Trial Plan Emerges as a New Congress Opens in Turmoil

By JANET HOOK and EDWIN CHEN

Jan. 7, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WASHINGTON —

The 106th Congress convened Wednesday in utter turmoil, with an impeachment trial threatening to eclipse all other public business and a new House speaker struggling to get his sea legs on stormy political waters.

As the Senate prepared to start a trial today on whether to remove President Clinton from office, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) late Wednesday said that Republicans were near agreement on a compromise plan for holding a wide-ranging impeachment trial.

The proceeding will begin with one of the House prosecutors reading the articles of impeachment in the Senate chamber. Then U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will be sworn in as presiding officer, and he, in turn, will swear in the senators as jurors. If Democrats and Republicans have reached agreement on a trial plan before then, the Senate also may adopt a resolution establishing the new procedures.

The trial plan emerging Wednesday night, Lott said, would give both sides “a substantial amount of time” to make their case and would end with up-or-down votes on the two articles of impeachment, which charge Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his illicit relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Lott told reporters that the plan may allow both sides to call witnesses--but only if a majority of the Senate considers them relevant and votes to hear from them.

Democrats earlier Wednesday had expressed strong opposition to calling witnesses.

House Republicans who are preparing to argue the case before the Senate have drawn up a list of possible witnesses that includes Lewinsky as well as Clinton confidant Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and presidential secretary Betty Currie.

Lott said that he still needed to discuss the plan with top Senate Democrats and White House officials and that key elements had not yet been determined. “Nothing is written in stone,” he said.

Late Wednesday night, top White House officials arrived at the Capitol to discuss the trial plan with a small, bipartisan group of congressional leaders.

Representing Clinton were White House Counsel Charles F. C. Ruff, chief congressional liaison Larry Stein, Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Rochetti and Gregory Craig, his chief impeachment defender.

Lott did not say how long the trial will last but that he expects further trial proceedings on Monday--even if a procedural agreement has not been reached. He said he hopes it can wrap up by the end of January, “but it may take longer than that.”

Lawmakers Put in Holding Pattern

The emerging plan seemed to be a significant shift from an earlier proposal floated by Lott that would have allowed no witnesses, given each side only one day to present its case and could have cut off debate without a straight vote on the articles of impeachment. That proposal drew sharp criticism from within the GOP, especially among conservatives.

With the prospect of a full trial--possibly with witnesses appearing in the well of the august Senate chamber to discuss Clinton’s sex life--lawmakers opened the new session with a clear sense that Congress, especially the Senate, will be in a legislative holding pattern until the curtain drops on the impeachment drama.

“We must set aside our partisan instincts,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “Regrettably, we must also set aside--until this matter is resolved--important legislative work on matters like education, health care, Medicare and Social Security.”

But Lott vowed not to let impeachment prevent Senate committees from doing preliminary work on the GOP agenda for the year--including increased defense spending, reforming Social Security, education and the budget process and cutting taxes.

“We will do our best to get prepared for the regular legislative process while we do our duty on impeachment,” Lott said.

In the House, lawmakers’ first major act was to vote along party lines to elect J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) as speaker. Hastert, a little-known but well-liked former schoolteacher, tried to begin healing the wounds of partisanship that have riven the House and led to the resignation of one speaker, Newt Gingrich, and his designated successor, Bob Livingston, in less than two months.

“In the turbulent days behind us, debate on the merits [of a proposal] often gave way to personal attacks,” Hastert said in a short, sometimes folksy, speech on the House floor. “That is wrong and that will change.”

He promised that, in contrast to last year’s year-end budget stalemate, the House would pass all 13 appropriation bills by this summer. And he offfered an olive branch to Democrats: “I will meet you halfway--maybe more so on occasion.”

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) hit a similar note as he handed Hastert the gavel. “Let’s bury the hatchet,” he said.

But partisanship returned to the chamber almost immediately. Before the House voted along party lines to reauthorize the 13 House managers, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), to act as prosecutors when the impeachment goes to trial today, Democrats replayed their attack on the impeachment process.

“This is only to satisfy the hunger of the few people who wish to punish the president,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “I do not enjoy beginning on the divisive note of impeachment that consumed so much of the last Congress.”

Day Was Marked by Agonizing Moments

Both chambers began their sessions with the ritual of swearing in members. In the House, Democrats Sam Farr of Carmel and George Miller of Martinez missed the ceremony for health reasons and will be sworn in later in their home districts.

In the Senate, Vice President Al Gore presided over the ceremony--which included the swearing in of second-term Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

But the traditional pomp of opening-day festivities seemed almost an afterthought for senators, who spent much of the day in private meetings agonizing and strategizing over how to handle the impeachment trial.

Lott’s announcement that an agreement was near came after a day consumed by both parties meeting in closed-door sessions to discuss how to proceed. It marked the first time senators had met en masse since October, long before the House approved impeachment articles that many senators had hoped would never land on their desks.

Before senators returned to the Capitol this week, Lott had been floating a proposal authored by Sens. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) that would have permitted no witnesses, set one day for each side to present its case, then allowed a test vote to see if two-thirds of the Senate--the same number of votes needed to remove Clinton from office--thought the charges, if proved, justified his conviction.

The idea came under heavy criticism among Republicans, particularly from conservatives who said it gave short shrift to the Senate’s constitutional responsibilities to weigh evidence and deliberate. Wednesday’s discussions focused on how to modify the plan to make it more acceptable.

With the House managers continuing to press for witnesses, a consensus emerged among Republican senators that some witnesses would have to be called. The discussion then turned to how many would be needed.

“Most of our caucus wants the option held open for the House,” said conservative Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.). “We do have to show some respect for the House and what it has done.”

Witnesses Seen Adding Very Little

But many Democrats were adamantly opposed to calling witnesses, saying they would prolong the proceedings without adding new relevant information.

“They don’t add anything, they only demean the process, the Senate and the country,” said Boxer. “We all know all the details.”

The emerging trial plan would strike a middle ground, Lott indicated, by allowing witnesses only if their relevance is demonstrated.

“If either side wants witnesses, we have to consider that,” he said. But he added, “we have a legitimate obligation to say, OK, who and for what.”

Without a majority vote, he said, “no witness will be called or subpoenaed.”

Because Democrats hold 45 seats in the chamber, most senators generally assume that once the articles of impeachment come to a vote, there will be fewer than the 67 votes needed to remove Clinton from office.

However, some Democrats have indicated that they were not sure exactly how they would vote. Although he said it was unlikely, Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) said in an interview, “I still might vote to convict on one or both articles of impeachment.”

And Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) told a C-SPAN interviewer, “I could go either way based on the evidence as I’ve seen it or heard it, and I’ve followed it pretty closely.”

Byrd also had harsh words for Clinton in another television interview, criticizing him for holding a press conference with dozens of House Democrats that seemed more like a pep rally after the House voted to impeach him. “That was an egregious display of shameless arrogance,” said Byrd.

Times staff writers Marc Lacey, Richard A. Serrano and Art Pine contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GOP Looks to the Heartland

The top six Republican leaders in the new Congress all hail from either the South or Midwest.

1. Trent Lott, Senate majority leader (Pascagoula, Miss.)

2. Don Nickles, asst. majority leader (Ponca City, Okla.).

3. Connie Mack, Senate Republican conference chairman (Cape Coral, Fla.)

4. J. Dennis Hastert, House speaker (Yorkville, Ill.)

5. Dick Armey, House majority leader (Irving, Texas.)

6. Tom DeLay, House majority whip (Sugar Land, Texas.)

Live video coverage of the Senate impeachment trial begins at 7 a.m. today on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/scandal