Prosecutors Open Clinton Case

Before 100 seated and silent members of the U.S. Senate, Republican House prosecutors opened their impeachment case Thursday against President Clinton, describing a pattern of perjury and obstruction of justice that they repeatedly said could be bolstered by live testimony from key witnesses in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

Every pair of desks representing the 50 states was occupied. The gallery was full. And the historic Senate chamber fell hushed just after 10 a.m. PST when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist gaveled to order the case that for a year has consumed Washington and deeply troubled the rest of the nation.

Outside in a gloomy, freezing drizzle, visitors in long lines shivered toward the Capitol building hoping to get a short turn as witness to just the second time Congress has placed the country’s chief executive on trial.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), speaking in a grave and measured clip, evoked the principles of England’s Sir Thomas More and the poetry of William Shakespeare.

“You’ve taken an oath of impartiality,” he told the senators. “You have pledged to put aside personal bias and partisan interest and to do impartial justice.

“Your willingness to take up this calling has once again reminded the world of the unique brilliance of America’s constitutional system of government.”

Should they not live up to their sworn oath to listen to the evidence and render a fair verdict, he told the senators, justice will “become a mere convention full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Hyde was followed to the well of the Senate by four other House “managers,” who outlined their evidence that Clinton lied before a federal grand jury to hide his sexual affair with Lewinsky and then orchestrated an effort to further obstruct justice by enlisting his staff to conceal his moral failings. The House prosecutors will continue to present their case today and Saturday, and White House lawyers will begin their defense of the president Tuesday.

At their desks, senators for the most part appeared closely attentive, often taking notes, sometimes leaning forward to read large charts prepared by the House managers.

Thursday evening, when the proceedings recessed and senators left the chamber, those who spoke to reporters generally followed party lines.

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), for instance, said that he was particularly impressed by the words of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who urged the senators to hear from witnesses and said it is absurd for Clinton to maintain that he and Lewinsky did not have sex while she may believe that they did.

“Sensenbrenner, I thought, was very compelling,” Campbell said. “I didn’t hear anything new, but the way it was phrased was much more compelling.”

And he wondered: “How in the hell does one person have sex unless the other person has sex?”

Democrats Eager to Hear White House

Some Democratic senators said that they believe the Republican team scored some good points. But they are eager to hear from the White House side next week.

Even Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a defender of the president, said the Republican congressmen gave “an effective presentation.” But he quickly added: “They must still reach the central test--even if all these allegations are true--does it rise to the level of impeachable offenses?”

The House managers will need at least a dozen Democratic senators to vote with Republicans in favor of Clinton’s removal. And many Democrats were not awed by the managers’ first day of presentations.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) noted that the managers said they had enough evidence already but still wanted witness testimony anyway. “Either you have the evidence or you don’t,” he said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who last month was a House member of the Judiciary Committee and voted against impeachment, was asked whether witnesses should testify. No one was called for the House hearings.

“Do we want Monica Lewinsky in the well of the Senate?” he asked. “That is something I shudder at.”

But GOP senators said that they also would like to hear from Clinton himself.

“I think he should be invited or at least I don’t have a problem with him being invited,” said GOP Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.).

Added Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska): “If the president wants to clear himself for history, he should come testify. [Otherwise] history will not be good to this president.”

Hyde agreed afterward that the president should testify. “I’d like to hear him,” he said.

He also defended the work of his team, saying that, while the presentation may have made for a long day, “remember, repetition is the soul of scholarship.”

While Clinton’s lawyers sat through the day without speaking in the chamber, the White House was not holding its tongue.

Chief spokesman Joe Lockhart said the White House was particularly unnerved at the managers’ suggestion, repeated again by Hyde to the senators, that Clinton himself should testify.

“Any witness opens up this process to lengthy delays,” complained Lockhart.

He also criticized the managers, saying that they have “consistently bent, changed and shifted the rules” to match their political objectives. And, he said, they harbor divisive political motives warned against by the Constitution’s Founding Fathers.

