Starr Witness
Starr Witness God knows, there will be any number of ancillary proceedings in the looming House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry. Indeed, a rump group of Judiciary Democrats unofficially...
...It was the studied judgment of this panel of Democrats—whaddya know?—that with respect to Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton stands accused of not a single crime or misdeed that merits even consideration of his removal from office...
...ONLY TO LAY OUT THE ANTI-STARR CONSPIRACY THEORY OF WHITE HOUSE AGIT-PROP...
...Yes, because Kenneth Starr is a bad man and his investigation is "questionable," what he has proved must be forgotten, and Congress must decline to do anything about it...
...Robert Bennett himself, Clinton's lead attorney in the Paula Jones litigation, no longer contests the fact that Monica Lewinsky's affidavit denying a sexual relationship with the president was false...
...In other words, had Clinton never been deposed on January 17, 1998, and had Kenneth Starr never been born, the president of the United States would still be guilty of perjury...
...Line prosecutors, working under the supervision of the attorney general, are properly immune from congressional questioning about their day-to-day casework...
...But even on its own terms, the perjury-trap plot line is replete with gaping holes of fact and logic...
...WHY DO DEMOCRATS WANT TO QUESTION THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL...
...Because almost everything the Judiciary Committee might now conceivably busy itself with—short of a final vote on counts of impeachment—is nonsense...
...The independent-counsel statute explicitly subjects Starr to congressional oversight and obliges him to cooperate with congressional inquiries...
...To be sure, without Starr's Lewinsky investigation, this and subsequent presidential perjuries would never have been revealed...
...In any other context, this would not, could not, and should not happen...
...Except that Clinton has never once in nine months been denied such a chance...
...Thus the phrase "perjury trap" has entered the national vocabulary...
...No ifs, ands, buts, or exculpations about it...
...And Kenneth Starr is an executive-branch employee...
...How many relevant women were there...
...And the very next day, during his Jones deposition, Bill Clinton told lies in response to surprisingly detailed questions about Lewinsky, questions the president would never have been asked but for Ken Starr's sinister machinations...
...None," the president formally attested...
...Starr then, on January 13, arranged to capture Lewinsky on tape appearing to confirm the obstruction...
...What meaningful, not-yet-forthcoming testimony remains to be secured by the Judiciary Committee, then...
...When he presents himself to the Judiciary Committee, we assume he will acquit himself as convincingly as possible...
...But here as elsewhere, the law that authorizes Starr's work stretches separation-of-powers doctrine to the limit...
...We are quite sure, however, that if and when that happens, Judiciary Republicans will be honor-bound to stand up, sternly and unambiguously, for both Starr and the rule of law...
...Which tape Starr used two days later, on January 15, to hoodwink Janet Reno into endorsing his jurisdiction over the Lewinsky affair...
...In this respect...
...The committee might still call the "biased" and "partisan" prosecutor, Kenneth W. Starr, as a witness...
...The president's perjuries are there, in incontrovertible black-and-white transcripts, for all to see...
...There is only one possible answer...
...He had known since late December that Lewinsky was more than a passing rumor to them...
...The entire country already has in hand thousands of pages of grand-jury evidence, much of it sworn testimony, derived from hundreds of subpoenas and interviews involving dozens of witnesses...
...We're not quite sure what Henry Hyde can do to prevent his committee's Democratic minority, while it's beating up on Kenneth Starr in open hearings, from advancing this noxious notion—and thus transforming a necessary impeachment process into an obscurantist sideshow...
...Nor is it true that Clinton was caught unawares on January 17 by the Jones attorneys' Lewinsky queries...
...Clinton had known since early December that they were interested in the intern...
...The chair now recognizes . . . Professor Laurence Tribe...
...Yes, the president's Democratic allies in and out of the Judiciary Committee now essentially suggest...
...As a practical political matter—Starr is, after all, a central figure in the pending impeachment of a presi-dent—any refusal to allow his testimony becomes untenable...
