent.
Now, the proof that is in the record is that there was no corrupt
linkage, no assistance whatsoever which was designed and focused to
get Ms. Lewinsky to do anything, nothing which tied the job assistance
to what was going on in the Jones case.
Mr. Jordan did help open doors, and Ms. Lewinsky went through
those doors, and she either succeeded or failed on her own merits.
Two of the companies declined to offer her a job, and at the third she
did get an entry-level job which she received on her own merits.
There was no fix, no quid pro quo, no link to the Jones case.
And also, there was no urgency to Mr. Jordan's assistance to her. He
started assisting her well before she showed up on the Jones witness
list and he helped her whenever he could consistently with his own
heavy travel schedule.
KENDALL: There's the allegation of a quid pro quo, but there's
nothing in the evidence to support the "pro" part of it. What the
House managers have tried to do, and they are skillful prosecutors --
they are able, they are experienced, and they are polished, and they
know what they're doing. They've tried to juxtapose unrelated events
and by a selective chronology try and establish causation between two
wholly unrelated sets of an event -- of events.
And it's -- there's an old logical fallacy that -- you've had
enough Latin today -- that just because something comes after
something, it was caused by the preceding event. It's like the
rooster crowing and taking credit for the sun coming up. When you
look at the House managers' case, there's a lot of that going on
because we'll see there's no real existence of causal connection. And
we'll also see that a lot of the chronology you've been given is
erroneous.
As I said earlier, there is no evidence either direct or
circumstantial to support this quid pro quo allegation.
KENDALL: Now, let's start with the direct evidence, the most
logical place to begin. It could not be more unequivocal. Let's
start with Ms. Lewinsky.
First of all, her New York job search began on her own initiative
long before any involvement in the Jones case. Moving to New York was
her own idea, and it was one she raised in July of 1997.
This geographical move did not affect in any way her exposure to
a subpoena in the Paula Jones case. Under the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, of course, a witness can be subpoenaed in any federal
district, no matter where the case is pending. And, indeed, a great
many of the depositions in the Paula Jones case took place outside the
state of Arkansas.
And for this reason, Mr. Manager Barr's assertion that the
president wanted Miss Lewinsky to go to New York because it would, and
I quote, "make her much more difficult if not impossible to reach as a
witness in the Jones' case." That statement is entirely untenable.
KENDALL: She was just as vulnerable to subpoena in New York as
she was in Washington. And, indeed, she was already under subpoena in
January when she was finalizing her move. This contention just
doesn't withstand scrutiny.
Now, Ms. Lewinsky testified, "I was never promised a job for my
silence." You can't get any plainer than that. She testified that
her job search had no relation to anything she might do in the Jones
case.
In her July 27 interview with the FBI, the FBI agent recorded her
statement that there was no agreement with the president, with Mr.
Jordan, or anyone else that she had to sign a Jones affidavit before
getting a job in New York.
She told the FBI agent explicitly that she had never demanded
from Mr. Jordan a job in exchange for a favorable affidavit and that
neither the president nor Mr. Jordan nor anyone else had ever made
this proposition to her.
Now, Mr. Jordan, who is an eloquent and exceedingly articulate
man, took care of that claim in his own grand jury testimony. He was
asked about any connection between the job search and the affidavit.
He said there was absolutely none.
KENDALL: He said on March 5, as far as he was concerned, these
were two entirely separate matters. And in his grand jury appearance
on May the 5th, he was asked whether the two were connected, and Mr.
Jordan said, and I quote "unequivocally, indubitably, no."
The president has likewise testified that there was no connection
between the Jones case and Ms. Lewinsky's job search. He told the
grand jury, "I was not trying to buy her silence or get Vernon Jordan
to buy her silence. I thought she was a good person. She had not
been involved with me for a long time in any improper way -- several
months -- and I wanted to help her get on with her life. It's just as
simple as that."
Quid pro quo, no. The uncontested facts bear out these
categorical denials of the three most involved people.
*** Eastern Time 14:47 ***
KENDALL: Ms. Lewinsky began looking for a job in July of 1997,
and the event that hardened her resolve to move to New York was a
report by her ostensible good friend, Ms. Linda Tripp, on about
October the 6th that one of Ms. Tripp's friends at the National
Security Council said that Miss Lewinsky would never, ever get a job
in the White House again.
Now, it turns out that this disclosure, like so much else Ms.