“I don’t think the founders intended [that] a party . . . in the majority in the Congress could remove a president at their whim based on partisan political differences,” Lockhart said.

Jim Kennedy, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, watched some of the proceedings from the visitors’ gallery. He later stepped outside in the rain and ice and read a two-paragraph statement to reporters, refusing to take questions.

He criticized the GOP managers and said that they “have begun to lay out a case that is both unsubstantiated and circumstantial.”

“The reality is there is no case for the removal of the president,” Kennedy said. “We look forward to presenting our defense case based on the facts, the law and the Constitution, so all of us can move quickly back to the business of the American people.”

Clinton Grounded by Bad Weather

Clinton had planned to leave town Thursday. But ugly weather interfered. He plans to fly today to New York for an appearance with the Rev. Jesse Jackson to encourage Wall Street to invest in minority communities.

Thursday morning, he visited an Alexandria, Va., police station to propose a new $6-billion initiative to increase the number of the nation’s police officers.

With Clinton trying to focus on matters beyond the trial, partisan rancor filled much of the air outside the Senate chamber. Once again, Republicans and Democrats accused one another of one-sided strategy sessions violating the spirit of last Friday’s unanimous agreement to postpone a decision on whether to call witnesses.

As it turned out, three Senate Republicans had met with House managers to explore criteria for calling witnesses. That meeting infuriated Democrats.

But then Democrats had to acknowledge that more than a dozen Democratic senators had met on Wednesday afternoon with Democratic lawyers of the House Judiciary Committee.

The controversy raised new questions about whether the Senate can conduct a bipartisan trial, which both parties have promised.

But when Rehnquist took the presiding officer’s chair, that political animosity seemed to have been checked in the Senate cloakroom.

The Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, former pastor of a North Hollywood church who now serves as the Senate chaplain, opened with a prayer, asking God to keep the senators focused in a spirit “of nonpartisan patriotism today and in the crucial days to come.”

He was followed by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms James Ziglar, who warned the room to keep quiet under “pain of imprisonment.”

Then Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, stepped to a single microphone. He introduced his team and Sensenbrenner began a lengthy presentation, twice using the word “cancer”--a reference to warnings to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal of “a cancer on the presidency.”

“What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law,” Sensenbrenner said. “Failure to bring President Clinton to account for his serial lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations.”

Clinton’s Alleged Lies Cited

Sensenbrenner outlined both articles of impeachment against Clinton. The first, citing him for perjury before the grand jury in August, accused him of making a number of false statements. The congressman said that Clinton’s lies occurred when he said:

* His involvement with Lewinsky did not fall under the definition of “sexual relations.”

* He had been truthful in his earlier deposition in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case.

* He did not try to influence his secretary, Betty Currie, to protect him from being found out in the Lewinsky scandal.

* He told his staff the truth about his relationship with the former White House intern.

The second article accuses Clinton of obstruction of justice. On that score, Sensenbrenner said that the president:

* Joined with Lewinsky in concocting a cover story about their relationship.

* Suggested that she provide an affidavit to avoid testifying in the Jones lawsuit, knowing that such an affidavit would have to be false to get her out of the Jones matter.

* Conspired with Lewinsky and Currie to hide evidence, such as gifts he had given Lewinsky.

* Used the power of his office to help procure a new job for Lewinsky in return for her false affidavit in the Jones case.

“What he did was criminal, time and time again,” Sensenbrenner said. “These criminal acts were in direct conflict with the president’s obligation to take care the laws be faithfully executed.”

Sensenbrenner was followed by his colleagues and, while they also outlined key parts of their case, at times using video snippets of Clinton’s grand jury and deposition testimony, they all asked to be allowed to bring in witnesses to prove their case.

Under the rules adopted by the Senate last week, the senators will not decide whether to hear live testimony from witnesses until they have heard opening statements from both sides and then voted on whether depositions should be taken first.

Clinton, Lewinsky Differences Cited

Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.) noted that Lewinsky’s story often splits from Clinton’s account of their relationship and that it would help to have people she confided in tell their versions.

