Small perjury, if any. In response to a very big trap.
(I'm adding this to that list I just posted. I only saved it as a text file, so instead of lots of online searching, I've just reposted it here. It's maybe a week old?)
Clinton did wrong, but it was not a very big wrong. It was a very, very small perjury. Just about the most minor, and under all the circumstances, the most forgivable perjury that I can imagine.
There is of course a natural tendency to think it must have been a very big wrong, because look at the very big national turmoil we are in as a result. But we have never before so intruded on a President's private life while he was in office. And we now know that many have had extramarital affairs, and at least some while in office. Do we really want inquisitions into the sex lives of all of our elected officials? And perhaps the rest of us as well?
He lied to the American people. He said, famously, in response to relentless and furious demands for answers from the press: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."
Were the American people really demanding to know whether the President had had an affair while in office? Or did most of them want the area left alone, as it had been for Presidents in the past? Was he really lying to a rabid press? Yes, I know, the American people were watching. And he did lie to us. But we weren't demanding answers to that question, most of us. Not at all.
We are told this crisis is not about sex or adultery. It's about perjury, obstruction of justice, abuse of office. Really? It seems its only about the President's attempting to cover up a politically damaging affair, hoping his partner would do the same, and he treating her decently after he had to break it off by assisting her in finding employment outside his office. As he might a friend he was fond of. Really, it is all about a commonplace adultery, and trying to cover it up.
So how did we get here? And why on earth has the press, and the Washington establishment, gone on this unprecedented campaign to search out and debate every detail?
Which leads to part of why I think this was a very, very small perjury, though by a very important man. He should never have been asked the questions about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones case in the first place.
Clinton's sex life was cleverly and most successfully made "fair game" for the
mainstream media, through the instrument of a sexual harassment lawsuit. It was
seized upon (and perhaps invented), funded, and fully directed, by zealous enemies of the President. There's really no question that that is true. These enemies did not just happen to learn of a great wrong they felt had been committed. They in fact had been routing around through Arkansas for years, searching for anything that might possibly bring the candidate, and then the President, down. Whitewater was born of this search, and handed to Starr, and has produced nothing, as relates to the President and First Lady. But these enemies were focused especially on the rumors of Clinton's infidelities. The trouble was, this was an area the press usually shied away from, unless it became a police or legal matter. So how could they bring the mainstream press in? They needed a sexual harassment lawsuit. The trouble is, that wasn't the Present's modus operandi. He had fully wanted liaisons. Then they found Paula Jones.
The great advantage of the Jones vehicle was they didn't have to prove the President actually did anything wrong or unwanted to her. They could use a lawsuit that has been proved frivolous, and was dismissed, to conduct a literal inquisition, under oath and with power of subpoena, into every aspect of the President's consensual sex life, no matter how remote from Paula Jones. They could do this because, unfortunately (and wrongly, I believe), in sexual harassment lawsuits the issue of the relevance of such evidence as consensual relationships with unrelated women is an unsettled matter, up to the particular judge, and is usually only decided upon at trial. After the depositions have already been taken. And they knew that if they leaked any admission by the President of adultery, it would become instant and continuing headline news. Even though the leaks were illegal. This was their breakthrough.
As it happened, soon after the President was compelled to testify about his affair with Lewinsky, and misled under oath and probably committed perjury, the
Lewinsky line of questioning was determined by the Judge to not be necessary or material, and she threw it out. Unfortunately, she was a bit late.
The President wasn't just lucky that his falsehoods turned out to be in a frivolous and dismissed lawsuit, and concerned a non material collateral line of questioning. He knew the purpose of the suit and the remoteness of the questions very well going in. Which is why he sought to avoid perjury, barely, while misleading and not providing the information sought. Whether he avoided technical perjury or not I don't know. I doubt it.
Whether Linda Tripp had long been involved with the affiliations of zealous
opponents out to bring down the twice elected President, or only made contact later would be interesting to know. In any event, her tapes of Lewinsky's supposedly confidential girl talk contradicting the President's testimony, and the information that Clinton had testified about his relationship with Lewinsky in the Jones trial, made their way to Starr's office soon after Clinton's testimony.
Entrapment by zealous opponents, I'd say. Which revealed no more than a
President trying to cover up, in limited ways, his adultery.
The rest we all know too, too well.
Now if this concerted campaign to misuse sexual harassment laws and the judicial system to bring the President down had revealed something really serious, such as bribing of judges, or any number of things, it wouldn't matter very much how the information became public.
But when we hear claims that the President's perjury about this subject under these circumstances imperils the legal system, I do think this background is most relevant.
This is not the right way, or the right reason, to remove a President from office.
Doug
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