Bill Clinton: This Precedent's for You
BILL CLINTON: THIS PRECEDENT'S FOR YOU What if, just for the sake of argument, nothing more can ever be established from the Monica Lewinsky investigation than that she and the president engaged...
...Now, Alan Dershowitz may believe that it is legally impossible to make a crime out of such a sworn statement, and the rest of America's punditocracy may believe that no prosecutor has ever so much as tried...
...The violation, a felony under Title 18, Section 1503, of the United States Code, carries a basic penalty of 10 to 16 months of incarceration...
...Four days after this document was signed and delivered, on April 14, 1998, the Justice Department issued a press release to announce that Battaiino had pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and would be sentenced on July 20, 1998, at 9:30 a.m...
...Why, for that matter, should congressional Republicans now be desperately beseeching Kenneth Starr not to send them a report on Clinton's potentially impeachable offenses until after the independent counsel has chased down every last lead—and thus proved something, well, more "serious" than just a sexual episode with Monica Lewinsky...
...Other titans of legal scholarship are even more emphatic about the president's invulnerability on this score...
...District Court for the District of Idaho, Arthur filed a civil tort claim against Battalino and the VA, alleging that he had been the victim, during this affair, of medical malpractice...
...In particular, Battalino denied Arthur's charge that during an office visit on June 27, 1991, she had suddenly acknowledged having "feelings" for him—and had proceeded to perform an act of oral sex...
...Simply" for deception about oral sex in a civil case...
...But Bill Clinton's Justice Department appears to have a different view...
...If he says, 'I didn't have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky,' and it turns out, hypothetical-ly—I don't believe this—but if it turns out he had oral sex on one occasion with her, you cannot get a perjury [prosecution...
...CNN's Bill Press reports on Crossfire that "there's never been another case in the history of this nation where someone has been indicted for lying about sex in a civil case...
...In May 1991, responsibility for Arthur's medication was assigned to a Va staff psychiatrist, Dr...
...Battalino, in response, insisted that her sexual contact with Arthur had not begun until July 1991, when he was no longer in her care...
...And she testified as follows: "No, sir...
...Edward I. Arthur is a decorated Army veteran of the Vietnam War...
...At a hearing in this case on July 14, 1995, for example, Battalino was asked: "Did anything of a sexual nature take place in your office on June 27, 1991...
...In one of those conversations, she rebuked him for telling someone about the office-visit encounter: "No, the thing was that we were supposed to not have had sex until after...
...Department of Justice last year conducted a grand-jury and FBI investigation of Battalino's truthfulness...
...BILL CLINTON: THIS PRECEDENT'S FOR YOU What if, just for the sake of argument, nothing more can ever be established from the Monica Lewinsky investigation than that she and the president engaged in, say, a sex act—and that both of them later, under oath in a civil proceeding, denied having had a sexual relationship...
...In October 1991, according to a recent story in Boise Weekly, Battalino resigned her post at the hospital after her superiors became aware that she had maintained an "intimate relationship" with Ed Arthur...
...Two months ago, on April 10, 1998, the Department of Justice filed an official "information" in federal district court by which attorney general Janet Reno alleged that Barbara Battalino "did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice in connection with a pending proceeding before a court of the United States...
...As United States v. Battalino reminds us, falsely denying such behavior under oath is a serious crime, all by itself...
...I can't believe you would divulge that...
...The charge rested entirely on Battalino's two-word courtroom denial of July 14, 1995, which Reno concluded "was false and misleading in that the defendant in fact had performed oral sex on Arthur in her Boise VA office on June 27, 1991...
...You'd think Congress would feel an urgent responsibility to resolve the question whether the president of the United States is a serious criminal...
...Geraldo Rivera, for instance, tells his CNBC audience that "in our research—and it's been furious and in-depth—we've found scarce precedent for a federal prosecution of a sex lie in a civil case...
...Press's guest, defense attorney Stan Brand, offers anyone who can produce a single example of such a prosecution "dinner for two at The Palm...
...The answer to this question, we have been told over and over and over again since the beginning, is simple: If that's all Ken Starr's got, then Bill Clinton is and should be off the hook...
...We'll have the porterhouse steak...
...In 1990 and 1991, he received treatment for various combat-related disorders at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boise, Idaho...
...You can't get a perjury conviction" on the basis of vague responses to vague queries, Harvard's Alan Dershowitz informed the nation, early on in the controversy...
...Barbara Battali-no...
...A few weeks from now, in other words, at the behest of the Clinton administration, a former VA hospital physician will submit to a possible federal prison term...
...That same month, in U.S...
...And armed in part with this taped evidence, the U.S...
...Toward the end of their romance, it would subsequently turn out, Ed Arthur had—shades of Linda Tripp—recorded more than 25 hours of telephone conversations with Barbara Battalino...
...Why should exactly the same standard of justice, for exactly the same offense, not clearly apply to Bill Clinton himself...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 40
