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| Q&A: FACTUAL DISPUTES | |
 January 22, 1999 
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After listening to six days of testimony, senators submitted their questions to the House managers and White House lawyers. Following excerpts from day one of questioning, Margaret Warner and guests analyze the factual disputes of the case.
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JIM LEHRER: Questions and answers at the senate impeachment trial and to Margaret Warner.
KWAME HOLMAN: Under the established rules, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was assigned the task of reading each of the senators' questions. WILLIAM REHNQUIST, Chief Justice: I would like to advise counsel on both sides that the chair will operate on a rebuttable presumption that each question can be fully and fairly answered in five minutes or less. (Laughter) |
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| Questions and answers. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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KWAME HOLMAN: The laughter was insightful. House manager Ed Bryant's response to the first question ran nine minutes. The first several questions were general in nature and gave both legal teams the opportunity to respond to and rebut the cases for and against conviction laid out over the previous six days. But after 30 minutes, senators began asking questions that got to the specifics of the case.
WILLIAM REHNQUIST: Senators Ashcroft and Hatch: "The president was faxed a witness list on December 5th and actually reviewed it no later than the 8th. Thus, isn't the White House argument that the president had no incentive to assist Ms. Lewinsky's job search until December 11 just a red herring?" KWAME HOLMAN: Both sides were asked whether witnesses should be called in the trial. |
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| The issue of witnesses. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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WILLIAM REHNQUIST: Senators Grassley, Smith of New Hampshire, Bunning and Craig ask the House managers: "In your presentation, you made the case that the senate should call witnesses." In light of the White House's response to this argument, do you still hold this position? Please elaborate.
WILLIAM REHNQUIST: This is from Senators Gramm of Texas and Smith of New Hampshire to the White House counsel: "If you said that our oath to impartial justice required us to allow the president to have a handful of witnesses to defend himself, don't you believe that all 100 senators would say yes? How can we do impartial justice by turning around and denying the House that same right?"
Senators, I really think they should have done it right the first time, and they've told you, not back then, but they've told you now that they have done it right because otherwise, they wouldn't, as a matter of their responsibility, be able to stand in the well of this senate and urge you to remove the President of the United States. How could they make that recommendation if they had any uncertainty, if they didn't believe that what's in those five volumes was sufficient under the day? They couldn't. They couldn't. Our rights are these for the President of the United States: He's entitled to ask you whether, when the House of Representatives voted to impeach him, they had enough evidence to make one of the most serious constitutional judgments that's entrusted to them. And it can't be that because they didn't do it right then, that you and we are now asked to extend this process just so that maybe, if they'd go to the right person or ask the right question or find the right document, something will emerge that translates those five volumes into something that really is a constitutional basis for removing the president. |
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MARGARET
WARNER: After six days of listening silently to the House managers and
President Clinton's attorneys, the senators finally were able to ask
questions today, although indirectly. They focused on two general areas,
the factual disputes in the case and the legal and constitutional standards.
Kwame Holman reports. 
WILLIAM
REHNQUIST: Senators Dorgan and Baucus and Schumer to the president's
counsel: "In Counselor's Ruff's presentation, he set forth a time line
that undermined the manager's theory that Judge Wright's December 11th
discovery order triggered an intensification of the president's and
Jordan's efforts to assist Lewinsky in finding a job. In response to
Mr. Ruff's presentation, the managers handed out a press release outside
the senate chamber asserting that it was the December 5th issuance of
the witness list in the Jones case and not the judge's discovery order
on the 11th that triggered the intensification of the job search. This
does not appear consistent with assertions made by the House managers
in their trial brief and oral presentations." Please comment.
DAVID
KENDALL, President Clinton's lawyer: It was the assertion very clearly
voiced in Mr. Manager Hutchinson's presentation and very clearly made
in the trial brief of the House managers that it was indeed the December
11th order that-- I used the word jump-started yesterday-- that catalyzed,
that pushed forward the job search. If you look at page 21 of the House
manager's brief, you see them say, "this sudden interest was inspired
by a court order entered on December 11, 1997." Now, their position
could not have been clear until we began our presentations, and then
all of a sudden, it wasn't the December 11th order, it was instead,
the December 5 witness list. Suddenly, because it's been clear that
the December 11th order was entered at the time when Mr. Jordan was
flying to Europe, he could not have known about it. He had met with
Ms. Lewinsky earlier that day, and indeed, that December 11th meeting
had sprung from actions taken by Ms. Lewinsky in a phone call with Mr.
