Starr Had Offered McDougal Unusual Perjury Deal, Jury Told
The final witness in Susan McDougal’s trial testified Monday that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s office, in an effort to get McDougal to talk, offered to let someone else decide whether she should be charged with perjury.
Former Starr prosecutor Ray Jahn said that McDougal was told in 1996 that if there came a point when there was a question about whether she had committed perjury, the matter would be turned over to an independent prosecutor.
The offer did not do any good, Jahn testified in the fifth week of McDougal’s criminal contempt and obstruction trial.
McDougal went to jail rather than talk with Starr’s investigators, saying she was afraid she would be charged with perjury unless she told Starr’s office a story that implicated the president and first lady.
Jahn won convictions against McDougal, her ex-husband James, and then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker in a 1996 Whitewater trial.
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