Some GOP Senators Seen Breaking Ranks on Perjury

As senators prepare to cast one of the most momentous votes of their careers, enough Republicans are considering breaking ranks that one of the two charges against President Clinton--perjury--may be rejected by a bipartisan majority, GOP sources say.

That would be a rude slap in the face for the GOP prosecutors from the House, where the perjury charge once had been considered their case’s strongest element. It also could make it easier for Clinton to claim vindication when the impeachment trial against him comes to an end.

It has long been expected that neither the perjury or obstruction of justice charges would garner the two-thirds Senate majorities needed to convict and remove Clinton from office, largely because of the expectation that almost all of the Senate’s 45 Democrats would vote against both articles.

But as the vote nears Thursday or Friday, there is still considerable suspense about how individual GOP senators are going to vote on the two roll calls that could have as much impact on their own political futures as on the president’s.

Although senators have been reluctant to say how they will vote in advance, key Republicans are predicting that as many as 15 GOP senators may vote against the perjury charge.

“You might not even get a majority” on that charge, acknowledged Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).

“There are some serious concerns about whether [the charges] will rise to high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine).

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) said that Monday’s closing arguments by House prosecutors likely have some Republicans “rethinking” their reservations about the perjury charge. But, he said, it is “probably still true” that more have been persuaded by the case for obstruction of justice.

Hatch predicted that the obstruction charge would draw majority support. But a two-thirds vote is still considered far out of reach.

Some senators say that their decision on whether to vote to remove Clinton will be affected by broader concerns than the weight of the evidence.

“You can’t be trapped with this evidence alone,” said one senior Republican who asked not to be named. “You have to consider the role of this country in the world, in the international economy. There’s a lot that goes into the final decision.”

Adding to the pressure facing Republican senators is that no issue looms larger than impeachment for key elements of the GOP political base.

“Clearly, there is no issue that has greater resonance among grass-roots conservatives than the issue of impeachment,” said Marshall Wittmann, congressional affairs director at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “So if senators either split their verdict or vote against [both charges], they will have to do a lot of repair work with their Republican base.”

There is much at stake for the party as a whole, as well. The more Republicans who vote against one or both articles, the more it will empower Democrats to attack the legitimacy of the House Republican case against Clinton. Significant GOP defections “would demonstrate what a weak case Republican managers had to begin with,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

Senators will begin detailing their conclusions about the case today when they begin deliberations. Current rules call for each senator to get as much as 15 minutes to speak in closed session on the case. A motion is planned today to conduct the debate in public, but it faces an uphill fight to win the two-thirds majority required for passage.

One senior aide who has worked with GOP senators in the search for an exit strategy to the impeachment trial predicted that seven to 15 Republicans will vote against one or more articles of impeachment--an estimate echoed in a Sunday television interview by Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.).

If, as many Republicans now expect, the Senate gives more support to the obstruction of justice charge than to perjury, it would mark a reversal from the attitude toward the allegations in the House. There, the perjury charge was considered the easier charge to prove--in part because it was the easiest to explain to a public that, polls showed, was convinced Clinton had lied under oath. Indeed, at one point, House Republicans considered pushing perjury as the sole article of impeachment.

In the House’s Dec. 19 vote on impeachment, the perjury article passed, 228 to 206. The obstruction of justice article passed by a narrower margin, 221 to 212.

But in the Senate, Republicans have seemed less interested in whether Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky. Instead, they have focused on the evidence that he allegedly obstructed justice in seeking to conceal his affair. Also, the standard for conviction for perjury loomed as a problem, some said, because it demands insight into the intention of the accused that the House did not completely establish.

“Perjury is much tougher to prove,” said Snowe. “One thing I’ve learned is [that] there is a difference between making false and misleading statements and what constitutes perjury. They are not the same.”

Added Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), “When it comes to proving perjury, it seems to me that you have to prove intention. If you have a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, that is difficult to do.”

Other Republicans who have indicated that they did not think the perjury charge had been proved include Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Shelby.

Smith said after Monday’s arguments that he was reconsidering supporting the perjury charge but that the obstruction case is far more persuasive.

House managers implicitly shifted their focus away from the perjury charge when they decided, under pressure from an impatient Senate, to call only three witnesses. The three they called had more to do with elements of the obstruction charge.

* TOUGH CALL FOR SENATOR: Vote on whether to remove Clinton may have John McCain in a lose-lose situation. A14