Paula Jones & Bill Clinton - Another Look at Truth, Lies, and/or Consequences

Great Debates
21

Well, this was likely presented in some other thread, but Bricker; you forget that perjury is not simply “lying under oath”. Did Pres. Clinton lie? Sure he did; or at least prevaricate. But did those lies actually come under Perjury statutes? Well, in a sense, he was arraigned, but not convicted (in Congress) so it would seem like the evidence- while enough for an indictement; was not enough for a conviction. Nor has anyone charged him for criminal perjury, and certainly Clinton had enough enemies so that if they thought it could stick, they would have. So, your opinion does not seemed to be shared by the legal community.

See, the lie must also be deliberate AND material. We can argue about the “deliberate” thing, but it seems clear the entire Monica evidence was not material. (Everyone seems to agree that Monica was “willing”, very much so, thus Monica was cetainly not “sexually harrassed”.) (It can also be argued that the entire Jones trial, having been thrown out, was “not material”.) Thus, no “perjury”. You know, it is kind of like “drunk driving”; not only do you have to be drunk, you also have to be driving.

22

DrDeth, the materiality of the questions and Clinton’s answers in the Paula Jones deposition are not relevant – he was accused of lying during his grand jury testimony. For that proceeding, he was asked, directly, about sex with Monica, and he denied it. The question was very relevant to that proceeding, since the grand jury was in existence to handle it.

Elvis1Lives, I am afraid we are talking past each other. But at least we’re down to a very simple point.

“I suffered tangible job detriments.”

According to you, that’s a lie, since it ultimately became clear that she was talking about things that the court found - correctly - were NOT tangible job detriments. Your point seems very straightforward: she made a statement of fact, and it wasn’t true, and therefore she lied.

Let me come up with another analogy, and see if it helps to distinguish between a pure statement of fact, and a conclusion of law - which is what Paula’s claim actually was.

Let’s say that I go into an alley, accost the first passer-by, pull out a set of dentures, and announce that he better hand over his wallet, or I’ll pinch him with the dentures… “… and we all know how dangerous a human bite can be!”

This guy sues me for the assault. In his lawsuit, he claims that I, armed with a deadly weapon, robbed him of his wallet.

Now - is he lying, or telling the truth?

I don’t rightly know – because I’m not sure whether, under this state’s law, human dentures, wielded in assault, constitute a deadly weapon. Ultimately, a judge would rule - or perhaps has already ruled - on this issue. But if it turns out that dentures are not a deadly weapon, it doesn’t mean the guy lied when he filed his lawsuit, or even if he said, under oath, that I used a deadly weapon.

The allegation that I used a deadly weapon is a conclusion of law. It’s reached after applying the law to a given set of facts.

The allegation that I had a set of dentures, or that I was the guy in the alley, are questions of pure fact.

You see the dfference? Paula’s claim that she suffered “tangible job benefits” is a conclusion of law. The actual things that happened to her are questions of fact.

  • Rick
23

Bricker: you say that Clinton lied in his Grand Jury testimony about having sex with Monica? Huh? Where? What line? Please cite- and not somebody who says that Clinton lied to the Grand Jury- I mean his actual tangible lie. By that time he had admitted fooling around with her.

What he was accussed of lying about during the Grand Jury was (if my memory serves me correctly):“lying about lying”, that is he said that when he testified during the Jones trial, he did not lie about his sexual relations with Monica. Not the same thing at all. If his opinion is that his testimony during the Jones trial did not rise to the level of perjury, then he did not lie to the Grand Jury, either.

The other “grand jury lie” was that he remembered the “relationship” starting later than Monica did. Here, either Monica was wrong, or maybe he was. But, someone whose memory is incorrect about something is not commiting perjury.

The Grand Jury could have, in any case, if they thought Clinton HAD perjured himself before them, bring charges. They did not.

24

DrDeth:

Let me step back just a bit.

I should have said something along the lines of, “…as I conclude he lied during the Grand Jury testimony…”

Clinton’s testimony is a lie only if you credit Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony, as I personally do. Ms. Lewinsky testified that in all nine sexual encounters with the President, he touched her bare breasts. In several of them, he touched her genitals, bringing her to orgasm.

Clinton, on the other hand, testified that he did none of those things.

I resolved the conflict against Mr. Clinton, for several reasons: first, the complete lack of detail in his testimony, which merely consisted of a denial that he did anything that was ‘sex’ under the Jones deposition definition, as contrasted with the specific, consistent, and detailed testimony Ms. Lewinsky provided of their sexual encounters. Moreover, Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony was corroborated in other respects by other evidence - for example, she claimed to have seen Mr. Clinton on a particular day, and a particular guard let her in; the guard’s testimony and the White House security logs verify her.