Tripp said, is false. Ms. Tripp's NSC friend said no such thing. But
it did have a profound impact on Ms. Lewinsky, who described it as the
straw that broke the camel's back. It was plain to her then that she
was never going to be able to get another White House job.
Mr. Jordan's assistance to Ms. Lewinsky began about a month
before Ms. Lewinsky learned, about six weeks before she learned she
was a possible witness in the Jones case.
Ms. Lewinsky testified that she had discussed with Linda Tripp
sometime in late September or early October the idea of asking for Mr.
Jordan's assistance, and Ms. Lewinsky indicated she couldn't recall if
it were her idea or Linda Tripp's idea.
KENDALL: But in any event, Mr. Jordan became involved sometime
later at the direction not of the president, but of Ms. Currie, who
was a longtime friend of Mr. Jordan and who had discussed with Ms.
Lewinsky her job search. Now, Ms. Currie had previously assisted Ms.
Lewinsky in making contact with Ambassador Bill Richardson at the UN.
Ms. Lewinsky's first meeting was with Mr. Jordan on November the
5th, and Ms. Lewinsky testified that the meeting lasted about 20
minutes and that they had discussed a list of possible employers she
was interested in. She never told Mr. Jordan that there was any time
constraint on his assistance and both she and Mr. Jordan travel a
great deal out of the country and in the country in that November-
December period.
Now, Mr. Jordan testified unequivocally that he never at any time
felt any particular pressure to get Ms. Lewinsky a job. This is plain
and powerful and unrebutted testimony. He was asked in the grand jury
if he recalled any kind of a heightened sense of urgency by Ms. Currie
or anyone at the White House about helping Ms. Lewinsky during the
first half of December, and he replied, "Oh, no, I do not recall any
heightened sense of urgency.
KENDALL: What I do recall is that I dealt with it as I had time
to do it."
Now, let me just pause here and observe that if there had been
any improper motive for any sinister effort to silence Ms. Lewinsky,
it would have been extremely easy for the president to have arranged
for her to be hired at the White House. If there were some corrupt
intent to silence her, that was an obvious solution because she very
much wanted to go back to work at the White House. It mattered a
great deal.
But while she was interviewed a couple of times by White House
officials in the summer of 1997, those interviews never resulted in a
job offer. The fix was not in. There was no corrupt effort to bring
Ms. Lewinsky back, give her a White House job, or indeed transfer her
in any way from her Pentagon job.
Now, she continued her job search efforts with the assistance of
some of the White House people.
KENDALL: In late October or early November, she told her boss at
the Pentagon, Mr. Kenneth Bacon, that she wanted to leave and move to
New York City. She enlisted in trying to help her get a private
sector job, and he helped her because she'd done good work for him.
He had a positive impression and testified that he wanted to do
whatever he could for her.
In November of 1997, her supervisor at the Pentagon indicated
that Ms. Lewinsky gave notice of an intention to quit her Pentagon job
at the year end.
Now before we get to the private sector firms that Ms. Lewinsky
went to, I want to pause and make the point that she had a United
Nations delegation job in her back pocket. Back pocket is a male
image -- perhaps in her purse. She had it in her hand and available
all during this period.
In early October, at the request of Ms. Currie, Mr. Podesta, Mr.
John Podesta, who was then the White House deputy chief of staff, had
asked Ambassador Bill Richardson to consider Ms. Lewinsky for a
position at the UN.
*** Eastern Time 14:52 ***
KENDALL: The ambassador testified that he did not take this as a
pressure call. He said there was no pressure anywhere by anybody to
hire Ms. Lewinsky. Ms. Currie testified to the grand jury without
contradiction that she was acting on her own as Ms. Lewinsky's friend
in trying to help her.
Now, Ms. Lewinsky interviewed for the UN position on October 31
with Ambassador Richardson, and he, through his staff, offered her a
job on November the 3rd. Ambassador Richardson testified to the grand
jury that he never spoke to the president or Mr. Jordan about Ms.
Lewinsky; that he was impressed by her; that he made the offer on the
merits; and that no one had pressured him to hire her.
He testified specifically to the grand jury on April the 30th,
and I quote "this was my decision to hire. I did not do it under any
pressure or anything. I felt that she would be suitable for the job
and I didn't feel I had to report to anybody. It's not in my nature.
I don't take pressure well on personnel matters. I'm a cabinet
member.
