-Caveat Lector- >From Reuters Saturday January 23 4:22 PM ET Prosecutors To Talk To Lewinsky In Clinton Trial <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo By John Whitesides WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A judge Saturday ordered Monica Lewinsky to cooperate with House of Representatives prosecutors in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, igniting a storm of anger from Senate Democrats. White House lawyers and prosecutors traded sharp accusations during a second day of questioning by senators as U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled Lewinsky must meet with prosecutors who want to discuss her possible testimony in the trial. Lewinsky's attorneys rejected an initial request from the prosecutors, who then enlisted independent counsel Kenneth Starr's help in going to court to enforce his immunity agreement with Lewinsky and get her to cooperate. Prosecutors are anxious to call Lewinsky as a witness to explore her conversations with Clinton and Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie, which are at the heart of the perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Clinton. ``Ms. Lewinsky's testimony has never been more important than it is now,'' said Paul McNulty, spokesman for the prosecutors. ``House managers have a responsibility to interview her before deciding to call her as a witness.'' White House counsel Charles Ruff scoffed at the explanation offered by prosecutors. ``What we have here is the managers using their quote 'institutional role,' unquote, to get the independent counsel to join with them and use the authority that he has under the immunity agreement to threaten Miss Lewinsky with jail,'' Ruff said. ``Can you imagine what that little conversation is going to look like?'' he asked. With the congenial spirit of the first two weeks of the trial beginning to unravel, Democrats complained bitterly that the move violated the two-week-old bipartisan agreement that postponed consideration of possible witnesses until next week. Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said the House move ``will only exacerbate the already deepening tensions between the House and the Senate. For the good of the country, this political jockeying has got to stop.'' But several Republicans said they saw no problem with the interview. ``Maybe by interviewing her they'll decide not to call her,'' Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah told reporters. Democratic senators sent a letter to lead prosecutor Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, asking him to reconsider. Democratic Leader Tom Daschle pleaded with prosecutors not to ''politicize the process in the Senate as you politicized it in the House.'' Hyde, rising on the Senate floor in an impassioned speech, told senators he was willing to risk the possible political backlash from pursuing impeachment and ignoring polls showing large majorities do not want Clinton removed from office. ``Equal justice under the law is what moves me and animates me and consumes me, and I'm willing to lose my seat any day in the week rather than sell out on those issues,'' Hyde said. ``Despite all the polls and the hostile editorials, America is hungry for people who believe in something. You may disagree with us, but we believe in something,'' he said. One of the prosecutors, Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, said he also had contacted an attorney for Clinton friend Vernon Jordan about arranging an interview with Jordan. He said any prosecutor would meet with potential witnesses before calling them to testify. ``Obviously this is an adversarial process we are engaged in,'' Hutchinson told senators. The prosecutors used many of the questions from senators to press their case for witnesses. ``A trial without witnesses, when it involves a criminal accusation, a criminal matter, is not a true trial,'' Rep. Bill McCollum of Florida said. ``Witnesses are a logical thing.'' Senators ended their questioning of Clinton's accusers and defenders Saturday after submitting 106 written questions through Chief Justice William Rehnquist. They will resume the trial Monday at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) and may take up more questions then before considering a motion to dismiss the case. McNulty said a time and place for the Lewinsky interview was unscheduled. Lewinsky arrived in Washington Saturday but was shielded from reporters. She left her plane from a rear door and was whisked away in a van to the Mayflower Hotel. Lewinsky's attorneys had resisted her meeting with House prosecutors on the grounds her immunity agreement with Starr's office covered congressional subpoenas, but not informal interviews with one side or another. The judge's ruling came as Senate Republicans, who met in a private caucus early Saturday, predicted they were united against a motion to dismiss the trial expected to be filed Monday by Byrd. ``We're going to defeat the Byrd resolution, and we're going to defeat it because it would set a terrible constitutional precedent,'' Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican, said. He said the trial should go to a final up-or-down vote on the two articles of impeachment alleging that Clinton committed perjury and obstructed justice in the Lewinsky case. There are 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats in the Senate and only a simple majority is needed to prevail on dismissal. ``I don't know of any Republicans who will vote to dismiss,'' said Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. The dizzying swings in the trial seemed to deflate Democratic predictions that an end to the trial was near. ``I notice a shift every half-day. I think it's a little more likely to last a little longer as of this morning,'' Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold said. ``That could change by this afternoon.'' After the motion to dismiss, the Senate will consider a motion to subpoena witnesses -- including Lewinsky -- for closed-door depositions. If Democrats hold firm, only six Republicans would have to oppose that motion to defeat it. ``I feel that there is growing consensus that we should have witnesses, but they should be a very, very limited number,'' Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, said. If the Senate rejected witnesses, it would move directly to consideration of the articles of impeachment. If witnesses are approved, the Senate will arrange closed-door depositions. House prosecutors have said they want to call Lewinsky, Jordan, Currie, White House chief of staff John Podesta and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal. Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott floated the idea through his press spokesman that he would oppose allowing any debate on the motion to dismiss or the request for witnesses, but said the issue was still ``to be decided.'' Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota plan a motion to open the debates, if they are held, to public view. The debates on motions would be closed under current Senate rules. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >From wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : Clinton Impeachment The Senate impeachment trial: White House lawyers expose legal frame-up By Barry Grey 23 January 1999 In three days of pointed arguments, White House lawyers presented a devastating rebuttal of the articles of impeachment against President Clinton. One after another, the attorneys dismantled the entire edifice of the Republican case. They demonstrated that the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice were based on the falsification of evidence, misrepresentation of testimony and groundless speculation. On the constitutional issues of due process and impeachment law, as well as questions of fact, the job performed by the White House attorneys was so thorough that the Republican prosecutors were left without a legal leg to stand on. The defense presentation made it overwhelmingly clear that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and his congressional allies had not only mounted a weak case, but were guilty of prosecutorial abuse. In any standard legal case, prosecutors who behaved in such a manner would be subject to judicial sanction. Clinton's lawyers did not directly address the fundamental issue--the politically motivated conspiracy that underlies the impeachment proceedings. But in the course of showing the contradiction between the testimony of witnesses before Starr's grand jury and the conclusions asserted by the prosecutors, they implied the existence of unstated and sinister motives. White House special counsel Gregory Craig, for example, said in the course of his dissection of the perjury charges: "Think just for a moment, and ask yourself whether these allegations about this testimony is really an effort to vindicate the rule of law, or is it something else?" The legal blows delivered by Clinton's counsel set the stage for the summation given by Dale Bumpers of Arkansas. It fell to a septuagenarian retired senator to spell out not only to the Republicans, but also to his fellow Democrats, the enormous peril, from the standpoint of bourgeois rule, of the course on which they were embarked. He used scathing words to describe the investigation of the White House, characterizing it as an abuse of the judicial system: "We are here because of a five-year, relentless, unending investigation of the President... . But that investigation has also shown that the judicial system in this country can and does get out of kilter unless it's controlled, because there are innocent people, innocent people, who have been financially and mentally bankrupted." Calling the welter of accusations and massive deployment of FBI snoops "bizarre," he warned that the removal of an elected president, in defiance of the vast majority of the population, could destabilize the entire political system. "But if you vote to convict, you can't be sure what's going to happen... . So don't, for God's sakes, heighten the people's alienation that is at an all-time high toward their Government." By the end of the defense presentation, the Republicans were in turmoil. There were bitter recriminations and open divisions within the camp of the GOP. Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson told his television audience that Republican leaders in Congress had all but scuttled any chance of gaining a conviction by "giving Clinton a platform" to deliver his State of the Union address. House prosecutors were rebuffed when they called on the Senate leadership to give them time for a rebuttal of the defense case. Orrin Hatch, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed a plan to move immediately from the deposition of witnesses next week to a vote for adjournment, forgoing testimony of witnesses on the Senate floor. This was opposed by Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who insisted the trial continue to the bitter end. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, who is heading up the Republican prosecution, issued a defiant demand that Clinton personally testify before the Senate. By Friday evening, the Republican camp seemed on the verge of civil war. The record of the past year, since the Monica Lewinsky scandal was launched, has revealed a definite pattern. Each crisis in the campaign to destabilize the Clinton administration, such as the electoral debacle suffered by the Republicans last November, has seen a ratcheting up of right-wing frenzy within the leadership of the Republican Party. The expeditious manner in which the White House lawyers demolished the Republican case is, in its own way, a devastating indictment of the media and the entire political establishment. How was this shabby frame-up able to proceed so far? Neither Clinton nor the Democrats in Congress were able to repulse it. They have been far more concerned with covering up the role of the extreme right in the Republican Party than with exposing the Starr investigation and impeachment conspiracy. The media not only failed to expose the legal frame-up, the TV networks and the press egged on and promoted month after month a heap of half-truths and lies that a few conscientious lawyers were able to tear down in the course of three days. Faced with the unmasking of the Republican case, the pundits were reduced to lame, semi-coherent attempts to cover their tracks. The wholesale complicity of the media has been most shamelessly reflected in the pages of the New York Times. It has insistently and repeatedly echoed the allegations of Starr and his operatives and presented their charges as an open and shut case. Even after the White House lawyers had dismantled Starr's amalgam, the Times persisted in slanting its presentation of the impeachment proceedings. Its January 22 editorial said the arguments presented to the senators concerned "whether they should be punitive or forgiving about the fact that Mr. Clinton lied under oath." It is premature to predict the outcome of the proceedings in the Senate. There remains a hard core of Republican leaders, especially in the House, who are determined to bring down the Clinton administration, regardless the political consequences. Whatever the immediate fate of Clinton, the fact remains that a plot organized by right-wing forces, based on a sex scandal and a patchwork of legal charges incapable of withstanding serious analysis, has succeeded in bringing the government to the point of collapse. This fact alone has profound significance. It testifies to the enormous erosion of democratic institutions in America. See Also: In fourth day of impeachment trial: White House Counsel refutes case against Clinton [21 January 1999] Top of page Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. 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