Secondly, I find against Mr. Clinton by applying the common-sense test. Everything I know of people tells me that if a woman is giving you oral sex, it’s very natural to fondle her during the act, and very unnatural to imagine sitting silently by, doing nothing.

However, you’re quite right to call me on this: I usually only offer that opinion if someone asks what I think. From a standpoint of what was proved, the answer is, as you suggest, that no trier of fact actually compared the testimony of the two and reached a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt, as would be required for a perjury conviction.

So, while my personal view is that Clinton lied, I should have been clear that that’s all it was.

If you still require specific cites to the grand jury testimony for any of the above, I will be happy to provide it.

That said, it’s entirely unclear whether the grand jury could have indicted a sitting president for perjury. The question first arose during the grand jury investigation of then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. The government argued that the Vice President, and all officers of the United States except the President, were not immune from the judicial process, and that an officer need not be impeached before indictment. However, they also argued that the President himself, for various constitutional (and practical) reasons, was not subject to the ordinary criminal process. See Memorandum for the United States, Application of Spiro T. Agnew, Civil No. 73-965 (D.Md., filed October 5, 1973).

Courts have held that a federal judge is indictable and may be convicted prior to removal from office. Kerner v. U.S., 417 U.S. 976 (1974). The Supreme Court has never weighed in on the issue of the President’s being subject to criminal indictment.

  • Rick
25

Richard Posner, a very highly respected applellate court judge wrote An Affair of State : The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton, a dispassionate, scholarly book about the impeachment trial. It’s not long. I recommend it to DrDeth and anyone else who wants a fair-minded, expert legal analyisis.

Posner argues that Clinton did indeed commit crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice. Yet the complexity of Clinton’s impeachment revolves around whether criminality per se reaches the level of ``high Crimes and Misdemeanors’’ for which constitutionally a president may be removed. His book studiously avoids taking a position for or against impeachment.

However, he says that an ordinary person who committed the level of perjury and O of J that Clinton did would go to prison for IIRC about 18 months.

26

The especially great thing about this is that this **highly respected applellate court judge **published this **dispassionate, sholarly book **with its **fair-minded, expert legal analysis **saying that **Clinton did indeed commit crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice **while there was still the potential for an indictment of Clinton by the OIC!!! There was a fairly acrimonious exchange in the New York Review of Books between Posner and Ronald Dworkin about that, not least because there were circumstances under which the potential case against Clinton could have ended up in Posner’s court!!! The NYRB archive is only partially available right now, and I don’t think that these exchanges are on there. As far as I am concerned, it was grossly unethical for Posner to publish this book when he did. Don’t you agree that the published opinions of a highly respected applellate court judge- a sitting judge at that- would have a prejudicial effect on any trial?
As far as Posner’s respectability goes- remember that he was the guy who said, in an exchange with Alan Dershowitz in Slate, that the SCOTUS might well have decided Bush v. Gore differently if it had been Gore suing to stop Bush recounts, but that it was still the right decision, politically inspired or not. JDM

27

OK I was wrong- http://www.nybooks.com/articles/187 is a link to Dworkin’s review.

Here is a relevant statement from the article:

**
JDM

28

JDM, I posted the name of the book for those are truly interested in learning more about the subject. It’s been years since I read it, and I’m not prepared tp re-join a debate on this subject.

On another thread, I accused liberals of demonization. The NYRB is a master.

Who should we believe? Some far-out lawyer who writes for the political magazine NYRB or the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School? RP is highly by all, including responsible liberal media. Furthermore, if RP had behaved unethically, the Bar Association has had 5 years to go after him.

I doubt there was any reasable chance of this occurring. If it did, he’d have obviously recused himself, wouldn’t he?

I confess that IANAL. Are you one? Why is your opinion valid?

. This argument really comes down to the left’s idea that only they should be allowed to express opinons. Note that by the time RP’s book came out in 1999, there had already been a zillion books, articles, TV shows, etc. on this topic. Every single one had the potential to affect some hypothetical trial. Tough. That’s the price we pay for freedom of speech.

So? :confused:

What’s striking about JDM’s post ist that is consists of ad hominem attacks. Most are unfair or ridiculous. No information in favor of RP is given (and there’s a ton of it).

However, JDM’s conclusion is that one shouldn’t read Posner’s book or try to refute his arguments. The man has been demonized by the NYRB, so we should simply ignore anything he says.