KENDALL: "I don't have to account for anything. This was mine
-- my choice, my decision -- and I stand behind it."
He also declared, "What I did was routine."
Now, this fact is highly significant because, although this job
was not precisely the job Ms. Lewinsky wanted, it was a job in New
York and she kept this open until January 5, when she finally turned
it down.
Now, it was Mr. Manager Bryant who referred to this in passing,
just kind of walked around it, he disparaged it in the way that a good
trial lawyer does, to recognize it's there, but then move around and
away from it. But it's an important fact, and it tears a very large
hole in their circumstantial evidence case.
Because she had in her hand, I will say, this job offer all
through this period of November and December and into January. It
wasn't precisely what she wanted, but it was a good job, it was in New
York City, and there was no urgent necessity for her connected with
her private sector job search.
Once again, quid pro quo, no.
KENDALL: Now, there's a lot of further direct evidence
concerning her job search, and this is contained in a great many
interviews and grand jury transcripts from the people at the various
New York firms Mr. Jordan contacted on Ms. Lewinsky's behalf.
Again, there is simply no direct evidence whatsoever from any of
these people of any kind of quid pro quo treatment.
While Mr. Jordan made the contacts on her behalf, there was no
urgency about them, there was no pressure, and they were wholly
unrelated to the Jones case.
Let's recognize the obvious here. The president's relation, the
improper relation with Ms. Lewinsky had been over for many months. He
continued to see her from time to time. He did what he could to be of
assistance to her as she sought employment in New York because, as he
testified, she was a good person, and he was trying to help her get on
with her life.
Mr. Jordan was able to open doors, but once open, there was no
inappropriate pressure. He really opened three doors for her: At
American Express, at Young & Rubicam, and at Revlon.
KENDALL: And she batted one for three. And actually, in job
searches as in baseball, I at least would take that batting average
any day of the week. But she succeeded on her own once she was
through the door, and her getting through the door had no relation to
the Paula Jones case.
Let's first of all take a look at what happened with American
Express and see whether in the direct or circumstantial evidence,
there's any evidence of a quid pro quo here. The independent counsel
conducted a very large number of interviews and also summoned a great
many witnesses from each of these three sets of companies.
Mr. Jordan was a member of the American Express board of
directors and he telephoned a Ms. Ursula Fairbairn (ph), the executive
vice president of human resources at American Express, on December
10th or 11th. And he told Ms. Fairbairn (ph) that he wanted to send
her the resume of a talented young woman in Washington to see whether
she matched up to any openings at American Express.
Ms. Fairbairn (ph) told the FBI that it was not at all unusual
for American Express board members or other company officers to
recommend young people for employment.
*** Eastern Time 14:58 ***
KENDALL: Ms. Fairbairn (ph) -- Ms. Fairbairn (ph) said that Mr.
Jordan did not in fact mention any White House connection that the
applicant had and he exerted no pressure at all on her to hire the
applicant.
Ms. Fairbairn (ph) recalled that Mr. Jordan had made another
employment recommendation about two months earlier and indicated this
was simply not an unusual request.
Now, the Office of Independent Counsel also, you see it on the
chart, interview Thomas Schick (ph) at American Express. He's the
executive president for corporate affairs and communications. Ms.
Fairbairn (ph) had sent the name and resume to Mr. Schick (ph) because
she thought that that's where Ms. Lewinsky might fit in and he
interviewed Ms. Lewinsky on December the 23rd in Washington.
He decided after this interview not to hire Ms. Lewinsky because
she felt -- he felt that she was lacking in experience and he also
thought that American Express was probably not the right kind of
company for her given what she had told him she was interested in at
the interview and that she'd probably be better off going to a public
relations firm.
KENDALL: Now, the decision not to hire her, he told the FBI, was
entirely his own. He felt no pressure to either hire or not hire Ms.
Lewinsky and never talked to Mr. Jordan at any time during this
process.
Once again, quid pro quo? No.
Now the second company is actually two companies, and it's Young
& Rubicam and Burson-Marsteller. Mr. Jordan called Peter Georgescu,
the chairman and CEO of Young & Rubicam, the large New York
advertising agency.
Mr. Jordan had no formal connection with the company but he'd
been a friend of Mr. Georgescu's for over 20 years.
Mr. Georgescu was interviewed by investigators from the Office of
Independent Counsel and said that sometime in December, 1997, Mr.
