House charges called groundless

SERRANO

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's defense team ended its aggressive, systematic argument against his removal from office Thursday with an extraordinary appeal by former Sen. Dale Bumpers, D- Ark., who urged his onetime colleagues to rise above partisanship and keep the faith with America's founders.

They intended "high crimes and misdemeanors" to be "distinctly political offenses against the state," Bumpers said, adding that the president's conduct in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal "does not even come close to being an impeachable offense." Bumpers delivered his emotional, personal appeal even as Senate Democrats intensified their efforts to bring the impeachment trial to an early conclusion. The afternoon-long White House presentation amounted to a double- barreled strategy of confronting the facts and the law while appealing to senators' consciences. First David Kendall, the president's personal lawyer, laid out a step-by-step argument that Clinton didn't commit perjury or obstruct justice while trying to conceal his affair with Lewinsky. "There are no grounds to remove him from office," Kendall said. He was followed by the just-retired Bumpers, who provided the trial's most dramatic and emotional moments. Looking around the stilled chamber, Bumpers urged those with "an intense dislike of the president" to rise above it, adding:"He is not the issue. He will be gone. You won't. So don't leave a precedent you almost surely will regret." After Bumpers finished, dozens of senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- surged forward to greet him. Freshly energized by the White House presentation, Democrats made a show of exuding optimism as they pointed to signs that some Republicans may be wavering in their determination to hear witnesses. The contentious question of whether to depose witnesses is set for debate as early as Monday. Such a decision requires a simple majority of 51 votes. And since there are 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats in the Senate, the presumption has been that the GOP would prevail and witnesses would be called. But several Republicans said Thursday that they were undecided or leaning against calling witnesses. Among them were Sens. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., Gordon Smith, R-Ore., James M. Jeffords, R-Vt., and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "I think there is movement. I think there is still a possibility of witnesses, but the need for them is diminishing as the case seems more and more clear," Smith said. Shelby added: "On witnesses, I'd have to be persuaded. I would vote (against witnesses) if I had to vote now. I don't think I'm alone." Perhaps fearing a weakening of Republican resolve to press on with the trial, Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., hastily called a news conference after the session adjourned. Inveighing against "a rush to judgment," he urged senators to resist any impulse to "short circuit" the proceeding. Hyde also rued that he and his fellow House GOP prosecutors weren't given the opportunity to rebut the White House statements. "The last one to speak always has the advantage," he conceded, adding that his team hopes to rebut some of the White House presentation during the upcoming two days of questions from senators. After sitting mute through six days of virtually uninterrupted speeches by lawyers for both sides, starting today senators will pose questions to House GOP prosecutors and White House lawyers for up to 16 hours. Kendall focused largely on rebutting the charge that Clinton obstructed justice by trying to find a job for Lewinsky. Twice, Kendall read from Lewinsky's grand jury testimony, in which she stated: "No one ever asked me to lie and I was never promised a job for my silence." Then he asked plaintively: "Is there something difficult to understand here?"Kendall denigrated the House GOP case as one based on "circumstantial evidence" that is "at best profoundly ambiguous." Invoking a phrase used repeatedly by Hyde and other House prosecutors, Kendall said: "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." Referring to the allegation framed by House prosecutors as one of "quid pro quo," Kendall said at one point: "There's nothing in evidence to support the quo part." If the president had truly wanted to silence Lewinsky, Kendall said, "it would have been very easy for the president to have arranged for her to be hired by the White House." Bumpers, a noted orator who served six terms in the Senate, said he wasn't addressing the Senate on behalf of a dear friend but, rather, "it is the weight of history on all of us and it is my reverence" for the Constitution. He said it would be dangerous to the political process to remove Clinton from office for his conduct in the Lewinsky scandal. Bumpers then recalled in detail the debates held by America's founders at the Constitutional Convention over the impeachment clause, offering his interpretation of the events in 1787. The Founders, he said, intended "high crimes and misdemeanors" to mean "distinctly political offenses against the state." And Clinton's conduct, Bumpers argued, "does not even come close to being an impeachable offense." "The question is how did we come to be here?" he asked. "We are here because the president suffered a terrible moral lapse of marital infidelity, not a breach of the public trust, not a crime against society. "You can censure Bill Clinton. You can hand him over to the prosecutor for him to be prosecuted. But you cannot convict him. You cannot indulge yourselves the luxury or the right to ignore this history." Bumpers didn't defend Clinton's conduct, calling it "indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless," and added: "I promise you, the president would not contest any of those (descriptions) or any others." Bumpers went on to poignantly describe the suffering by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea. The Clintons, Bumpers said, are "about as decimated as a family can get. A relationship between husband and wife, father and child has been incredibly strained, if not destroyed." Bumpers, 73, continued: "The punishment of removing Bill Clinton from office would pale compared to the punishment he has already inflicted on himself." Bumpers closed by citing Bob Dole, the former Senate Republican leader and another World War II hero, reminding senators Dole, the loser to Clinton in the 1996 presidential election, has advocated a censure of Clinton. Today, senators will begin questioning lawyers for both sides. The senators must submit their written questions to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the trial's presiding officer. Each side will alternate asking questions.

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