| As my mother used to say, Dash was a day late and a dollar short: Starr hadnt cared about the lawfulness of his behavior for a long time
Shortly before Thanksgiving, the House Republicans returned to Washington to elect Bob Livingston of Louisiana, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, as the new Speaker of the HouseHe would take office in January when the new session of Congress beganAt the time, most people thought the movement to impeach me was stalledSeveral moderate Republicans had said that they were opposed to it, and that the election had been a clear message that the American people wanted the Congress to reprimand or censure me and get on with the publics business
In the middle of the month, I settled the Paula Jones case for a large amount of money and no apologyI hated to do it because I had won a clear victory on the law and the facts in a politically motivated caseJoness lawyers had appealed her case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the governing case law was clear: if the Court of Appeals followed its own decisions, I would win the appealUnfortunately, the three-judge panel assigned to hear the case was headed by Pasco Bowman, the same ultra-conservative judge who had removed Judge Henry Woods from one of the Whitewater cases on the basis of spurious newspaper articles after Woods had rendered a decision Starr didnt likePasco Bowman, like Judge David Sentelle in Washington, had shown that he was willing fake chloe bag to make exceptions to the normal rules of law in Whitewater-related cases
Part of me almost wanted to lose the appeal so that I could go to court, get all the documents and depositions released, and show the public what my adversaries had been up toBut I had promised the American people I would spend the next two years working for them; I had no business spending five more minutes on the Jones caseThe settlement took about half our life savings and we were already deeply in debt with legal bills, but I knew that if I stayed healthy, I could make enough money to take care of my family and pay those bills after I left officeSo I settled a case I had already won and went back to work
My promise to leave the Jones case behind would be tested once more, and severelyIn April 1999, Judge Wright sanctioned me for violating her discovery orders and required me to pay her travel costs and the Jones lawyers deposition expensesI strongly disagreed with Wrights opinion but could not dispute it without getting into the very factual issues I was determined to avoid and taking more time away from my workIt really burned me up to pay the Jones lawyers expenses; they had abused the deposition with questions asked in bad faith and in collusion with Starr, and they had repeatedly defied the judges order not to leakThe judge never did anything to them
On December 2, Mike Espy was acquitted on all charges brought against him by independent counsel Donald gucci twirl ladies watch SmaltzSmaltz had followed Starrs playbook in the Espy investigation, spending more than $17 million and indicting everybody he could in an effort to force them to say something damaging against MikeThe jurys stinging rebuke made Smaltz and Starr the only two independent counsels ever to lose jury trials
A few days later, Hillary and I flew to Nashville for a memorial service for Al Gores father, Senator Albert Gore Sr who had died at ninety at his home in Carthage, TennesseeThe War Memorial Auditorium was full, with people from all walks of life who had come to pay their respects to a man whose Senate service included his role in building the interstate highway system, his refusal to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto in 1956, and his courageous opposition to the Vietnam WarI had admired Senator Gore since I was a young man, and always enjoyed the chances my association with Al gave me to be with himGore had campaigned hard for Al and me in 1992, and I got a big kick out of hearing the Senator give his old-fashioned stump speeches full of fire and brimstone
The music at the memorial service was moving, especially when we heard an old tape of Senator Gore as a rising young politician playing the fiddle in Constitution Hall in 1938Al delivered the eulogy, a loving and eloquent tribute to the father, the man, and the public servantAfter the service I told Hillary I wished everyone in America could have heard it
In mid-month, just as I miu miu bags was about to leave for Israel and Gaza to keep my commitments under the Wye River accord, the House Judiciary Committee voted, again along straight party lines, in favor of impeaching me for perjury in the deposition and the grand jury testimony, and for obstruction of justiceThey also passed a fourth count accusing me of giving false answers to their questionsIt was a truly bizarre proceedingChairman Hyde refused to set a standard for what constituted an impeachable offense, or to call any witnesses with direct knowledge of the matters in disputeHe took the position that a vote for impeachment was simply a vote to send the Starr report on to the Senate, which could determine whether the report was factually accurate and whether my removal from office was warranted
A bipartisan group of prosecutors told the committee that no normal prosecutor would charge me with perjury on the evidence in this case, and a panel of distinguished historians, including Arthur Schlesinger of City University of New York, CVann Woodward of Yale, and Sean Wilentz of Princeton, said that what I was alleged to have done did not meet the framers standard of impeachmentthat is, a high crime or misdemeanor committed in the exercise of executive powerThis had long been the accepted understanding, and their interpretation was backed up by an open letter to Congress signed by four hundred historiansFor example, in the Watergate case, the House Judiciary Committee voted cheapest replica speedy louis vuitton real leather against impeaching President Nixon for alleged income tax evasion because it had nothing to do with his performance in officeBut all this was entirely irrelevant to Hyde, to his equally hostile counsel, David Schippers, and to the right-wingers who controlled the House
Ever since the election, Tom DeLay and his staff had been firing up the right-wing networks to demand my impeachmentThe radio talk shows were pushing it hard, and moderates were beginning to hear from anti-Clinton activists in their home districtsThey were convinced they could get enough moderate members of Congress to forget about the popular opposition to impeachment by making them fear the retaliation of disappointed Clinton haters
In the context of this strategy, the Hyde committees vote against a censure resolution was as important as its votes for the impeachment articlesCensure was the preferred option of 75 percent of the American people; if a censure motion were to be presented to the House, the moderate Republicans would vote for it and impeachment would be deadHyde claimed that Congress didnt have the authority to censure the President; it was impeachment or nothingIn fact, Presidents Andrew Jackson and James Polk had both been censured by CongressThe censure resolution was voted down by the committee, again on a partisan voteThe full House would not be able to vote on what most Americans wantedNow it was just a question of how many moderate Republicans could be white paddington chloe bag persua |
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