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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (7212)	9/28/1998 11:49:00 AM
From: MulhollandDrive	Respond to of 13994

Thanks Carl, Nice to see the non-edited version. <g> Looks like Clinton views himself more like a movie producer than an elected public official. Could have been a serious miscalculation on his part. bp

To: Bilow who wrote (7212)	9/28/1998 11:53:00 AM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 13994

Good. The whole article is indeed interesting. The parts I clipped were the parts that were descriptions and quotes from the leading Supreme Court decision on the subject of intentionally misleading testimony and perjury. I clipped all, or virtually all, of that. The parts you are emphasizing are opinions of some prosecutors and the like. And yes, it is certainly true that perjury often is an add on crime when prosecutors are trying to figure out ways to throw the book at someone that feel is a really bad actor and otherwise might not be punished enough. And perjury can be a way of convicting someone of something when prosecutors are determined to get him because of other matters. (Hiss) Note that the last language which you make bold is a description of the prosecution's position in that leading Supreme Court decision, the Bronston case: a category of perjury defined as "intentionally misleading responses with an especially strong tendency to mislead the questioner." That's exactly what the Supreme Court rejected. Depositions are a form of combat. It's up to the questioning attorney's to ask enough follow up questions in enough ways to fully trap the wily deponent. Feints and slides, so long as there is no absolutely dead on falsehood, are fine. If things get that far (which I rather doubt), the Senate will get into all this. Count on it. Doug

To: Bilow who wrote (7212)	9/28/1998 12:24:00 PM
From: dougjn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

In the Iran-contra scandal, many charges involved witnesses accused of lying to congressional investigators. I have said a number of times that I thought that Iran-Contra should have been dropped much, much earlier than it was. I also thought the conviction of a number of people for perjury was suspect, and had some stench of set-up to it. There was though the fact that the things they were lying about were directly what Congress was investigating. And things which I think Congress unquestionably had a right to know about. Clinton's Jones deposition feints and sleights were undertaken to hide things which I fully believe (as did Clinton) that Jones lawyers had no right to be asking him about. Yes, yes, the Judge did allow those Lewinsky questions. She shouldn't have. She later threw them out as "not necessary" for the fair determination of whether Jones had suffered sexual harassment. Judge Wright (unlike the President) was nieve enough to think her sealing order would protect the confidentiality of that testimony until she got around to ruling on its materiality and admissibility. Even though it involved a deposition of the President, which the press were desperate to get at, and which the Jones lawyers were equally interested in leaking. Unfortunately, in sexual harassment cases the admissibility of such testimony is essentially entirely up to the standards which the presiding judge feels like applying. It shouldn't be. The consensual sexual background of harassment defendants should be made off limits in the same way that the consensual sexual background of those who allege rape has been made, through the "rape shield" laws. They were questions the President shouldn't have been asked. By the Jones lawyers. Or by that rabid media circus that was hounding the President as viciously as anyone has ever been hounded by them, just before he was cornered into famously saying "I never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." From MS Bookshelf: Sexual relations: 1) sexual intercourse. (Yes, it's true, the President was lying if MS Bookshelf's second definition was instead applied: 2) Sexual activity between individuals) He should never have been asked those questions. That he chose to mislead us when he was, is not so hard for the American people to understand. Doug