Starr’s Report Charges That Clinton Abused Powers, Obstructed Justice

Countering President Clinton’s accusers, his lawyers argued Friday that “a private mistake does not amount to an impeachable action.”

In a 73-page preliminary rebuttal of the impeachment report sent to the House by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, the lawyers rejected the “flimsy and unsubstantiated basis” of Starr’s charges and dismissed the report as “nothing but the details of a private sexual relationship told in graphic details with the intent to embarrass.”

While his lawyers attacked Starr’s report, Clinton spent the day fighting for his presidency on a more emotional level. In a breakfast with religious leaders, he spoke of his “genuine repentance” and “broken spirit.” For the first time, he included Monica S. Lewinsky and her family in the list of people whose forgiveness he has sought.

Even while expressing contrition, the president said that he has instructed his lawyers to “mount a vigorous defense” and made clear his determination to remain in office.

For his part, Clinton hopes to make the case for keeping his job by doing it. He has a busy schedule of domestic travel and foreign visits in coming weeks, including stops next week in New York, Cincinnati and Boston for campaign fund-raisers that will test his political viability and policy speeches that will showcase his policy priorities.

There are two elements to the president’s defense. One is a point-by-point rebuttal to the charges and the other is the assertion that the president’s behavior, no matter how offensive it is to many Americans, does not constitute an impeachable offense.

“The salacious allegations in this referral are simply intended to humiliate, embarrass and politically damage the president,” David E. Kendall, the president’s personal attorney, told reporters at a news conference in the White House Roosevelt Room. “In short, this is personal and not impeachable.”

The lawyers made this case in their initial written rebuttal, which was prepared without seeing Starr’s report. They will expand on it in a more detailed report that responds to each of Starr’s 11 impeachment grounds, which White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said could be available as early as today. And the same line of defense is expected to be presented verbally to the House if Congress formally takes up the charges.

Arguing that Starr’s narration of lurid details was meant to do political rather than legal damage, McCurry said that “you won’t see anything on any of the salacious stuff” in the White House rebuttal.

White House officials expressed confidence that congressional leaders would give the president’s case a fair hearing.

“As we say where I come from, every pancake ever made has two sides,” Kendall said. “I think we will have a fair opportunity to present our side.”

In specific rebuttal to Starr’s charges, Kendall said Lewinsky’s own testimony confirms that Clinton did not tell her to lie. The president’s instructions to Betty Currie, his secretary, do not amount to tampering with a witness because she was not a witness in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment case, the only case Clinton knew about when he talked with Currie about his recollections of Lewinsky’s visits.

Kendall and White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff also flatly rejected Starr’s contention that Clinton abused his power by misusing his government attorneys and improperly asserting privileges.

“Let me be clear,” Kendall said. “No amount of gratuitous allegations about this relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, no matter how graphic, can alter the fact that the president did not commit perjury, he did not obstruct justice, he did not tamper with witnesses and he did not abuse the power of his office.”

Kendall argued that the question facing Congress is not whether the president acted wrongly, which he has admitted, but whether Starr’s case meets the test of the Founding Fathers’ concept of impeachment.

“The question is whether there is evidence here to countermand and override the judgment of the people of this country who not once, but twice have elected this man president of the United States,” Kendall said. “There are a lot of lurid allegations in the prosecutor’s referral but there is no credible evidence of impeachable offenses.”

White House officials said that their great hope is that the country and the Congress will not consider Starr’s report as “gospel.”

Instead, they hope they will be able to convince Congress and the public that Starr “dangerously overreached” in his four-year investigation of the president and particularly his eight-month inquiry into Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky.

“In this investigation, no stone has been left unturned--or [we believe] unthrown,” the White House lawyers said. “Therefore, it is important to distinguish between what the president has acknowledged and what the [office of independent counsel] merely alleges.”

The lawyers’ written response was distributed by the White House even before Starr’s report was made public and was based largely on allegations that the attorneys anticipated would be in the document and leaks about its contents in the news media.

Beginning one of the most peculiar days in the history of the presidency, Clinton surrounded himself with religious leaders from across the country and across the spectrum of religious faith and--on live nationwide television--declared: “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned.”

Wearing the half-moon reading glasses he rarely uses in public, Clinton read from notes he said he prepared by himself late Thursday night.

He acknowledged that the initial statement he delivered about his relationship with Lewinsky in a televised speech to the nation on Aug. 17 was not contrite enough.

“It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine. First, and most important, my family; also my friends; my staff; my Cabinet; Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness,” he said.

The president’s remarks were his most thorough admission of guilt and responsibility after several attempts at apologies that failed to satisfy both critics and supporters.

White House officials and people close to the president said that, over the last few weeks, the public pummeling from friends and allies as well as discussion with his family and introspection have brought about an inner change in the president.

“I believe that he is a different guy now than he was on the evening of Aug. 17th,” said one senior White House advisor who spends a great deal of time with the president. “He’s been dealing with this in a more profound and intense way. And that was reflected in the depth of what he said today.”

The president’s speech offered an emotional and visual complement to the legal language of his lawyers’ rebuttal and the highly embarrassing, even shocking, details in Starr’s report.

“And if my repentance is genuine and sustained and if I can maintain both a broken spirit and a strong heart, then good can come of this for our country as well as for me and my family,” Clinton said.

“Though I cannot move beyond or forget this--indeed, I must always keep it as a caution light in my life--it is very important that our nation move forward,” the president said.

Clinton prepared his remarks deep into the evening after what by all accounts was an emotional meeting late Thursday with his Cabinet.

Times staff writers Sam Fulwood III and Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.