Jordan had telephoned him, and had asked him to take a look at a young
person from the White House for possible work in the New York area.
Mr. Georgescu had responded, we'll take a look at her in the usual
way.
*** Eastern Time 15:00 ***
KENDALL: And he stated that that was kind of a code between he
and Mr. Jordan and it meant that if there was an opening for which she
was qualified, she would be interviewed and hired, but there would be
no special treatment. He testified that Mr. Jordan understood that
and he also said that Mr. Jordan did not engage in any kind of sales
pitch about Lewinsky.
Mr. Georgescu said that he then initiated an interview for the --
on behalf of Ms. Lewinsky, but his own involvement was arms length and
that she succeeded or failed totally on her own merits. He recalled
that Mr. Jordan had made another similar request on a previous
occasion and he said that he and Mr. Jordan frequently exchanged
opinions about people in the advertising business on an informal
basis.
As a result of this telephone call, Ms. Lewinsky was interviewed
by another person -- a Ms. Celia Burke (ph), who was the director of
-- excuse me, she was the managing director of human resources at
Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm that was a division of
Young & Rubicam.
KENDALL: According to Ms. Burke (ph), this interview was handled
by the book, and while the Lewinsky interviews were a little bit
accelerated, they went through the normal steps.
Ms. Burke (ph) testified that while no one put -- she testified
that nobody put any pressure on her, and she said that both she and
the director of corporate practice at Burson-Marsteller, Ms. Erin
Mills (ph), and another corporate practice associate, Mr. Ziad Tabasi
(ph), had all like Ms. Lewinsky and thought she was well qualified.
The chairman of the corporate practice group, Mr. Gus Weill (ph), had
decided not to hire Lewinsky.
Ms. Mills (ph) testified that the procedure under which Ms.
Lewinsky was considered involved nothing out of the ordinary. Not a
single one of these witnesses testified there was any urgency
connected with Mr. Jordan's request.
Mr. Mills (ph) -- Ms. Mills (ph) also told the FBI that despite
the fact that Ms. Lewinsky had been referred by the chairman of Young
& Rubicam (ph), their consideration of her was entirely objective.
She thought that Ms. Lewinsky was poised and qualified for an entry-
level position, but Mr. Weill (ph) decided to take a pass.
KENDALL: Once again, quid pro quo? No.
Now, Mr. Jordan was a member of the board of directors of Revlon,
a company wholly owned by MacAndrews & Forbes Holding Company, and Mr.
Jordan's law firm had done legal work for both of these companies.
The corporate structure here is complicated, but I'll be talking
basically about two firms, Revlon -- I think we all know what Revlon
does -- and its parent company, MacAndrews & Forbes Holding.
Now, Mr. Jordan telephoned his old friend, Mr. Richard Halperin,
at the holding company on December 11th and said he had an interviewee
or he had an applicant that he wanted to recommend, and he gave Mr.
Halperin some information about her.
Mr. Halperin testified to the grand jury that it wasn't unusual
for Mr. Jordan to call him with an employment recommendation. He'd
done so on at least three other times that Mr. Halperin could recall.
KENDALL: On this occasion, Mr. Jordan told Mr. Halperin on the
telephone that Ms. Lewinsky was bright, energetic, enthusiastic, and
he encouraged Mr. Halperin to meet with her. Mr. Halperin didn't
think there was anything unusual about Mr. Jordan's request and he
testified that in the telephone call, Mr. Jordan did not ask him to
consider Ms. Lewinsky on any particular timetable -- no acceleration
of any kind.
Indeed, far from there being some heightened sense of urgency,
Mr. Halperin explicitly told the FBI that there was no implied time
restraint or requirement for fast action.
Now, Ms. Lewinsky came up to New York City and she interviewed
with Mr. Halperin on December 18, 1997, and Mr. Halperin described her
as follows, "as a typical young capable enthusiastic Washington, D.C.-
type of individual" -- I don't know if that's pejorative or not -- who
described her primary interest as being in public relations.
He and Ms. Lewinsky talked about the various companies that
McAndrews and Forbes (ph) controlled, and Ms. Lewinsky identified
Revlon as a company that she would like to be considered at, and Mr.
Halperin decided to send her there for an interview.
KENDALL: Mr. Halperin sent her resume to another person at the
holding company, not at Revlon, at the holding company, to Mr. Jamie
Durnan (ph), who is a senior vice president there. He got the resume
in mid-December and he decided to interview her in early January.
