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Impeachment Watch
The Criminal President: 11 Impeachable Offenses
And his cabinet resents being duped
Janet "he-has-my-file" Reno shows support
PRESIDENT Clinton's Democratic colleagues rebuffed his pleas for support
yesterday as leaks of the
independent counsel's report, to be published today, suggest that it
will be a bombshell and that Mr
Clinton committed serious crimes.
Democratic senators said after meeting the President that they would be
guided by the facts, rather
than by his belated confession and sudden blitz of apologies. Asked
whether Mr Clinton had committed
impeachable offences, Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate,
said: "We cannot answer
that. The records and the facts and the documents President's fate will
show."
Yet more party members, whose support will be vital if Mr Clinton is to
cling to power, distanced
themselves from him. In an angry speech on the floor of the House of
Representatives, James
Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, said: "Perjury, obstruction of justice and
abuse of power are serious
charges. American morality has been reduced to 'Don't ask don't tell;
can't ask won't tell.' "
The Republican majority in Congress said that it would publish the
report by the independent
prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, probably this afternoon, putting in front of
the American public almost all
the details of Mr Clinton's sex and cover-up scandal. Only information
which could harm private
citizens will be held back.
Rattled by the intensifying political turmoil in Washington, traders on
Wall Street sent the main Dow
Jones index plunging by 249.48 points to close at 7615.54.
Leaks appear to confirm the Democrats' worst nightmare. The Starr report
explicitly alleges that Mr
Clinton committed perjury, obstructed justice, interfered with witnesses
and abused his power, sources
said. He is accused of committing 11 impeachable offences, according to
one television report.
"The Starr report is a straightforward narrative," a source said. "The
President continued to lie and lie
and lie." Mr Starr's documents give graphic details of Mr Clinton's
encounters with Monica Lewinsky,
the 25-year-old former White House clerk.
These have been included to show that Mr Clinton was untruthful in sworn
grand jury testimony last
month when he said that he had been "legally accurate" in denying in the
Paula Jones harassment suit
that he had a sexual relationship with her.
Lying to a grand jury in a criminal case would be a far more serious
crime than a lie in the Jones suit. It
would be impeachable beyond doubt. People familiar with the report say
that it makes a strong case
that efforts by Vernon Jordan, the President's friend, to find Miss
Lewinsky a job were designed to buy
her silence. It backs up Mr Jordan's claim of innocence, but suggests
that the President abused his
confidant's trust.
Leaks also suggest that Mr Starr has secured details of efforts by Mr
Clinton to thwart Paula Jones's
lawsuit and of his collusion with Miss Lewinsky to encourage witnesses
to conceal their affair.
After an emotional White House meeting lasting more than an hour, Mr
Daschle said that he accepted
Mr Clinton's apologies for his behaviour and lies. But he declined to
rule out impeachment. Mr Clinton
did not speak publicly about his troubles yesterday, nor repeat the
anguished apologies he made
repeatedly on Wednesday. But he did try in private meetings to shore up
support from his cabinet.
His ministers are said to resent having been duped into continuing to
express public support for him
after he lied directly to them in January, denying the affair with Miss
Lewinsky.
Nevertheless, Janet Reno, the Attorney General, said that she retained
confidence in him. She said: "I
think he is telling the American people that he has made a very, very
bad mistake and that he assumes
full responsibility for it."
Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, expects it to
take about two weeks for
members of Congress to assimilate the Starr report, but he plans to
publish large sections of it quickly
on the Internet. This opened the first clear split with the Democrats,
who want to give Mr Clinton a day
or two to prepare a point-by-point rebuttal before the report is made
public.
Henry Hyde, the chairman of the judiciary committee, which will hold
hearings to decide whether to
send articles of impeachment for a vote in the full House, said that all
445 pages of the report, including
the introduction and a 280-page narrative, "will be immediately
assembled and disseminated to the
press and the people".
Mr Daschle said: "That would demonstrate that there is an element of
unfairness we would have to be
concerned about."
The London Telegraph, September 11, 1998
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