Public Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy On His Decision To Vote No On Both Articles Of Impeachment

February 11, 1999

Senator Patrick Leahy's detailed procedural and factual analysis of the case

Leahy is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The record of this impeachment trial is a time capsule that we leave for succeeding generations of Americans. As this trial began, we reopened the records of the previous presidential impeachment in 1868. In reviewing the precedents, rules and arguments in that trial, it has occurred to me more than once that our actions today will be reviewed and evaluated just as closely. What we have done in the process of this trial is to leave a trail of precedents that our successors will strive to understand and, if we acted wisely, seek to emulate. Our actions can stir a chord that will vibrate through the history of our Republic.

And so, in explaining my decisions in this trial, I know that I am addressing myself to my Vermont constituents and fellow Senators, but also to future generations. I know that in this audience is my grandson and, perhaps, even his grandchildren.

The conclusion I have reached on the Articles of Impeachment is imbued with this solemn knowledge and sense of duty. My conclusion is that we must not avenge the faults of William Jefferson Clinton upon our nation, our children and our Constitution.

Extreme partisanship and prosecutorial zealotry have strained this process in its critical early junctures. Partisan impeachments are lacking in credibility. The Framers knew this. We all know this.

We began this 106th Congress the last of the 20th Century facing a challenge that no Senate has been called upon to address since the aftermath of the Civil War. To deal with this challenge, we took a special oath, administered to Senators who must determine whether to override the election by the people of the United States of their President and remove him from office. The Constitution purposefully restrains the Congress and carefully circumscribes our power to remove the head of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. The Constitution intentionally makes it difficult to override the electoral judgment of the American people. I will cast my votes wary of the dangers posed by the House Managers' seductive invitation to vote to remove the President for symbolic purposes.

We all agree that the President's conduct with a young woman who was working in the White House was inexcusable. It was deeply disappointing, especially to those who know the President and who support the many good things he has done for this country and the world. His conduct in trying to keep his inappropriate relationship secret from his wife and family, his friends and associates, and from the public glare of a politicallycharged lawsuit, though understandable on a human level, has had serious consequences for him personally and for the legacy of his presidency.

The President has admitted before a Federal grand jury terribly embarrassing personal conduct and has seen a videotape of that grand jury testimony broadcast to the entire nation, with excerpts replayed over and over, again. This modern day version of the public stockade has been difficult to witness for those who know this man and his family and care about them.

The Jones lawsuit has now been settled and $850,000 has been paid on a case that the District Court judge had dismissed for failing to state a claim.

The Clinton presidency has been permanently tarnished by impeachment. The Senate trial has provided a forum to replay the embarrassing and humiliating facts of the President's improper relationship. No one can say this President or his presidency has emerged unscathed.

For me, one of the President's most regrettable actions was his nationallytelevised statement to the American people in which he shook his finger and defiantly told us that the allegations were untrue. Although not charged in the Articles of Impeachment, that statement was intended to mislead the American people with respect to the nature of his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. While I understand the pressures that he was under at the time, that statement was wrong. Although the President later apologized for his actions, I feel very strongly that no President should intentionally deceive the American people and I condemn him for having done so.

But condemning the President is not the purpose of an impeachment trial. Impeachment cannot be about punishing the officeholder. Senator George Edmunds of Vermont explained in 1868 that "punishment by impeachment does not exist under our Constitution . . . [the accused] can only be removed from the office he fills and prevented from holding office, not as punishment, but as a means merely of protection to the community." The Senate's focus must be on whether the conduct with which the House has charged President Clinton has been proven and warrants his removal from office to protect the public.

The President's indiscretions did not alone bring us to this point. Raising this matter to the level of a constitutional impeachment only began with the referral from special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Justice Robert Jackson, when he was Attorney General, observed that the most dangerous power of the prosecutor is the power to "pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted." I am concerned that this is what happened in the case of President Clinton.

Does anyone recall, after the fruitless years of investigations of this President and the past year of upheaval, that it was the "talking points" given to Ms. Tripp by Ms. Lewinsky which were supposed to be the "smoking gun" proving a vast conspiracy to suborn perjury? No one now doubts Ms. Lewinsky's account that she wrote the "talking points" based on her discussions with Ms. Tripp, and that Ms. Lewinsky never even discussed them with the President.

Monica Lewinsky has consistently maintained that no one ever asked or encouraged her to lie, and that she was never promised a job for her silence. Indeed, in her 24th interview, the Senate videotaped deposition demanded by the House Managers, she testified to her own purposes in keeping her relationship secret. She acted in what she thought was her own best interests. She sought to conceal her relationship with the President in a vain attempt to avoid being "humiliated in front of the entire world." And the record establishes that it was Linda Tripp, rather than President Clinton, who acted in the conflicting roles as Ms. Lewinsky's intimate confidant and ultimate betrayer.

As a former prosecutor, one of the questions I have asked myself is whether these criminal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice would have been brought against any person other than the President of the United States. If William Jefferson Clinton were Billy Blythe or Bill Jones would any prosecutor in the country have successfully brought such charges? Experienced prosecutors, Republican and Democratic, testified before the House Judiciary Committee that no prosecutor would have proceeded based on the record compiled by Mr. Starr. I agree and note that during the course of these Senate proceedings the case has only gotten weaker.

The testimony in the record shows that Ms. Lewinsky had no intention of revealing her relationship with the President and that she is the person who originated and carried out her plan to hide certain gifts from the Jones lawyers. Indeed, the only crimes shown to have possibly occurred are not high crimes but those for which Ms. Lewinsky and Ms. Tripp have received immunity from prosecution from Mr. Starr.

To influence the Senate's judgment, the House Managers have argued that the consequences of the President's acquittal of their unproven charges would be dire for our children. I trust the parents of America to raise their children, to explain what the President did was wrong, and to point out the humiliation and other consequences he has brought on himself and his presidency. I do not believe that the Constitution calls upon us to remove a duly elected President for symbolic purposes. Rather, I believe that the precedent set by conviction without proof and removal without constitutional justification would be far more dangerous for our Republic.

The House Managers have warned that should the President be acquitted we will damage the "rule of law." I strongly disagree. Instead, we must follow the supreme law of the land, our Constitution. By doing so we will establish an important constitutional precedent and provide a lesson for the future: Partisan impeachment drives are doomed to fail. It is up to the Senate to restore sanity to this impeachment process, exercise judgment, do justice and act in the interests of the nation. History will judge us based on whether this case was resolved in a way that serves the good of the country, not the political ends of any party or fortunes of any person.

In all the references to the first presidential impeachment trial, that of President Andrew Johnson, few recall that after the unsuccessful effort to remove him from office, former President Johnson returned to serve this country as a United States Senator. I look forward to the day when the Senate can close our work as an impeachment court and we can all return to the other important work we face as United States Senators representing our States.