Now, you have at the holding company two sets of interviews of
Ms. Lewinsky going on. When he returned in early January, Mr. Durnan
(ph) also scheduled an interview and he met with Ms. Lewinsky on
January the 8th.
His decision was made entirely independently or Mr. Halperin's
decision, and he wasn't even aware that Mr. Halperin had seen Ms.
Lewinsky when he met with her on January the 8th.
Now, Mr. Durnan (ph) met with Ms. Lewinsky in the morning, and he
thought -- now this is his view; you're going to get two views of this
interview -- Mr. Durnan (ph) thought that she was an impressive
applicant for entry-level work. He was impressed with her
particularly by her work experience at the Pentagon, he told the FBI.
He felt she would fit in with the parent company but there weren't any
openings there.
KENDALL: Based upon what she had said about what her interests
were, he decided to send her resume over to Revlon because it thought
it matched up well with her interests. He sent the resume over and he
left a message -- and now we're going to come to a Revlon person --
and he left a message with Ms. Ellen Seidman (ph), who was the senior
vice president for corporate communications at Revlon.
Now cut to Ms. Lewinsky. Ms. Lewinsky had had a very good
interview with Mr. Halperin, both she and Mr. Halperin thought.
However, for reasons the record don't make clear, the Ms. Lewinsky's
impression of the Durnan (ph) interview were dismal. She thought the
interview had not gone well. She thought it had gone poorly. She
described herself as being upset and distressed.
She had no idea of his positive reaction to her, and this is not
just a late analysis. He'd already send her resume -- he sent her
resume over to Revlon immediately after their interview. But in any
event, Ms. Lewinsky was afraid it had gone poorly; that she'd
embarrassed Mr. Jordan; so she called up Mr. Jordan and on that same
day later, January the 8th, Mr. Jordan spoke by telephone to the CEO
of MacAndrews & Forbes, his friend Mr. Ronald Perelman.
He mentioned to Mr. Perelman that Ms. Lewinsky had interviewed at
MacAndrews & Forbes, but he made no specific request, and he did not
ask Mr. Perelman to specifically intervene in any way.
KENDALL: Now, later that day, and I know this is complicated,
Mr. Durnan happened to speak -- Mr. Durnan is the second interviewer
of Ms. Lewinsky -- happened to speak to Mr. Perelman, and Perelman
mentioned he had a call from Mr. Jordan about a job candidate.
Perelman then said to Durnan, let's see what we can do, and Durnan
indicated that he'd already on his own initiative been working on
this, had talked to Ms. Lewinsky and sent her resume over to Revlon.
Mr. Perelman later that day phoned Mr. Jordan back to say
everything is all right, she appeared to be doing a good job. The
resume was over at Revlon.
Mr. Jordan expressed no urgency, no time constraints. Mr.
Perelman didn't say anything out of the ordinary had happened, because
it hadn't.
Now, later that same day after speaking to Mr. Perelman, Mr.
Durnan phones Ms. Seidman at Revlon. He'd sent the resume over
earlier in the day. He didn't say that Mr. Perelman had mentioned Ms.
Lewinsky to him. He simply said to Ms. Seidman, look, I've sent you a
resume, I've met with this young woman. If you think she's good, you
should hire her.
KENDALL: According to Mr. Durnan, Mr. Perelman never said or
implied that Ms. Lewinsky had to be hired, and indeed Mr. Durnan had
already interviewed her and formed a positive impression.
According to Ms. Seidman, who's at Revlon, Mr. Durnan gave her a
similar account that he gave to the grand jury. He said that he
thought she ought to interview Ms. Lewinsky, make her own decision,
hire her if she thought she was a good candidate only.
The record is crystal clear that Ms. Seidman over at Revlon had
no knowledge that Mr. Perelman had ever spoken to anyone about Ms.
Lewinsky. Ms. Seidman testified that she made an independent
assessment of Ms. Lewinsky. She interviewed her the next day. She
told the grand jury that she'd found Ms. Lewinsky to be a talented,
enthusiastic, bright young woman who was very eager -- "I like that in
my department."
At the conclusion of the interview, she intended to make an offer
to Ms. Lewinsky, but it was contingent on the opinion of two other
people, a Ms. Jenna Sheldon (ph), who was a manager of human resources
at Revlon, and Ms. Nancy Risdon (ph), who was manager of public
relations for corporate affairs.
