Those were not perjury charges but contempt charges.
And the matter was only pursued because Clinton was who he was. I don’t believe any prosecutor has the time or the money to pursue such chickenshit charges against defendants who are not gigantic political targets.
Also, it was a part of a deal with then Starr Inquisition. The deal was that if Clinton pled, Starr would call of the Whitewater investigation which had failed utterly to find any wrongdoing on the part of bill Clinton but had succeeded greatly in destroying the lives of several people who had committed the crime of being friends with the Clintons.
It seems like Dewey keeps saying it’s plausible and that it’s theoretically possible but he hasn’t really said if it’s something a prosecutor would normally be likely to pursue, or if it’s something that ordinary citizens routinely go to jail for.
On a related note, I’m positive that if I had gone AWOL from the Navy for a year the way Bush did from the ANG, I would definitely have been in a world of shit.
I’m also pretty sure I would have gotten prosecuted for any DUI’s.
I never claimed to have a case that mirrored the Clinton example in every single respect. Indeed, if I had to wait for a foursquare-on-point case before I reached legal conclusions, I’d never get anything done.
What I did claim is that there is case law developing the meaning and timing of “materiality,” and I’ve provided that. Furthermore, I think that the perjury cases, taken together, establish principles that, when applied to the Clinton case, demonstrate a criminal act.
I note that not all of the cited cases deal with testimony at trial. Some deal with testimony at pretrial hearings and at hearings before administrative bodies. Depositions are clearly within the purview of the perjury statute. The cases cited establish that a tangential point can be the basis for a perjury conviction (it need not go to the central issue of the case). There isn’t a case that factually mirrors the Clinton affair in every detail, but there’s a body of law there that, as a whole, points to a strong argument for perjury.
I also note that your hand-waving dismissal of the Lewinsky affair as “tangential,” “irrelevant,” and “immaterial” are misplaced. Certainly Judge Wright thought that testimony might be material to the case for a variety of reasons, and since materiality is determined at the time of the questioning, you can’t let the later flow of information impact the materiality determination.
Put yourself in the shoes of the questioner. You’re aware of a possible presidential liason with an intern, but you don’t know the details. Certainly if it turns out that liason follows a similar pattern to what you’re alleging (ie, quid pro quo harrassment), it strengthens your case. Getting a “yes” answer about the affair is a prerequisite to establishing those other details. Thus, the question is material, and must be answered truthfully.
Prosecutors are not automatons. Whether a prosecutor “would normally be likely to pursue” such a case is dependent on the individual prosecutor. You’re asking me to make a gross generalization.
As for whether “it’s something that ordinary citizens routinely go to jail for,” I have no basis for saying one way or another. That is a statistical question.
I note that I am neither a prosecutor nor a criminal defense lawyer – indeed, I am a transactional attorney, not a litigator – so I’m not about to make a pronouncement as to what informal standard practices exist amongst the prosecutorial community.
You still aren’t really answering the question about whether prosecutors routinely pursue perjury charges for all the thousands of trivial lies which are told in discovery every day.
And aside from the question of materiality (which I don’t believe any jury would have found), we still have a question as to whether Clinton’s answer was either technically or deliberately untruthful. The latter would be especially hard to prove.
For the record, my last post was my made before reading Dewey’s post directly above it.
I will accept that DCU is not a criminal prosecutor or a litigator and does not feel comfortable answering statistical questions about prosecutorial habits of discretion.
Again, I’m not asking for a case that mirrors Clinton’s case in every single respect. The only relevant details I"m asking for are “someone lied about a tangential detail in a civil deposition and faced prison time for doing so.” Surely there are a lot of lies that people tell in civil depositions; surely a large number of these lies are about things that are (at least arguably) irrelevant; surely some folks have gotten caught on these lies. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for an example of someone who’s done these things and went to prison for it, unless that just doesn’t happen.
Yes, the detail was only arguably irrelevant; I’ll concede that. However, it was arguably irrelevant: it wasn’t central to the case at hand. I’ll interpret “irrelevance” generously on any case that you or someone else can show, therefore.
Daniel
Where did you get the idea that it was? Cites might be helpful here.
Perhaps you forgot the cases of Robert Palmer, Web Hubbell, Christopher Wade, Neal Ainley, Stephen Smith, Larry Kuca, Jim Guy Tucker, James McDougal, Susan McDougal, William Marks Sr., John Haley, David Hale, Eugene Fitzhugh, Charles Matthews and John Latham. In case you did, all of these individuals were convicted in court by Whitewater prosecutors.
I could list the crimes they were convicted of, if that would help you out. Suffice to say, there was a lot for the prosecutors to do here. And when the Lewinsky matter needed to be investigated, due to the allegations made at the time, who assigned the case to Starr rather than another, separate prosecutor? Wasn’t it the Reno Justice Department?
