“Once upon a time, an independent counsel named Kenneth Starr wrote a report that got a president impeached for lying about a blow job.”
This opening salvo from Bess Levin of Vanity Fair is a crude but somewhat accurate description of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. It is a flippant summary of a bipartisan impeachment effort that has led to perception that the president was impeached for infidelity. Sites like Wikipedia confound the problem by pointing to all the members of Congress who voted for impeachment that had extramarital affairs exposed by the media. As a matter of fact and a point of law, President Clinton was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
The dismissal of a perjury charge just for lying about sex has long been a narrative for those who opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. His own attorney David Kendell said: “no prosecutor in the United States would bring a perjury prosecution on the basis…” of the questions asked of Bill Clinton. Testing that claim, the New York Times interviewed several lawyers and legal experts and even interviewed a woman who was at that time serving time for perjury because she lied about sex…in a civil case!
Former prosecutor Jeffrey Abrams said; “Symbolically, the sword of Damocles hangs over every perjurers head, and no one can know whether they’re the perjurer that’s going to be prosecuted.” A judge, Lacey A. Collier who sentenced a supervisor for a Post Office in Florida to 13 months for her lying about sex under oath had this to say; “One of the most troubling things in our society today is people who raise their hands, take an oath to tell the truth then fail to do that. An analogy might be made to termites that get inside your house. Nobody sees it, nobody knows about it until the house collapses around you.”
What President Clinton lied about and his obstructions of justice are the kind of titillating background that reads like steamy exposition in a cheap romance novel. What began as an investigation to both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s financial dealings regarding the Whitewater controversy, Janet Reno appointed Ken Starr and approved a broad investigation of the Clinton’s. This wide ranging investigation included allegations made about the firing of White House travel agents (travelgate), misuse of FBI files as well as Bill Clinton’s conduct in a sexual harassment case filed by a former Arkansas State employee, Paula Jones.
Jones had filed a sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton on May 6th of 1994 alleging that in a hotel room where Clinton had summoned Jones, he propositioned her and showed her his penis. The president challenged Jones legal standing, arguing that her claims cannot be brought against a sitting president. This defense strategy took that sexual harassment case all they way to the Supreme Court on May 27th, 1997. That Court unanimously rejected the defense motion to post-pone trial until after Clinton’s presidency and allowed Jones complaint to proceed.
Publicly, Clinton denied Jones claims and prepared his defense for that trial. A settlement was offered Jones, but she would not accept the amount without an apology. Apparently President Clinton refused to apologize so the settlement was withdrawn and Jones attorneys quit. As part of the Clinton defense, a motion to dismiss the case had been filed. Judge Susan Webber Wright granted that motion to dismiss on April 2, 1998 and Jones appealed the case soon after.
By November of that year, Clinton finally settled the case. Jones got more than she initially asked for but no apology. It’s connection to the impeachment of President Clinton is made by Monica Lewinski. The attorneys for Paul Jones used a strategy of demonstrating a pattern of behavior by Bill Clinton. They compiled a witness list of people they suspected were victims of sexual harassment by Clinton. The tawdry nature of this tale involves players such as Linda Tripp who was recording the conversations she had with Lewinski, and was the one who told Jones attorneys about this. For this reason Monica Lewinsky was a witness for the Paula Jones civil suit. During deposition, Clinton had been asked if he every had any sexual relations with Lewinski (as defined by Exhibit 1 modified by the court). Clinton denied this.
This denial led to some truly cheesy and somewhat steamy facts regarding Bill Clinton’s relationship to the intern, Monica Lewinski. Testing the stain on a blue dress of Lewinski’s for DNA was the Paul Verhoven on both steroids and Viagra moment. All of this titillating sexual intrigue largely overshadowed the fact that while he was president he lied under oath in civil suit brought against him. Despite the fact he would ultimately settle the case with Paula Jones, he publicly denied her accusations and went to trial.
For Jones the legal maxim “justice delayed is justice denied” must have been meaningful. Bill Clinton had lied repeatedly under oath. These were felonies. This, in a cut and dry black and white analysis is exactly why he was impeached. The Senate failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote to convict Clinton and he remained president for the rest of his term.
There were many Clinton defenders and it seems then and now that a good portion of that public were willing to allow that maybe presidents are above the law. At least when it comes to lying about sex under oath. One of the most cited judges of the 20th Century, Judge Richard Posner put it this way; “…the President may be a little above the law, that felonies can be excused when they seem the harmless consequence of human weakness that never should have been a subject of legal proceedings, that prosecutorial excess can mitigate a defendant’s guilt, and that pragmatic considerations should bear heavily on the decision to force a President from office.”
Reading this through the filter of a #MeToo Movement that has itself shown signs of crumbling, a time where Tara Reid is dismissed as unbelievable by the same people who insisted everyone should “believe all women,” just how should we take Posner’s claim that Clinton’s lies under oath and his harassment of Jones was the “harmless consequence of human weakness?” What is the proper lens by which to view this legal question? I suppose it depends upon what your definition of is is.
During the impeachment trial, Clinton invoked the Supreme Court ruling Bronston v. United States. This was a ruling that took strict construction of the federal perjury statute holding that factual statements made that are misleading cannot be construed to mean intentional lying. The Supreme Court unanimously held a failure of follow up questions from alert litigators to clarify any ambiguities of a misleading statement should not be used against the one testifying. This principle has come to be known as “the literal truth” rule.
Ken Starr, Literal Poster Child for Impeachment Bess Levin Vanity Fair Jan 27th, 2020
“Bill Clinton Got Impeached for Lying About a Blowjob” Jennifer Wright Sep 20th 2019
The Impeachment of Bill Clinton
US Teenagers think Oral Sex isn’t Real Sex NCBI, April 16th, 2005
In Truth, Even those Little Lies are Prosecuted Once and a While NYT, Nov 17th, 1998