So what did he say???
Sen. John Kerry's closed-door impeachment statement
Released into Congressional Record, February 12, 1999
Mr. KERRY. Mr. Chief Justice, my colleagues, I want to thank the Chief Justice for his important stewardship of these proceedings. And I thank Senator Lott and Senator Daschle for their patient leadership in helping to bridge the divide of partisan votes so that these are not partisan deliberations.
There is a special spirit in this Chamber. No matter all the easy criticisms directed our way, this is a great institution and in our own way we are witnessing--living out--the remarkable judgment of the Founding Fathers.
Let me turn to the question of removing President William Jefferson Clinton.
Many times the House managers have argued to us that if you find the facts as you argue them, you must vote to convict and thereby remove. But of course, that, like a number of things that they said, is really not true. You can, of course, find the facts and still acquit, because you don't want to remove on a constitutional basis or, frankly, on any other balance that a Senator decides to make in the interest of the Nation.
Now, I agree that perjury and obstruction of justice can be grounds for removal or grounds for impeachment. The question is, Are they in this case? I will not dissect the facts any further because I don't have the time but also because I believe there are issues of greater significance than the facts of this case.
Let's assume you take the facts as the House managers want you to. I would like to talk about some of the things in the arena outside of the mere recitation of facts--critical considerations in this matter.
I have listened to all of the arguments for removal, and I must say that even as I understand what many have said, there seems to be a gap between the words and the reality of what is happening in this country.
Some have said it sets a double standard for judges, despite the fact that the vast majority of scholars say there is a difference between impeachment of judges and the President, despite a difference clearly spelled out in the Constitution, and despite all of the distinguishing facts of each one of those cases involving judges.
Some have said we will have a negative impact on kids, on the military, and on the fabric of our country.
And while I agree that this is absolutely not about polls and popularity, some are making a judgment that clearly the country itself does not agree with. The country does not believe the fiber of our Nation is unraveling over the President's egregious behavior, because most people have a sense of proportion about this case that seems totally lacking in the House managers' presentation.
No parent or school in America is teaching kids that lying or abusing the justice system is now OK. In fact, the President's predicament, I argue, does not make it harder to do so. If anything, there may now be a greater appreciation for the trouble you can get into for certain behavior. More parents are teaching their children about lying, about humiliation, about family hurt, about public responsibility, than before we ever heard the name of Monica Lewinsky.
The clear answer to children who write letters about the President is that since being discovered he has been in a lot of trouble, may even be criminally liable, has suffered public humiliation, and all of history will not erase the fact of this impeachment, this trial, or the lessons of this case.
But the bottom line for us is our constitutional duty, our responsibility to balance based on common sense and sense of honor.
There is a simple question but a question of enormous consequence: Do we really want to remove a President of the United States because he tried to avoid discovery in a civil case of a private, consensual affair with a woman who was subsequently determined to be irrelevant to the case, which case itself was thrown out as wholly without merit under the law? That is the question.
Let me be clear about the President's behavior so no one misinterprets. I am as deeply disturbed by it as all of us are here in the Senate. But I am not sure we need additional moralizing about something that the whole Nation has already condemned and digested. The President lied to his countrymen, to family, friends, to all of us. And if one is not enormously concerned by gifts not surrendered, conversations which can't refresh recollection, jobs produced with uncommon referral and speed, certainly one must be unsettled by the mere lack of easy compliance with judicial inquiry by a President. That is of grave concern to all. It deserves our censure.
But let me say as directly as I can that no amount of inflated rhetoric, or ideological or moral hyperextension can lift the personal, venial aspects of the President's actions to the kind of threat to the fabric of the country contemplated by the Founding Fathers. I must say that I am truly somewhat surprised to see so many strict constructionists of the Constitution giving such new and free interpretation to the clear intent of the framers.
And I have, frankly, been stunned by the overreach, the moral righteousness, even the zealotry of arguments presented by the House managers.
No matter the words about not hating Bill Clinton, no matter the disclaimers about partisanship, I truly sensed at times not just a scorn but a snarling, trembling venom that told us the President is a criminal and that 'we need to know who our President is.'
Well, the President is certainly a sinner. We all are. And he may even have committed a crime. But just plain and simply measured against the test of history so eloquently articulated by the Senator from New York this morning and by the Senator from Delaware yesterday, just plain and simply, this is not in any measure on the order of high a crime and misdemeanor so clearly contemplated by the Founding Fathers.
Unlike President Nixon's impeachment case, no government power or agency was unleashed or abused for a goal directly affecting public policy. No election was interfered with. No FBI or IRS power was wrongfully employed. At worst, this President lied about his private, consensual affair and tried wrongfully, but on a human level--understandable to most Americans, at least as to the Paula Jones case--to cover it up. I think, in fact, that most Americans in this country understood there was in that inquiry a violation of a zone of privacy that is as precious to Americans as the Constitution itself.
The fact that the House dropped the Paula Jones deposition count underscores the underlying weakness on which all of this is based. So I ask my colleagues, are we really incapable of at least measuring the real human dimensions of what took place here and contrasting it properly with the constitutional standards we are presented by precedent and history?
We have heard some discussion of proportionality. It is an important principle within our justice system and in life itself. The consequences of a crime should not be out of proportion to the crime itself. As the dictionary tells us, it should correspond in size, degree or intensity.
I must say that no one yet who will vote to remove has fully addressed that proportionality issue.
If you want to find perjury because you believe Monica about where the President touched her, and you believe that adopting the definition given to him by a judge and by Paula Jones' own lawyers, and you can reach into the President's mind to determine his intent, then that is your right. But having done that, if you think a President of the United States should be removed, an election reversed, because of such a thin evidentiary thread, I think you give new meaning to the concept of proportionality. If you do that, you turn away from the central fact that the President opened his grand jury testimony by acknowledging 'inappropriate, intimate contact' with Monica Lewinsky.
Enough said, you would think. But no, not enough for this independent prosecutor. While not one more question really needed to be asked, a torrent of questions followed. Every question thereafter calculated to either elicit an admission of a lie in a case found to be without merit, or to create a new lie which could bring us here.
With the President's acknowledgment of intimate contact, everyone in this Chamber understood what had happened. Everyone in America understood what had happened. For what reason did we need eighty percent of the questions asked about sexual relations? For the simple reason that the Presidential jugular instinct of the so-called independent counsel was primed by what all of us have come to know--he had colluded with Paula Jones' attorneys and Linda Tripp to set the Monica trap in the January deposition, and now he was going to set the perjury trap in the grand jury. Mr. Bennett's own comments in the deposition underscore this:
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