Ms. Seidman testified that after they had both interviewed Ms.
Lewinsky, Mr. Risdon (ph) told her that she'd found her very
impressive and Ms. Sheldon (ph) had also been very impressed.
KENDALL: Ms. Risden (ph) told the FBI that she'd been impressed
with Ms. Lewinsky who, although she had no public relations
experience, was bright and articulate.
On the basis of all this, Ms. Seidman decided to offer Ms.
Lewinsky an entry-level job as public relations administrator. The
offer was made and Ms. Lewinsky accepted. And I repeat, the record
evidence is uncontradicted that the fix was not on at all in this
process. This was the third company Ms. Lewinsky had interviewed with
and on this series of interviews, she was successful.
Nobody at any of these companies suggested there was any quid pro
quo link. The only person -- only person in this record who talked
about trying to have Ms. Lewinsky use signing of the affidavit as
leverage to get a job was none other than Linda Tripp -- that paragon
of faithful friendship.
On the audiotapes, it's Ms. Tripp who frequently urges Ms.
Lewinsky not to sign an affidavit until she had a job in New York.
KENDALL: It's not clear if Ms. Tripp knew about the UN job that
Ms. Lewinsky had. She, on the audio tape, Ms. Lewinsky sometimes
professes agreement with Ms. Tripp's advice, saying that she will not
sign an affidavit until she has a job. But as Ms. Lewinsky testified
to the grand jury -- and again, Ms. Lewinsky is testifying under the
threat of perjury which will blow away her immunity agreement -- she
was lying to Ms. Tripp when she said she would wait to sign the
affidavit until she got a job.
As Ms. Lewinsky testified to the grand jury, her statement to Ms.
Tripp about Mr. Jordan assisting her in a quid pro quo sense was not
true, she said it only because Ms. Tripp was insisting that she
promise her not to do this. But, in fact, the affidavit was already
signed when Ms. Lewinsky made that promise.
Once again, quid pro quo? No.
That's some of the direct evidence. Now let's look at the
circumstantial evidence, the alleged circumstantial evidence.
KENDALL: The quid pro quo theory rests on assumptions about why
things happen, and on facts about when things happen. The former is
-- requires logic, but the second is a matter of fact.
I mentioned previously that Article II -- or the subpart 4 here
uses the word "intensify." It didn't say that the job search began as
an effort to silence Ms. Lewinsky, it only says that it intensified as
a result of that process. The original charge made by the independent
counsel -- and it's there in the independent counsel's referral, at
page 181 -- was an allegation that the president helped Ms. Lewinsky
obtain a job in New York at a time when she would have been a witness
against him. However, the House committee looked at the evidence, I
think, in the five volumes, and even though they haven't referred to
it here very much, decided that that theory would not get off the
runway. So they revised their claim and gave us a kind of wimpified
version alleging, not initiation, but intensification.
KENDALL: Now, under the right circumstances it's plain that
helping somebody find a job is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
There's nothing wrong with it. Mr. Manager Hutchinson told you that,
and I quote here: There is nothing wrong with helping somebody get a
job, but we all know there's one thing forbidden in public office; we
must avoid quid pro quo, which is this for that.
Now, he went on to assert, that the president's conduct crossed
the line, as he put it, when the job search assistance became tied and
interconnected -- those are his words, with the president's desire to
get a false affidavit -- and then he went on to say you will see --
it's a prediction that Mr. Manager Hutchinson made to you -- you will
see that they are totally interconnected, intertwined, interrelated;
and that is where the line has crossed into obstruction.
Now, Mr. Manager Hutchinson pointed to a critical event for their
quid pro quo theory and that's the entry on December 11th, 1997, by
Judge Wright, who was the judge in the Paula Jones case, of an order
pertaining to discover in the Paula Jones case.
KENDALL: This is the critical event, according to the managers.
But let's look closely at this so-called critical event, because
it's the only claim, only factual claim, the managers make of some
causal relationship between the job search and the Jones case, and
that claim is dead wrong and it's demonstrably dead wrong.
The managers have argued that what brought Mr. Johnson (ph) into
action to help Ms. Lewinsky find a job, what really jump started the
process, was Judge Wright's December 11 order. And that order
concerned discovery of relationships that president had allegedly had
during a certain period of time with women who were state or federal
employees.
In the House, Chief Counsel Schippers powerfully made the point
about how important this December 11 order was. "Why the sudden
interest," he asked, "why the total change in focus and effort?
