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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (3783)	9/18/1998 9:57:00 PM
From: dougjn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Careful! You are sounding more reasonable. <g> Doug

To: Johannes Pilch who wrote (3783)	9/19/1998 12:34:00 AM
From: jbe	Respond to of 67261

Clinton could probably NOT have taken the Fifth. 1)The Fifth Amendment states that no one "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The grand jury was not conducting a trial of a criminal case; the only task of a grand jury is to decide whether it is worth seeking an indictment and thus STARTING a criminal case(a task, incidentally, that Starr never intended it to perform). Under the circumstances, would not invoking the Fifth in itself be viewed as proof of guilt (of perjury in the Paula Jones case)? 2)If Clinton had nevertheless sought to invoke the Fifth Amendment, the judge would have had to rule on whether he could do so or not. 3) If he had simply refused to answer questions, he could have been locked up for civil contempt, as Susan McDougal was. (This of course is not as serious as leaking information about grand jury proceedings, which is classified as CRIMINAL contempt. I am still waiting for someone on Starr's team to be cited for criminal contempt.)