...By established tradi-tion—and under constitutional separation-of-powers doctrine—discretionary criminal-justice enforcement is entirely and exclusively the province of the executive branch...
...It is only clear that Janet Reno's aides, dumbstruck by Linda Tripp's "body wire" tape, quickly concluded that an independent-counsel investigation was unavoidable—and settled on Starr as the best-situated candidate...
...An astonishingly ugly, fundamentally undemocratic idea...
...No, it would not...
...If Judiciary Committee Democrats insist that he appear, as they no doubt will, then chairman Henry Hyde will have little choice but to concur...
...And more than just statutory requirements are implicated...
...As a theoretical matter, sure, we suppose he should...
...And the president had spent a good part of the preceding six weeks planTHE PERJURY-TRAP PLOT LINE IS REPLETE WITH GAPING HOLES OF FACT AND LOGIC...
...On December 11, 1997, Judge Wright narrowed the scope of this inquiry to state employees while Clinton was governor and federal employees while he was president—and then ordered him to respond...
...He knows what he has done with the Lewinsky investiga-tion—and why—better than anyone else on Earth...
...And he has never once taken it, either—because, at least where the most serious charges against him are concerned, no "exculpatory" evidence does or can exist...
...On October 1, 1997, before they had ever heard the name "Monica Lewinsky," Paula Jones's lawyers submitted a set of written "interrogatories" to the president in which he was asked to identify virtually every woman with whom he had engaged, or had sought to engage, in extramarital sexual relations...
...But still, we fear, little good can come from Starr's imminent big moment in the spotlight...
...ITS NOT EVEN CLEAR STARR WANTED JURISDICTION OVER LEWINSKY MATTERS...
...Would it have been okay for the country to remain in the dark this way...
...And should the president not be accorded an opportunity, as his defenders sometimes demand, to present "exculpatory" evidence to the committee— evidence that the "biased" and "partisan" prosecutor neglected to develop or deliberately suppressed...
...Which means that when Clinton—under oath before Judge Susan Webber Wright on January 17, 1998—affirmed that affidavit as "absolutely" true, he was lying...
...More such nonsense inevitably awaits us...
...Would it significantly advance public understanding, or substantively inform congressional deliberations, if those witnesses were made to recapitulate the available record while the cameras whirred...
...Only to lay out the anti-Starr conspiracy theory White House agit-propsters have been weaving all year long, the theory Clinton's congressional defenders have lately adopted as their overarching argument-for-all-seasons...
...Ken Starr is an intelligent and capable man...
...All the more so since the anti-Starr conspiracy theory—even if perfectly true—would be altogether irrelevant to Bill Clinton's fitness for office...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...On January 16, that jurisdiction granted by the circuit court, Starr "dispatched" Tripp to debrief the Paula Jones attorneys...
...And once Hyde joins this call, Starr will have little choice but to heed it...
...The ignorant credulity with which "new questions" have recently been published and broadcast about the origins of the independent counsel's Lewinsky investigation is an embarrassment to American journalism...
...Yes, there are certain circumstances in which American citizens have no legitimate right or reason to know that their president is criminally dishonest...
...On December 23, 1997— weeks before even Starr's severest critics contend that the independent counsel had the slightest inkling about Monica Lewinsky—Clinton did respond...
...It is not at all clear from the public record, for one thing, that Starr actually wanted jurisdiction over the president's Lewinsky escapade...
...It runs like this: Linda Tripp conspired to get Monica Lewinsky involved in what might look to be a job-for-silence swap with the president...
...ning how to lie about having sex with her...
...Indeed, a rump group of Judiciary Democrats unofficially convened the first such proceeding last week: a "hearing" to address cosmic questions about the Constitution's Article II, Section 4. All the usual suspects were invited to "testify...
...Think of it: Why will Democrats want to call Starr in the first place...
...Some "trap...
...Tripp then, on January 12 of this year, delivered evidence of the purported obstruction of justice to the independent counsel...
Vol. 4 • October 1998 • No. 7