Nobody but Betty Currie really cared about helping Ms. Lewinsky
throughout November, even after the president learned that her name
was on this prospective witness list. Did something happen to move
the job search from a low to a high priority on that day? Oh, yes,
something happened.
KENDALL: On the morning of December 11, 1997 Judge Susan Webber
Wright ordered that Paula Jones was entitled to information regarding
these other women.
Now, Mr. Manager Hutchinson again emphasized that the impact of
this December 11th order was dramatic. He stood here and told you
that the president's attitude suddenly changed, and what started out
as a favor for Betty Currie in finding Ms. Lewinsky a job dramatically
changed into something sinister after Ms. Lewinsky became a witness.
And so, Mr. Manager Hutchinson says, what triggered -- let's look
at the chain of events: the judge, the witness list came in, the
judge's order came in -- that triggered the president into action.
And the president triggered Vernon Jordan into action. That chain
reaction here is what moved the job search along.
Remember what else happened on that day December 11th -- again,
that was the same day that Judge Wright ruled that the questions about
other relationships could be asked by the Jones attorneys.
KENDALL: Mr. Manager Hutchinson presented in his very polished
and able presentation, a chart to you. It was exhibit 1. And I've
taken the liberty of borrowing it for our own purposes. But you see
that he has outlined in detail what happened on December 11th here.
The very first item is that Judge Susan Webber Wright issued
order allowing testimony of Lewinsky. Then second meeting between
Lewinsky and Jordan, leads provided, recommendation calls placed, and
then later, the president and Jordan talk about a job for Lewinsky.
Well, that's what the chart says, but when you look at the
uncontested facts, this isn't even smoke and mirrors. It's worse.
First of all, Ms. Lewinsky entered Mr. Jordan's building for
their meeting at 12:57 on December 11th, as we see here from the
chart, the entry chart of Mr. Jordan's law firm. Ms. Lewinsky's name
is misspelled, but she identified this as her entry into the law firm.
*** Eastern Time 15:21 ***
KENDALL: But this did not spring from, magically, the entry of
the judge's ordered. It was scheduled three days earlier, on December
8, and even that telephone call was pursuant to an agreement made
between Ms. Lewinsky and Mr. Jordan two weeks before that. It had
nothing whatsoever to do with the judge's order. Indeed after her
first meeting with Mr. Jordan, on November 5, Mister -- Ms. Lewinsky
testified that she had a follow-up conversation by telephone with Mr.
Jordan around Thanksgiving, and he advised her he was working on the
job search as he had time for it; he asked her to call him back in
early December.
Mr. Jordan testified that he was out of the country from the day
after Thanksgiving until December 4th. He also testified that, on
December 5th -- this is before the witness list -- Ms. Currie called
and reminded him that Ms. Lewinsky was expecting his call. He asked
Ms. Currie to have Ms. Lewinsky call him, and she did so on December
8th, and they agreed to meet at Mr. Jordan's office on December 11.
So this meeting -- this sinister meeting was arranged by three people
who had no knowledge whatsoever about the Paula Jones witness list at
the time they acted.
KENDALL: Now, Ms. Lewinsky herself was also out of Washington
for most of the period from Thanksgiving to December the 4th, first in
Los Angeles and then overseas.
Inexplicably, but I think significantly because it says something
about the strength of the case, the House managers ignore this key
piece of testimony about when the meeting was set up. It's
uncontradicted. The point is that the contact between Mr. Jordan and
Ms. Lewinsky resumed in early -- or in December, not because of
something having to do with the order, but because they had agreed it
would. The gap is attributable, the gap in timing, to Mr. Jordan's
travel schedule.
Now, let's look at when this discovery order was entered. It was
in fact entered late in the day of December 11, after the conclusion
of a conference call among all the counsel in the Paula Jones case.
We have here on the chart a blow-up of the clerk's minutes.
Now, it's a great accommodation to lawyers when in a case judges
will have conference telephone calls because it means you don't have
to travel to the same city.
KENDALL: And there were a number of these held in the Jones
case. This is a conference call that began as the clerk's minutes
indicate, at 5:33 p.m. Little Rock time in the afternoon. That would
be 6:33 in Washington, D.C., and it ended at 6:50 p.m. in Little Rock,
or 7:50 in Washington, D.C.
