Where's the crime?
January 21, 2001
The president did not lie, nor did he admit that he lied in the statement he gave today. - Clinton lawyer David Kendall, 1/19/01
No doubt David Kendall had some rationale for his statement, but listening to him could easily give one the impression that the main job of a lawyer is to teach clients how to lie and get away with it.
The truth is Clinton lied in his Jones testimony, he lied in his statement last Friday, and regardless of what rationale Kendall may have in mind, I call his statement a lie as well. Of course, we're all familiar with the quibble about the definition of "sexual relations," but there's no way to get around Clinton's denial that he was never alone with Monica.
Closure of this ghastly mess is surely a plus, but Clinton's statement is shot through with just the kind of evasions and trickery that prompted Judge Susan Webber Wright to cite him for contempt. In that ruling, recall, she said: "Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. Lewinsky was intentionally false and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false."
Compare the operative part of Clinton's statement (click here for full text):
| I have had occasion frequently to reflect on the Jones case. In this consent order, I acknowledge having knowingly violated Judge Wright's discovery orders in my deposition in that case. I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and that certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false. |
Notice the obfuscation in citing "Judge Wright's discovery orders" (which, exactly?) and the "I now recognize," clearly a device for evading the charge of perjury, which requires knowing falsification. Mark Levin on Fox News compared that to someone saying, "I tried to walk a fine line but now recognize that I robbed the bank."
Kendall was right when he said Clinton didn't admit to lying. In fact, he didn't admit to any crime at all, although Judge Wright's order was as close to a definition of perjury as you can get. Clinton's statement was not a plea agreement, as Special Counsel Robert Ray himself said. He was not charged with a crime, so there was nothing to plea against.
Clinton repeated a lie that he and his tribe have shopped endlessly for the past two years, namely that Judge Wright declared the Lewinsky case irrelevant to the Jones case. She excluded the Lewinsky testimony to avoid the delay that inclusion would have entailed, not because of irrelevance.
One more indication of the dishonesty of the Clinton administration, as if any were required, was Clinton's revocation a few days ago of the directive he signed in 1993 prohibiting lobbying by former administration employees. We can now understand the purpose of that directive as merely to collect points when needed, to be tossed overboard like yesterday's newspaper when no longer useful.
The Clinton statement was characteristic of the entire Clinton administration: full of equivocation and evasions to cover up corruption. In a sense, a fitting finale.