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The Rule of Law & President Clinton

Opening Statement by U.S. Representative Bob Barr (GA-7)
Impeachment Debate
December 18, 1998

Members of the House, today our Constitution stands in harm's way. The rule of law in America is under fire. The rule of law about which our chairman, Mr. Henry Hyde, spoke so eloquently just a few short moments ago; the rule of law which finds its highest and best embodiment in the absolute, the unshakable right each one of us has to walk into a courtroom and demand the righting of a wrong.

As President John F. Kennedy so eloquently put it: ''Americans are free to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it; for a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent and powerful, no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law.''

If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men, by force or threat of force, could long defy the commands of our courts and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from its neighbors.

This, Mr. Speaker, is the fundamental American right which President William Jefferson Clinton tried to deny a fellow citizen.

How did he do it?

I direct the attention of every member of this body to the report of the Committee on the Judiciary to accompany H.Res. 611. I direct your specific attention to Article III, which lays out a case of obstruction of justice. Despite the fact that, in the ears of lay person, obstruction might conjure up a massive frontal assault, in the world of law -- and I know this as a former United States attorney, who directed the prosecution of a Republican member of this body for obstructing justice before a grand jury -- obstruction of justice is much more insidious, much more implied, much quieter, but nonetheless destructive of the rule of law in this country.

What is obstruction? And what was the pattern of obstruction in this case? I respectfully direct the attention of each member of this body to the United States Criminal Code, Title XVIII, to those several provisions which set forth the principle that no man, no citizen of this land, no visitor to this land, shall tamper with witnesses, seek to hide evidence in a case or seek to change, modify or prevent testimony.
Yet, there is in this report, and in the accompanying 60,000 pages of evidence to which Chairman Hyde alluded, evidence of a clear pattern of obstruction of justice in violation of Title 18 of the United States Code by this president.

Such things as making statements to his secretary after he gave sworn testimony in an effort, a very clear effort, with no other purpose than to influence the testimony of his secretary, who most assuredly would have been and was called as a grand jury witness.
Evidence such as the president calling and directing one of the most powerful attorneys in this city, Mr. Vernon Jordan, after it was found out that Monica Lewinsky would indeed be and had been subpoenaed as a witness to appear before the court, and directed that she be found a job.

Evidence such as the president, the commander in chief, as we have heard today, picking up a telephone at 2 a.m. in the morning -- not by coincidence -- the very day that he found out that Ms. Lewinsky was indeed a named witness and would be a witness in the court case of Paula Jones, and going over with her to reaffirm in her mind the stories -- the cover stories that they indeed had agreed to if just this calamity would befall them.

These, I submit to every member of this House, are obstruction. They are indeed a frontal assault on our Constitution. You have here today in Article III alone three legs of a stool, if I could borrow an analogy from the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. You have the Constitution, you have the United States Criminal Code as violated by this president, and you have the evidence.

They support a vote for Article III of impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton for obstructing justice in America.