29

**
oh pooh.

**
About Dworkin:
http://www.law.nyu.edu/faculty/bios/dworkinr_bio.html
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/dworkin/
here’s a very critical review of one of Dworkin’s books, to show my open mindness
http://www.law.indiana.edu/ilj/v72/no4/berger2.html
here, for even more fun, is a feminist criticism of Dworkin’s philosophy, showing that Dworkin is not simply a rubber stamp leftist:
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v1n1/iorns3.html
these all are from the first two pages of Google hits on “Ronald Dworkin”

**
Here is an interesting anecdote about an early Posner v. Dworkin event:

from here:
http://www.linguafranca.com/0005/posner.html
which is a pretty good overview of Posner’s ideas and personality. One interesting point to be made here is that even in 1980, Dworkin was an influential and noted voice in the Law, hardly just some

**

You continue:

**

check your dates. After all, according to Ken Starr getting a date wrong is a very very bad thing. By the way, this isn’t the ABA, it’s the US Government. However, the Code states:

from here: http://www.utd.uscourts.gov/judges/judges_code.html

The fact that no one “went after him” does not make his book ethical.

**

Well in this case I am relying on Dworkin and his quoted section of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. The full canon is:

**

Nope, sorry. It may be that you can’t see the difference between some celebrity author, or Ann Coulter for that matter, and the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit, so I suggest you scroll back up a bit, and reread the section of the Code.

**
It does tend to deflate his argument a bit when he admits that Bush v. Gore may well have been politically motivated decision (particularly when it also shares his own politics).

Nope, sorry. First I made only two statements against Posner: 1. that it was unethical for him to publish the book when there were “impending” cases against Clinton, and 2. that by admitting that Bush v. Gore may have been a politically motivated decision, he did undercut his own credibility in his comments praising it. Neither of these are ad hom.
I did quote in bold some of your effusions about Posner’s character and reputation, and about the book, because they set the stage for my post. I suppose that could be considered ad hom, but they are your words, quoted carefully in context.
As far as demonization goes- don’t be silly. Read what I said.
As far as saying that Posner should be ignored, or that his freedom of expression should be abridged, well, I didn’t say that. I simply pointed out the hypocrisy of unethically publishing a book about someone else’s ethical and legal lapses. I stand by that.

OTOH What You Said About Ronald Dworkin!!! Naughty, naughty, naughty. Or at least ad hom. JDM

30

I really think I’ve said it enough times already. It doesn’t have to be strictly perjury to be legally actionable. I have never said it was perjury.

I was a few sentences into repeating myself once again, but there’s no need. Scroll up.

Bricker, you’re not talking past me, simply being repetitive (and, at this point, I’ll add, a bit obtuse). I do believe you’re refusing to acknowledge the questions I’m tired of repeating, though. Scroll up and reread - maybe you and wring can help each other if there’s still a problem.

It is not reasonable to think Jones’ statements about having suffered tangibly were sincere. It doesn’t take a legal education, or much of any education, to know what “tangible” means. The difference between real and imaginary is understood by small children, even if they don’t know the word “tangible”. But your position rests on the possibility that that she did not. Well, in a word, feh.

Scaife’s people could have explained that in a minute if they, using their professional responsibility, wanted to avoid filing a baseless suit and wasting the court’s time. But the fact that they did not (or chose to ignore the possibility) is further evidence against your almost-touching belief in their “good faith”.

You seem to be arguing a brief for a client as an advocate, not considering the case dispassionately as a judge or an interested layman would. Good day, counselor, and better luck on your next case.

31

ElvisL1ves said:

Then he said:

Then he finished with:

No wonder you like Bill Clinton so much.

32

You got me there, JDM.

I would tend to cut you some slack, JDM. A list of your critical comments looks harsher than you may have intended: [ul][li] this judge published this book while there was still the potential for an indictment of Clinton by the OIC!!! (Italic plus six hammers.)[]it was grossly unethical for Posner to publish this book when he did. (grossly)[]the published opinions… would have a prejudicial effect on any trial. As far as Posner’s respectability goes…(questioning RP’s respectibility.)[/ul]However, JDM, the main proof of ad hominem is what you didn’t say. You didn’t say something like, “RP’s reasons for believing that an ordinary person who did what Clinton did would get 18 months in prison were A, B, C, D and E. I disagree with his facts because F, G, L and M. I disagree with his legal reasoning, because, N, O, P, and Q.”[/li]
You transformed a debate about the magnitude of Clinton’s crime into a pissing contest between Dworkin and RP.

33

Bricker- during the Grand Jury testimony- the Monica Cat was already bagless. Clinton admitted recieving oral sex from her, etc. What he did not admit was that during his previous Jones trial testimony he lied- he claimed that he did not lie at that time. Again, please show me the actual line, the words, where Clinton lied during his GJ testimony. But you are right- if we are getting down to nit-picking details, and it is a “he-said/she-said” thing- the evidence is poor for a CRIME of perjury, especially when we are talking about rather stale memories. The difference seemed to be that Monica said the “relationship” started late one year, and Clinton said he remembered it as early the next year. This does not call for either to be “lying”- either could have simply mis-remembered.

