House Judiciary panel Democrats used a long-sought Constitution Subcommittee hearing today to criticize the impeachment inquiry of President Clinton while panel Republicans invited expert witnesses who argued the facts of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report warrant further investigation.
Subcommittee Chairman Charles Canady, R-Fla., said Starr's report "clearly supports the conclusion that the president" perjured himself.
Canady began the hearing into the history of impeachment by saying there were "competing perspectives on the crucial issue of the scope of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.'" But noting the panel consisted of 19 experts divided equally between parties, Subcommittee ranking member Robert Scott, D-Va., said "the American public should not be fooled by this hearing's illusion that the constitutional experts are equally divided on whether the Starr allegations are impeachable."
Also today, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that says presidential confidant Bruce Lindsey and other White House lawyers cannot refuse to answer a federal grand jury's questions about possible criminal conduct by government officials.
Rejecting a White House appeal that stems from an investigation of the president's relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky, the court turned away arguments that the attorney- client privilege of confidentiality extends to a president's White House lawyers.
In a separate case, the court refused to shield Secret Service officers from having to testify to federal grand juries about information they learned while protecting the president. Both cases were rejected by 7-2 votes.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., attended the subpanel hearing but did not speak. Ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., said Starr had tried to invent a new type of impeachable offense, with "authoritarian privacy-invading questions about sex." Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said the cycle's midterm elections "sent us a clear ... message" that the public opposed the investigation, adding the hearing should have been held before the House voted for its impeachment inquiry Oct. 8.
Meanwhile, in an appearance today at the fall meeting of the political action committee GOPAC, House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bill McCollum, R-Fla., said he thinks "it is treading on thin ice" to say that only offenses Clinton may have committed in connection with his official duties as president could constitute impeachable offenses.
McCollum also said he still hopes the Judiciary panel will finish its work "in the next five weeks or so," report out articles of impeachment, and allow for "a short lame duck session" of the 105th Congress to vote on impeachment before the year's end.
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