Jordan in November. So the point is these were two entirely separate
chains of events going forward -- the job search and the witness list.
And nothing supports the intensification theory presented by the managers,
certainly not this new, "well, it wasn't the December 11th order, it
was the December 5th order."
REP.
ASA HUTCHINSON: There's two things that I'm pointing to as the trigger
mechanisms for the job search intensification. One of them is the witness
list that comes in on December 5 -- the president knows about at the
latest on December 6. The other thing that intensified that effort was
the judge's order on December 11th. Now, they went through this long
circumstance of Mr. Jordan being in Holland and the time of a phone
call with the judge and all of that, showing that the judge's order
of December 11 could not have triggered any action on the 11th. There
is no question about that. That is obvious from the facts, as it was
obvious when I made my presentation. The meetings on the 11th with Vernon
Jordan and Monica Lewinsky were triggered by the witness list coming
in on the 5th that the president knew about on the 6th, that he discussed
with Vernon Jordan, as well. Now, we say that the judge's order of the
11th, which was filed that day-- the only thing that was filed on the
12th was their memorandum of that telephone conversation-- that triggered
additional action down the road. The job search was not over, the activity
continued into January. And so that all put pressure on the ultimate
fact in January when the job was obtained, the false affidavit was filed.
REP.
BILL McCOLLUM: Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, the House definitely
holds to the position that we should call witnesses, but I think the
issue here is what has been related to us in anything we've heard in
the past few days by the White House counsel that would say we don't
need them, or I think just the contrary, what have we heard that says
we're more likely to need them or you're more likely to need them? First
of all, I would like to point out to you that the White House counsel
is trying to have it both ways. They have been arguing to you on a lot
of technicalities of the law, the criminal law for the last few days,
and that's understandable. As I said to you a few days ago, I think
this is a two-stage process, and we -- the managers do. You have to
determine if the president committed crimes and then if he did, should
he be removed from office? Two separate questions. They've argued to
you that you should use the standard beyond the reasonable doubt, which
is a criminal standard. And I might add that that standard is only for
facts; it's not for whether you remove, it isn't to determine law. You
wear the hat of finders of fact, as well as the judges, the finders
of the law and so forth. But if you choose to use that standard, you
need to know, (a), that it doesn't mean that it excludes any doubt.
You probably need to hear a jury instruction, which we can provide at
some reasonable point for you about how a federal court would charge
a jury about that. But the point I'm making is that they've claimed
that and they've claimed there is a lack of specificity in the charges.
Well, we're not in court in the sense of a real trial here. We don't
have to be specific like that. The whole history of the articles of
impeachment that have come over here in the past on judges and so forth
have never gotten down into the technical specificity of a courtroom
and been thrown out because they weren't exactly right. But my point,
again, is that they've gone and built up a whole case about -- that
we ought to follow these rules and have a criminal proceeding and judge
the crimes on that basis, and yet they've said, you wouldn't have witnesses,
or we shouldn't call witnesses. In any criminal trial, you're going
to call witnesses. You need to judge their credibility. 
CHARLES
RUFF, White House Counsel: The House of Representatives, at least as
they are described by the managers they sent to you-- I don't know how
to put this gently-- violated their constitutional responsibility in
the handling of this matter. They characterized themselves as nothing
more than a grand jury, nothing more than a screening device between
the allegations transported to them by the independent counsel and the
ultimate vote a month and three days ago. They felt, as they reiterated
constantly during that process, that they knew everything they needed
to know not to make the judgment that it was, you know, worth sending
on to the senate for them to think about, but they knew everything they
needed to know, as you've heard them say so eloquently and so forcefully
here, to remove the President of the United States from office. And
now they're saying to you, "well, maybe not. There really isn't enough
here to make that important critical judgment."