And Robert Ray was contemplating criminal charges against Clinton when the settlement was reached.
Given all that, I believe the burden of proof is on you to show that this was a political effort, and not a straightforward prosecution.
All of those prosecutions were completely politically motivated and none of them had any connection to any wrongdoing by Bill Clinton in the Whitewater investigation.
Starr’s MO was to investigate Clinton’s friends until he could find or contrive something prosecutable in their business dealings or taxes, secure convictions and then offer to reduce those sentences in return for saying whatever Starr wanted them to say about the Clintons.
I don’t know how you think you’re proving that shit wasn’t partisan. The entire Whitewater campaign was a concerted, partisan attempt to undo an election by any means possible. The amazing thing is how clean the Clintons actually turned out to be. Other than some suspiciously flipped and severely compromised testimony suborned under threats of prison time, Starr failed completely to find any evidence of wrong doing by the Clintons. He was about to give up on the investigation when John Goodman in drag fell into his lap.
Quick question for you, MM: When Starr was done, to whom did he submit his referral? Was it a court charge, filed in court? Or did he give it to the House instead? Was he conducting a legal investigation/prosecution, or doing the work to support a political effort? Don’t be so naive.
Those persons would include, unsurprisingly, Tom DeLay, who whipped wavering House members into supporting the lame-duck, party-line impeachment instead of censure.
Hmm–I don’t see either that he lied or that his statement was irrelevant to the deposition. It seems to me that when you’re being sued by a business partner it’s relevant whether you’re an officer of the business (although I could easily be wrong on this point); however, he said he couldn’t remember his role, and he later clarified his role to the court. Disanalogous. And in any case, nobody is considering bringing him up even on ethics charges, much less bringing perjury charges.
Daniel
The point there was that one can do worse than what the Tighty Righties excoriate Clinton for and still not go to jail for it, or even be charged. The level of political hypocrisy required for them not to demand DeLay’s head should be evident, though.
Why was this a misguided submission? You are aware that the House of Representatives has a constitutional role to play here, given that presidential immunity would have precluded a court filing, aren’t you?
For that matter, impeachment proceedings had begun in 1974, for the same reason. The severity of the charges aside, there were allegations against the president in both cases that no court could legitimately handle.
No, it does not. Cite? The impeachment process has jack-all to do with the legal system despite the borrowing of some superficial trappings, as I’ve pointed out rather strenuously here, and more than once, and obviously without your notice or comprehension.
Your comment there is an example of something else I’ve pointed out rather strenuously as well - the acceptance meme that impeachment is somehow a special kind of court trial for defendants who happen to be federal officeholders. The attachment of the more gullible, or perhaps just more cowardly, partisans to that concept as a way of pretending to themselves their effort was either responsible or respectable is quite understandable, of course - but still falsely-based, unfortunately, and utterly unconvincing to others.
Now do you have an answer to provide for any of the questions that have been posed to you? Or, faced with the evidence thus far, would you rather just confess to slander and ignorance?
Here’s the source material, for those of you who are still laboring under that delusion of honorability:
Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7: *Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. *
If Starr had discovered any genuine criminality on the part of the President, there was nothing preventing him from pursuing criminal charges through the ordinary courts. In fact, he did just that with several other targets of the Whitewater Inquisition.
Instead of pursuing criminal charges he submitted Lewinsky evidence only to Congress for use in the wholly political process of impeachment (which is not a criminal trial).
Barnes and Slutzky, noted above, stand for the proposition that perjury applies to tangential matters as well as matters central to the case. And the lie in Barnes didn’t occur at trial, but at a pretrial suppression hearing.
The perjury statute by its very terms applies to depositions as well as matters in open court.
Put two and two together.
I’ve provided cases where people have gone to jail for lying about a tangential detail. And the statute applies equally to depositions under oath and matters in open court.
Unless you can provide a legal basis for saying that the rule in Barnes and Slutzky does not apply to depositions, my reasoning is sound.
I really don’t think relevance is even arguable, if you consider the matter at the time the question was asked. See the last two paragraphs of my prior post to you.
You should also be more careful with your language. Something can be tangential but still relevant. Something can be immaterial and still relevant. Those words describe three different things.
You’re certainly right that impeachment is not a criminal trial. But you’re wrong that criminal charges could have been pursued, at least prior to 2001. The president is immune from judicial direction, as per Mississippi v. Johnson, decided by the Supreme Court in 1867.
Now, you’re calling impeachment a political process as if that damns it. It does not, it merely describes the process as happening outside of the court system.
Or was it an illegitimate “political” process when pursued in 1974 as well?
Dewey, you keep talking about what is possible or reasonable but the point is that it is NOT common practice for prosecutors to pursue charges for piddley shit lies in discovery. If I had done the same as Clinton, the chances are very slim that I would have been prosecuted for perjury.