G.O.P. Senators Meet Secretly With Prosecutors on Witnesses nytimes.com
And it's all a subtle effort by the White House to poison the debate, right, JBL?
A small group of Senate Republicans has met secretly with the House impeachment prosecutors to devise criteria for determining whether witnesses would be called at the Senate trial, even as prosecutors this week approached Monica S. Lewinsky and Kathleen E. Willey about their possible testimony.
The question of calling witnesses to testify before the Senate has divided Democrats and Republicans as they set procedures for the trial. After a rare bipartisan meeting last Friday, all 100 senators agreed to vote this month on whether to call witnesses. Such a vote would take place after opening arguments from the House managers and the White House, which begin on Thursday.
At the time of the agreement, Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, announced that Democrats and Republicans had agreed to having a bipartisan group of four senators begin meeting immediately to try to hash out how the Senate would deal with the witness issue later. But that group did not materialize, nor was its creation part of the official impeachment measure passed by the Senate unanimously.
Senator Lott then quietly went ahead on his own and appointed three Senate Republicans who have said publicly that they favor calling witnesses -- Jon Kyl of Arizona, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Jeff Sessions of Alabama -- to work with Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the lead manager, and other prosecutors.
Senate Democrats were belatedly invited to a meeting of the new group on Monday, but Senator Tom
Daschle, the minority leader, rejected the offer.
"Senator Daschle's position is that we voted on an unanimous bipartisan level to put off the question of witnesses, so it would not be in keeping with that agreement to start a discussion about whether to call witnesses," said Ranit Schmelzer, a spokeswoman for Mr. Daschle.
As far as the White House knowing they will lose the case, I think your view on that is pretty much what Newt thought about dumping the porno Starr report and "secret" Grand Jury deposition on an unsuspecting public. As someone who's more entertained by the political theater of the absurd than anything else at this point, whatever happens is fine with me. Kathleen Willey has several contrasting versions of her story out there, you think she's going to turn the tide, you're whistling past the graveyard. |