The president’s “denials directly contradict Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony, but also contradict eight of her friends and the statements by two professional counselors with whom she contemporaneously shared details of her relationship,” Bryant said.

“By law, their testimony may serve as proper and admissible evidence to corroborate her side of this unfortunate story.”

He told the senators that Lewinsky herself should appear before them and that Clinton, too, should testify. Without that kind of a self-defense, Bryant said, the president most surely will be convicted and removed from office.

“The state of the evidence is such that, unless and until the president has the opportunity to confront and cross-examine witnesses like Ms. Lewinsky, and himself, to testify if he desires, there could not be any doubt of his guilt on the facts,” Bryant said.

“A reasonable and impartial review of this present record demands nothing less than a guilty verdict,” he added.

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) also called for Clinton to testify--something the White House has flatly rejected.

“Can you convict the president of the United States without hearing personally the testimony of key witnesses?” he asked the Senate.

“Can you dismiss the charges under this strong set of facts and circumstances without hearing and evaluating the credibility of the key witnesses?”

Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), the last presenter of the day, said that without witnesses, “who is telling the truth?” He answered his own question: “There is only one way to find out.”

“If the witnesses that make the case against the president--who incidentally are his employees, his top aides and his close friends--if all these people are lying, then he has been done a grave disservice,” Rogan said.

“He deserves not just an acquittal, he deserves the profoundest of apologies.

“But if they are not lying, if the evidence is true . . . ,” Rogan warned, “then there must be constitutional accountability.”

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Judy Lin and Art Pine contributed to this story.

As the Senate impeachment trial proceeds, there’s a remarkable lack of a crisis atmosphere in the capital, says Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus. Hear his audio reporter’s notebook on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/impeach

MORE COVERAGE

* Behind-the-scenes moves anger senators. A22

* President won’t take stand, White House says. A22

* Removal of U.S. judge is guiding precedent. A24

* Text of statements of GOP prosecutors. A24

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

THE PROSECUTION / Day One

“Reasonable and impartial review of this record, as it presently exists, demands nothing less than a guilty verdict.”

--Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.)

*

“The evidence will show that a scheme was developed to obstruct . . . justice, and that is illegal.”

--Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.)

*

“If witnesses may lie with impunity for personal or political reasons . . . we descend into chaos.”

--James E. Rogan (R-Glendale)

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Speed Read

Developments at a Glance

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) addressed the senators in a short opening statement, saying in part: ‘With your permission, we the managers of the House are here to set forth the evidence in support of two articles of impeachment against President William Jefferson Clinton.”

*

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) gave an overview of the accusations against Clinton and called for the Senate to “sift through the layers of debris that shroud the truth. The residue of this painful and divisive process is bitter, even poisonous at times. But beneath it lies the answer. The evidence will show that at its core, the question over the president’s guilt and the need for his conviction will be clear.”

*

Rep. Ed Bryant (R-Tenn.) spoke about “the four-way intersection collision of President William Jefferson Clinton, Ms. Paula Corbin Jones, Ms. Monica Lewinsky and the U.S. Constitution” and said that since the judge had ruled all Clinton’s sexual conduct with employees discoverable, then any actions taken to keep an affair with Lewinsky hidden, damaged Jones’ ability to present an effective court case.

*

Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) said it was implicit when Lewinsky filed a false affidavit that the president would reward her with job assistance from his friends, including Vernon E. Jordan Jr. “The question here is not why did the president do a favor for an ex-intern, but why did he use the influence of his office to make sure it happened.”

*

Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale) discussed the concept of perjury, defined a misleading statement as being perjurious and used video clips of Clinton’s testimony in the Jones trial and the Starr grand jury to bolster his argument that the president lied.

****

Today’s Schedule

* Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) will summarize the case presented up to this point. Next, the following congressmen will discuss the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Clinton.

Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.)

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah)

Rep. George W. Gekas (R-Pa.)

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio)