Articles of Impeachment of Bill Clinton

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Article I

The two Articles of Impeachment do not specify treason or bribery, the “high crimes and misdemeanors” identified in the U.S. Constitution. However, the Constitution recognizes “other high crimes and misdemeanors” without detailing what they might be. High crimes, as Richard Posner points out, may mean both serious crimes and those crimes committed by a high official. Misdemeanor, in the modern sense, would mean a minor crime, which clearly is not the intent of the Constitution's wording. Instead, misdemeanor has been construed to mean low crimes committed by high officials. The phrase high crimes and misdemeanors also suggests that impeachment arises out of complex illegal or unconstitutional actions.

Hence the formulation of Article I, which charges the president with violating his oath of office—meaning that he has violated the Constitution that he has sworn to uphold. By violating the Constitution, he has failed to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” For personal gain he has corrupted the judicial process and impeded the administration of justice. Two key words in the articles—“manipulated” and “exoneration”—are used to claim that the president has not put his country first but rather has used the mechanisms of the law for selfish purposes. This is what his fellow Democrats Dick Gephardt and Thomas A. Daschle (minority leader of the Senate) had in mind when they issued statements on September 16, 1998, urging President Clinton to abandon legalisms in his defense. Article I, then, is building a case that shows the president has used the tools of the legal system to undermine the legal system and, as a result, has committed an impeachable offense. Article I alleges that rather than preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution, the president subverted it.

The first specific charge in Article I is that Clinton lied to a grand jury. The language of the charge, however, accuses him of “one or more” false, misleading, and perjurious statements. In other words, Article I does not definitively call each statement a lie but rather groups together testimony that in the aggregate amounts to a conscious decision not to tell the truth. The “subordinate Government employee” referred to in (1) is Monica Lewinsky. In his grand jury testimony the president barely acknowledged his sexual relationship with her, although he would later confess to having misled the American people. That Lewinsky was a White House intern, a “subordinate,” implies that the president took advantage of her and thus abused his government office. In (2) and (3) Clinton is charged with lying about his affair with Gennifer Flowers. When he gave a deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit (the “civil rights action” accusing him of sexual harassment), he denied an affair with Flowers, but when questioned under oath by the grand jury investigating his relationship with Lewinsky, he admitted to having had sex with Flowers. By allowing his attorney in the Jones case to repeat to a federal judge false and misleading statements, Clinton had, in effect, committed perjury and perverted the course of justice.

The culminating charge in (4) is that the president lied or gave misleading testimony about tampering with grand jury witnesses and impeding the gathering of evidence that would have uncovered his unconstitutional and unlawful behavior. This charge refers specifically to Clinton's vague grand jury testimony about whether he gave Monica Lewinsky gifts and his subsequent efforts to retrieve those gifts with the help of his secretary. Lewinsky also had been in contact with the attorney Vernon Jordan, who had offered her a job and who was under suspicion of having advised her about her grand jury testimony. Clinton alluded to this suspicion when he made public statements denying that he had told anyone to lie about their dealings with him.

Article I is designed to move from quite specific accusations of perjurious testimony before a grand jury and a federal judge to a broader characterization of the president's actions after his grand jury testimony. The last charge, (4), is quite broad in its implications, which is perhaps why the language of Article I includes the phrase “one or more” to characterize the president's perjurious statements. Thus, the president has dealt with the grand jury in a “corrupt”—that is, dishonest and immoral—manner, a charge that leads to the conclusion that he “undermined the integrity of his office.” In other words, he has brought into disrepute one of the major institutions of government, the executive branch, and “betrayed his trust as President”—words that signify that he is both unworthy of the office and of the American people's confidence. Indeed, his actions have done “manifest injury” to the people of the United States. The word manifest implies that the president's crimes have been obvious and public and ought not to be regarded merely as private sins. Clinton would use the word himself later when he confessed, “I have sinned.” In this case, it was not the sin but the cover-up of his sin, leading to illegal and unconstitutional actions, that warranted his removal from office. Because he is president, sworn to uphold the law, his corrupt actions have subverted the “rule of law and justice.” His offenses, in other words, strike at the very core of government authority. Thus Article I concludes that President Clinton should be disqualified from holding any office “honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

Article II

Article II builds on the case in Article I (4), which is tantamount to accusing Clinton of obstruction of justice. Article II spells out that charge as another example of the way Clinton has violated his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Article II focuses on the president's “conduct,” a word used at the end of Article I to expand the case against him. He has impeded not merely grand jury investigations and Paula Jones's civil rights action but also the “administration of justice.” He has concealed evidence, covered up his crimes, and delayed legal actions that would expose his corrupt conduct. He has also engaged others in abetting his efforts to impede the course of justice.

Paralleling the language in Article I, Article II then specifies “one or more” of the president's actions that demonstrate his scheme to conceal the evidence brought against him in the civil rights action. That names are never mentioned in either article has the effect of making the impeachment charges less personal and more public, so that Clinton stands accused not of having lied about sex with a White House intern, for example, but rather of obstructing and perverting a “civil rights action.” The president's defenders wanted to make the distinction between lying about sexual affairs and other kinds of lies that might be deemed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Indeed, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from scholars objecting to the committee's effort to impeach Clinton on the basis of his misleading and false statements about his private conduct.

The first specific charges, (1) and (2), in Article II refer to a 2:00 am telephone call Clinton made to Lewinsky. He was concerned about gifts he had given to Lewinsky, and he encouraged her to say she visited the White House to see his secretary, Betty Currie. The president's discussion with Lewinsky about her testimony and his suggestions about how she should testify form the basis of the charge that he had encouraged a witness to provide false and misleading testimony in an affidavit or in person.

Charge (3) is directly linked to charges (1) and (2). It refers to Lewinsky's meeting with Clinton in the White House. The president gave her several Christmas presents, including a stuffed animal, chocolates, and a pair of joke sunglasses. That afternoon, the president's secretary contacted Lewinsky and later drove to her apartment and collected a box containing some of the gifts. Currie hid the box under her bed at home. Involving his secretary and hiding gifts are what this charge refers to as Clinton's scheming to “conceal evidence that had been subpoenaed in a Federal civil rights action brought against him.”

Charge (4) refers to contacts Lewinsky had with Vernon Jordan (contacts that are also alluded to in the last charge in Article 4), who responded to the president's request that Jordan find Lewinsky a job. Lewinsky and Jordan spoke several times on the phone, and he also met with her in person, not only to set up job interviews but also to discuss her relationship with Clinton. This close involvement of Clinton and Jordan in the job search of a White House intern is what led to the charge that the president was prejudicing the testimony of a witness in a civil rights action and thus corrupting a witness (Lewinsky) who could have given damaging testimony against him.

Charges (5) through (8) all center on Clinton's false and misleading statements not only about his own actions but also about those of others in order to obscure, obstruct, manipulate, and “corruptly influence” the testimony of others. In addition, he misled his own attorney, thus allowing his counsel to make “false and misleading statements to a Federal judge” (charge 5). The grand jury also received this false and misleading information.

The specific events alluded to in these charges include Clinton's statement in a deposition given in the Jones lawsuit. He denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky under a definition provided by her lawyers and said that he could not recall whether he had ever been alone with her. He also met with his secretary on January 18 and 20, 1998, and allegedly asked her leading questions designed to corroborate his version of events. At the second meeting he also went over with his secretary her testimony before the grand jury—another effort to tamper with a witness that is alluded to in charge (7).

The conclusion to Article II repeats word for word the conclusion of Article I: President Clinton has brought the presidency into disrepute, betrayed his trust as president, and subverted the rule of law and justice “to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.” He is thus disqualified not only to be president but also to hold any office of “honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich signed the Articles of Impeachment that were passed in the House on December 19, 1998, and he had his signature witnessed by Robert H. Carle, clerk of the House of Representatives.