Senate Rift Widens Over How to End Impeachment Trial

The Senate impeachment trial reconvenes today with House prosecutors facing long odds in their quest for live testimony and senators deeply divided over dueling plans that would chastise President Clinton without removing him from office.

First on the agenda for senators is whether to allow broadcast during the trial of the videotaped testimony provided in private this week by former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, presidential confidant Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal.

The last-ditch effort by the House prosecution team to gather new evidence that could sway senators ended Wednesday with a four-hour deposition of Blumenthal. Sources said that the presidential aide acknowledged Clinton had misled him in describing his relationship with Lewinsky but it seemed unlikely this type of disclosure would alter opinion in the Senate about the case.

With the proceeding now a month old and the Feb. 12 target date for completion nearing, senators anxiously are searching for a way to end it--although a large fissure has developed between the two parties’ approaches.

Under a Republican plan circulating Wednesday, the Senate would vote on “findings of fact”--essentially a determination that the House prosecutors had made their case that Clinton broke the law.

But the GOP plan, which requires a simple majority for passage, would not officially convict the president of perjury or obstruction of justice or recommend his ouster. A two-thirds majority is required for conviction on the impeachment charges and removal from office, or 67 votes in the 100-member Senate.

“William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided false and misleading testimony” to the grand jury about his affair with Lewinsky, states the one-page GOP draft.

Addressing the obstruction allegation, the document says that Clinton “engaged in a course of conduct designed to alter, delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence of evidence and testimony.”

GOP supporters of the findings, which could come up for a vote next week, want them approved as part of the impeachment trial. Although the plan is supported by many of the 55 Republican senators, a closed GOP caucus meeting Wednesday failed to resolve internal disagreements, including questions about constitutionality of the plan. And even some of the idea’s advocates conceded that it would need some Democratic support to be worth pursuing.

Democrats, meanwhile, are advocating a different approach: censure of Clinton’s conduct with no judgment on whether it violated the law. This proposal, long discussed within Congress, would be offered after an up-or-down vote on Clinton’s removal and the adjournment of the Senate trial.

Obstruction Charge Gets Major Focus

Amid senators’ search for an endgame, House prosecutors questioned Blumenthal in an effort to buttress the obstruction charge against the president. The House prosecutors allege that, in misleading Blumenthal and other aides, Clinton was obstructing the grand jury’s search for truth.

Blumenthal told the grand jury last year that Clinton had characterized Lewinsky as a “stalker” and that, while she wanted to have sex with him, he had rebuffed her advances.

During Wednesday’s questioning, Blumenthal confirmed that Clinton had told him this, sources said. And Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale) pressed Blumenthal to acknowledge that Clinton did not correct his false statements after Blumenthal was subpoenaed by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, the sources said.

Still, it is not expected that such admissions would cause most senators to conclude that Clinton should be expelled from office.

White House lawyers passed up the opportunity to cross-examine Blumenthal, a strategy that they used in the earlier depositions to drive home the point that, from their viewpoint, there were no developments to which they needed to respond.

After the questioning, Rogan said that he learned new information but refused to reveal details. Rogan pressed for live testimony, saying that Blumenthal’s account ought to be heard directly from the White House aide’s mouth by senators and the American people.

“This trial requires live witnesses,” Rogan said. “Because, if this were any other trial, without live testimony it would not stand the test of history.”

House managers met privately Wednesday to plan for today’s Senate session. They said they would recommend that Lewinsky, Jordan and Blumenthal all be called before the Senate.

But sentiment in the Senate appeared solidly against such a request. “I don’t think we need live testimony,” said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a party elder whose support would be essential for the witness motion to succeed.

Several senators said there was a greater likelihood that they would opt to release at least parts of the videotaped testimony of the three witnesses, which House prosecutors view as their fall-back position. Transcripts of the testimony are expected to be made public.

Senate Democrats and White House officials said that they will push for release of all of the videotapes or nothing.

“We’d be interested in excerpts we want to show and let the White House show excerpts they want to show,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the lead prosecutor.

Hyde said that prosecutors will not recommend calling witnesses outside of the three already deposed, even though his original witness list exceeded a dozen people. He said that he still holds out the hope that senators will back live testimony.

“I haven’t received a world of encouragement, but I’m ever hopeful,” Hyde said.

Some senators, however, wanted to prevent Hyde’s team from even showing the videotaped testimony, which the lawmakers and selected aides have been watching in secure viewing rooms this week.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said that he does not believe Lewinsky’s deposition adds anything to the case. “She will not be on the floor [of the Senate]. The tape will not be on the floor.”

At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and other GOP senators circulated a letter to Clinton urging him to voluntarily appear at a deposition.

“Your knowledge, intent, actions and omissions are central to the charges the House of Representatives have made against you,” the letter says. “Personal answers from you should prove beneficial in our efforts to reconcile conflicting testimony.”

Presidential aides dismissed the letter even before it arrived.

“I think we’ve made it very clear. The president has testified,” White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. “The time now is to find a way to bring this to an end, not extend it.”

He did, however, strike a more conciliatory tone in some of his comments.

Recognizing the growing concern among Republicans that an acquittal on the impeachment charges could be portrayed by the White House as a victory and exoneration, Lockhart said: “I now declare, in a post-impeachment era, this is a gloat-free zone.”

GOP Proposal Seen as Gimmick

To block the Republican finding-of-fact proposal, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said that Democrats might bog it down with “an array of amendments,” even as they also seek a speedy end to the trial.

Emerging from a closed caucus meeting in which they discussed the GOP approach, Democratic senators decried it as an unconstitutional gimmick designed to give political cover to Republicans who do not want to be on the record as voting to remove Clinton from office.

The Democratic rhetoric signaled that any finding-of-fact maneuver would close the trial on a distinctly partisan note--and thus would be likely to lack legitimacy among the American people.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said that the GOP plan “smacks of a gutless way of trying to get out of voting on the actual issue.”

“Any exit strategy that is entirely partisan is by definition going to be suspect,” said Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.).

That point was not lost on some Republican senators, who sought to win Democratic converts to the finding-of-fact idea and talked privately about abandoning the notion if it cleaves the Senate along party lines.

“It’s not what we’re trying to achieve--another party-line vote,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine).

Times staff writers Janet Hook, Edwin Chen, Art Pine, James Gerstenzang and Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.

Live video coverage of the Senate impeachment trial is set to begin today at 10 a.m. PST on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/impeach