Now quite late in the conference call, Judge Wright took up other
matters and advised counsel that an order on the plaintiff's motion to
compel testimony had been filed, and Barry (ph) -- that's Barry Ward
(ph), the judge's clerk -- will fax a copy of that order on the motion
to compel to counsel.
So sometime after 7:50 p.m., counsel get the witness list.
Notice that this proceeding is so late in the day -- I don't know if
you can see it, but when the clerk's minutes are filed, they're filed
not on December the 11th, but on December 12th.
Finally, while we don't even have evidence of a telephone call
between the president and Mr. Jordan.
KENDALL: We're back now to Mr. Hutchinson's -- Mr. Manager
Hutchinson's chart number one. We don't have any evidence that the
president in fact ever placed a call to Mr. Jordan on this date. The
president was out of the city. But if the call occurred, it must have
occurred by 5:55 p.m.
Now, let's -- again, look at this chart. December 11th is so
important that the managers have put it on the chart twice. It's the
only date on any of the chart that appears -- any of this chart that
appears twice. The president and Jordan talk about a job for
Lewinsky.
Clearly what they're telling you is that first you get the order,
that energizes, that jump-starts the process, and then the president
talks to Vernon Jordan.
Well, as I said, if a call occurred on that day, the earliest you
could have had any knowledge of the order would have been 7:50 p.m..
There is a problem, though, when you think that maybe the president
and Vernon Jordan talked on this date, even if we don't have evidence
of it.
And the problem is that at 7:50 p.m., Mr. Vernon Jordan was high
over the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane.
KENDALL: He was on his way to Amsterdam. He testified that "I
left on United Flight 946 at 5:55 from Dulles Airport." That is where
Mr. Jordan was on the evening of December 11. He'd taken off even
before the conference call. This makes no sense. The managers'
theory just makes no sense.
His meeting with Ms. Lewinsky and his calls on her behalf had
taken place earlier in the day. The president could not have spoken
to him about the entry of Judge Wright's discovery order. The entry
of that order had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Jordan's
assistance to Ms. Lewinsky. This claim of a causal relation totally
collapses when you look at the evidence.
Now, the other chart purporting to show causation are also
riddled with errors. I only want to show a few of them. And, again,
we've borrowed a chart from Mr. Manager Hutchinson, his charter number
7.
Now, he showed you this chart and it purports to be an account of
what happened on January the 5th, 1998.
KENDALL: You see how the president and Ms. Lewinsky appear to be
conferring about the affidavit that she's going to be filing in the
Jones case. But when you look at the real fact the chart becomes a
fiction.
Mr. Manager Hutchinson told you, and I quote, "Let's go to
January 5th, this is a sort of summary -- this chart is a sort of
summary of what happened on that day. Ms. Lewinsky meets with her
attorney, Mr. Carter, for an hour. Carter drafts the affidavit from
Ms. Lewinsky. Just a few minutes later," and Mr. Manager Hutchinson
continued, "Frank Carter drafts the affidavit, she is so concerned
about it. She calls the president. The president returns Ms.
Lewinsky's phone call."
Now, the suggestion here, and this our old circumstantial
evidence problem, the suggestion from this fact pattern is that Ms.
Lewinsky obtained a draft affidavit from her lawyer, Mr. Carter, on
January 5. Then, in a call with the president later that day, she
offered it to him for his review. Possible? Yes. True? No.
This is -- the facts here, simply, do not bear out this chart.
Why is that?
KENDALL: Well, it's because Mr. Carter's (ph) grand jury
testimony is very clear that he drafted the affidavit on the morning
of January 6 and he even billed for it on that morning. He did not
draft it and Ms. Lewinsky did not have it on January 5th. There's no
causation here; no linkage.
The theory on this chart doesn't stand up and if I may take
something else from the House managers, not simply their chart, but
borrow Mr. Manager Bryant's expression, that dog won't hunt.
Ms. Lewinsky could not have offered to show the president a draft
affidavit she herself could not have had on January 5th. The idea
that the telephone call on that day is about that affidavit is sheer,
unsupported speculation, and even worse, it's speculation demolished
by fact.
Let's kick the tires of another exhibit. Chart number eight,
which was shown to you by Mr. Manager Hutchinson, purports to describe
the events of January the 6th, and again it sets forth a chain of
events which makes it look at though Mr. Jordan was himself intimately
involved in drafting Ms. Lewinsky's affidavit.
Testimony, cont.
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