Dec. Same thing- I do not care if 10,000 lawyers wrote books saying that Clinton perjured himself during his GJ testimony. “Show me the line”. If the book is that good, it should have Clintons testimony- his EXACT words- where he supposedly perjured himself.

AFAIK- Clinton was accused of lying twice during his GJ testimony. One was argueable an opinion, the other was a possible mistake.

So- “show me the line”- and say why that line was perjury.

34

IIRC the book explains its reasoning clearly enough. If I owned a copy, I might be willing to type in all the relevant passages. As it is, the most efficient course may be for you to just read it.

35

OK, here we go:

Right at the beginning, Clinton read a statement to the grand jurors. It included:

Yet, as I’ve already pointed out, the conduct DID involve sexual relations as defined in the January 17th deposition, and Mr. Clinton knew it. Ms. Lewinsky testified that in their encounters, he touched her genitals and breasts. That falls under the definition of sex in the January deposition.

Continuing… throughout the testimony whenever he was asked a specific question that could not be answered directly without either admitting the truth or giving an easily provable false answer, he said, “I rely on my statement.” For example:

There you go, DrDeth.

  • Rick
36

pldennison, I do suspect strongly that she committed perjury, and that the Scaife lawyers acted unethically. But, as Bricker and others keep reminding me, IANAL and therefore have no basis for saying it actually was perjury.

But it didn’t need to be, and that is the point here - Clinton was nailed for statements that were never admitted or proven to be perjury either, except in the minds of those who wanted to believe so, so why shouldn’t Jones be held at least as accountable for her own such statements?

If you have a reasonable answer, please provide it. That’s what GD is for. That ad hominem stuff you like to use does not engender respect for the views you hold.

37

You can have my ad hominem when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

This is probably about to become Pit material, but for starters, let’s not go tossing about accusations of ad hominem after such doozies as:

“I’m just wondering how anyone but a lawyer could think that this . . . could possibly be interpreted to mean that she did not fill out an application.”

“I’d add a comment about lawyers here, but it seems superfluous somehow.”

“Your Miranda analogy is inappropriate, too, although I’m sure it must have been fun putting your lecturer’s cap on.”

“Scroll up and reread - maybe you and wring can help each other if there’s still a problem.”

Yeah, those are real substantive arguments. I am practically struck blind by their power.

The portions of your posts I quoted demonstrate quite clearly that you did, in fact, accuse Paula Jones of perjury. Then, when (quite frankly), you get your ass kicked by a lawyer, you have the gall to come back with, “But, as Bricker and others keep reminding me, IANAL and therefore have no basis for saying it actually was perjury.” What, suddenly you have some respect for the views of lawyers, after what I just quoted above? Please. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone as fundamentally dishonest since Danielinthewolvesden. Cripes, you were funnier when you claimed that Mir’s orbit was stable and never had to be reboosted.

38

Once more, here is the difference between the two: Paula’s allegation that she suffered “tangible job detriments” can never be perjury, because it is not a statement of fact, but a conclusion of law. Her statements which were of fact didn’t provide the facts necessary for the court to draw that conclusion of law. None of her statements of fact were perjurious.

Bill’s grand jury claim that he never touched Monica’s breasts or genitals could possibly be perjury. We cannot know definitively that it was perjury, however, since it’s possible (however unlikely it might be) that he received oral sex from Monica while not once touching her breasts or genitals.

IF - IF - IF - we believe Monica’s testimony, we must disbelieve Bill’s. IF that were done by a finder of fact in a perjury trial, it would be sufficient evidence to convict on perjury. In other words, as a matter of law, sufficient evidence exists on the record for a reasonable fact-finder to convict Mr. Clinton of perjury. Of course, that same fact-finder could also choose to disbelieve Ms. Lewinsky’s testimony and believe Mr. Clinton’s, and that, too, would be reasonable and supported by the record.

As a matter of law, the record is insufficient to convict Ms. Jones.

I hope this clears up the difference.

  • Rick
39

By the way - where did I ‘remind you’ that you weren’t a lawyer?

Unless you’re referring to the general problem we’re having – that I’m talking about the elements of perjury, and you’re using the word to generally refer to being deceptive under oath – and that this difference in approach sort of ‘reminds you’ that you’re not a lawyer… but I don’t think I’ve ever said anything to you along the lines of, “You’re not a lawyer, and so you don’t understand this.”

  • Rick
40

But we have only Ms. Lewinsky’s word on this, and isn’t it true that dueling testimony without any other corroboration does not make for perjury?

For that matter, why isn’t the most reasonable interpretation that they just didn’t see the event in the same way? They weren’t exactly clinically detached observers at the time, you know.

So the question stands. Please show us a clear indication perjury before the Grand Jury.