November 19, 1998: a Day of Democratic Infamy
the weekly Standard November 19, 1998: a Day of Democratic Infamy Sad to say, most of American journalism can no longer be troubled to do any genuine thinking about the Monica Lewinsky scandal....
...Betty Currie called Monica Lewinsky to arrange retrieval of the president's subpoenaed gifts, and not the other way around—which irrefutably indicates, so far as we can tell, that Clinton personally directed an obstruction ofjustice...
...This magazine applauds Rep...
...Fourth...
...Tenth...
...What was most remarkable about the Judiciary Committee hearing, however, was the gruesome picture it painted of the Democratic party...
...The New York Times, for example, published another of its loosely argued editorials endorsing no more than a toothless "censure" of the president—because "betraying the rule of law," by a Times logic too bizarre to be parsed, is somehow "not legally impeachable" activity under a Constitution designed to uphold that rule of law...
...Second...
...Shortly after the president's August 17 speech, Senators Lieberman, Kerrey, and Moynihan stated that the president's actions were not a private matter...
...The evidence further suggests that the president made false statements under oath to the grand jury on August 17...
...The president also declared that all inquiries into the matter should end because, he said, it was private...
...Hours before independent counsel Kenneth Starr concluded his House Judiciary Committee testimony on November 19, television "analysts" were already inviting Americans to turn away—with easy, witless judgments that there was "nothing new" to learn from the proceedings...
...The president reached an agreement with Ms...
...It also is inconsistent with the president's duty to faithfully execute the laws...
...The evidence suggests that, apart from making false statements under oath, the president engaged in a pattern of behavior during the Jones litigation to thwart the judicial process...
...In short, the evidence suggests that the president repeatedly used the machinery of government and the powers of his office to conceal his relationship with Monica Lewinsky from the American people, from the judicial process in the Jones case, and from the grand jury...
...Eighth...
...Third...
...Ninth...
...The evidence suggests that on January 23, 1998, after the criminal investigation had become public, the president made false statements to his cabinet and used his cabinet as unwitting surrogates to publicly support the president's false story...
...And the president used a government attorney—Bruce Lindsey—to assist his personal legal defense during the Jones case...
...Disposition of this constitutional crisis should be guided by the awful facts alone...
...As a result, the grand jury received inaccurate information...
...Indeed, the evidence suggests that the president repeatedly tried to thwart the legal process in the Jones case and the grand-jury investigation...
...Before the House Judiciary Committee November 19,1998 As our referral explains, the evidence suggests that the president made false statements under oath and otherwise thwarted the search for truth in the Jones v. Clinton case...
...Those facts have nowhere been better summarized than they were by the independent counsel, at the beginning of his prepared testimony, reprinted below...
...He coached a potential witness, his own secretary Betty Currie, with a false account of relevant events...
...Lewinsky at a time when the Jones case was proceeding and Ms...
...Unmoved by the astonishing behavior of the committee's Democrats, the next day's print press used this hearing as a mere prop for the restatement of predi-gested opinions about Bill Clinton's fitness for office...
...Lewinsky's truthful testimony would have been harmful...
...By making false statements under oath, the president, the chief executive of our nation, failed to adhere to that oath and to his presidential oath to faithfully execute the laws...
...The evidence suggests that the president participated in a scheme at his deposition in which his attorney, in his presence, deceived a United States district judge in an effort to cut off questioning about Ms...
...Fifth...
...But no Democrat, not once, seriously contested—or seemed the slightest bit curious or concerned about—the mountain of evidence Starr had presented the committee...
...Conyers's Democratic colleagues on the panel issued gassy speeches and leering innuendoes about Starr's vaguely alleged "misdeeds...
...The president made false statements under oath to the grand jury on August 17, 1998...
...Ranking minority member John Conyers wagged his finger at Starr throughout a breathtak-ingly crude recitation of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the independent counsel's office...
...The president had taken an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
...That same night, the president publicly acknowledged an inappropriate relationship, but maintained that his testimony had been "legally accurate...
...The president used White House aides and the United States ambassador to the United Nations in his effort to find Ms...
...And it is the position of his party, unanimously expressed in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, that this is no big deal...
...The president again took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
...The evidence suggests that the president, after the criminal investigation became public, made false statements to his aides and concocted false alibis that these government employees repeated to the grand jury...
...The privilege assertions were legally baseless in these circumstances...
...A false statement to a federal judge in order to prevent relevant questioning is an obstruction of the judicial process...
...The president of the United States has systematically violated the felony provisions of federal law...
...The president and his administration asserted three different governmental privileges to conceal relevant information from the federal grand jury...
...Democratic committee counsel Abbe Lowell—and, later, the president's personal attorney, David Kendall—peppered Starr with feckless, leading questions about the course of his investigation, all of which Starr parried easily...
...Hyde and his 19 committee allies for their persistence and integrity...
...In the half-century since it abandoned its traditional defense of southern racial segregation, the Democratic party has never sunk lower than it did on November 19, 1998...
...He provided job assistance to Ms...
...Refusing to cooperate with a duly authorized federal criminal investigation is inconsistent with the general statutory duty imposed on all executive-branch employees to cooperate with criminal investigations...
...He engaged in an apparent scheme to conceal gifts that had been subpoenaed from Ms...
...It is not true, at the threshold level of detail, that nothing new about Bill Clinton's crimes was revealed in the committee's questioning of Starr...
...Sixth...
...The evidence suggests that the president, acting in a premeditated and calculating fashion, deceived the American people on January 26 and on other occasions when he denied a relationship with Ms...
...They were inconsistent with the actions of Presidents Carter and Reagan in similar circumstances...
...The president did not correct his attorney's false statement...
...Having promised the American people to cooperate with the investigation, the president refused six invitations to testify to the grand jury...
...The evidence suggests that the president made a series of premeditated false statements under oath in his civil deposition on January 17, 1998...
...That is not a private matter...
...The evidence further suggests that the president, in the course of these efforts, misused his authority and power as president and contravened his duty to faithfully execute the laws...
...The evidence suggests that the president used his secretary Betty Currie, a government employee, to facilitate and conceal the relationship with Monica Lewinsky...
...That, too, is not a private matter...
...The evidence demonstrates that the president failed to adhere to that oath and thus to his presidential oath to faithfully execute the laws...
...Lewinsky a job at a time when it was foreseeable—even likely—that she would be a witness in the Jones case...
...Kenneth W. Starr...
...The evidence suggests that the misuse of presidential authority occurred in the following 10 ways: First...
...In addition to these 10 points, it bears mention that, well before January 1998, the president used government resources and prerogatives to pursue his relationship with Monica Lewinsky...
...Those acts constitute a pattern of obstruction that is fundamentally inconsistent with the president's duty to faithfully execute the laws...
...In our view, they were correct...
...And they delayed and impeded the investigation...
...The evidence demonstrates that the president deceived the American people in his speech on August 17 by stating that his testimony had been "legally accurate...
...Seventh...
...Lewinsky that each would make false statements under oath...
...For their part, Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by chairman Henry Hyde, have so far bravely resisted the unprincipled advice of fearful GOP "strategists" and bored-to-death pundits alike that they should simply drop the whole matter...
...He confirmed, for one thing, that cell-phone records clearly establish a previously disputed sequence of events last December 28...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 12
