Updated 2:51 PM ET May 5, 2000 ELLICOTT CITY, Md. (Reuters) -
A Maryland judge Friday refused to dismiss the criminal wiretap
charges against Linda Tripp stemming from her role in the White
House sex scandal that led to President Clinton's impeachment in
1998.
But the judge decided that if Tripp is put on trial, former White
House intern Monica Lewinsky should be allowed to testify in
person about the pivotal question of whether she gave Tripp
permission to tape record a telephone conversation in which
Lewinsky told of her affair with Clinton.
Tripp, a former White House secretary, was indicted July 30,
1999, on two counts of violating the Maryland wiretap law by
secretly recording a Dec. 22, 1997, telephone conversation with
Lewinsky from her home in Colombia, Maryland, and sharing the
tape's contents with Newsweek magazine.
In late 1997 Tripp spent hours taping telephone conversations
with Lewinsky about the former intern's sexual affair with the
president and turned the recordings over to Starr, setting off
months of investigations that ended in Clinton's impeachment in
the U.S. House of Representatives.
Howard County Circuit Judge Diane Leasure decided Lewinsky's
testimony to a grand jury investigating Tripp was not sufficient
as evidence of whether Tripp had Lewinsky's permission to make
the recording.
The ruling may or may not set the stage for Tripp to go to trial
in July as the only major figure in the scandal to face criminal
proceedings.
After nearly six months of testimony, arguments and legal
wrangling, Leasure was asked to decide whether evidence compiled
against Tripp by a special state prosecutor was tainted by the
testimony she gave independent counsel Kenneth Starr under a
grant of federal immunity.
The judge, whose ruling set a precedent in Maryland law, could
have granted a defense motion to dismiss the case outright, or
stripped away individual pieces of evidence found to have been
derived from the Starr investigation while allowing the remainder
of the case to go to trial.
"The appropriate remedy ... is the suppression of certain
testimony," the judge said. "The testimony of Monica S.
Lewinsky shall be and the same is hereby suppressed; provided,
however, that she will be permitted to testify regarding the
issue of consent."
It is illegal in Maryland to violate the law knowingly by
tape-recording conversations without the consent of all parties.
If convicted, she could face five years in prison and $10,000 in
fines on each count.
Central to the case against her was testimony from her one-time
friend, Lewinsky, the prosecution's key witness, who told the
court at a December hearing that she recalled the Dec. 22 date
of the recorded conversation because it was etched in her mind
and not because Starr's office had given it to her, as Tripp's
lawyers have charged.
However Lewinsky's credibility as a witness came under question
when she acknowledged leading state investigators to one of their
state grand jury witnesses, Tripp confidant Kate Freidrich, after
learning the woman's surname from Starr investigators.
State prosecutors have maintained that they can prove Tripp made
the tape on Dec. 22 while knowing that it would be illegal to do
so without Lewinsky's permission. But if Lewinsky's testimony
were stricken from the case wholesale, they could have difficulty
showing that Tripp had no such permission.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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