Perjury Double Standard
Railed Against Perjury in Clinton Impeachment
In 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. One was for perjury, the other for obstruction of justice. Sen. Hutchison, like all members of that Senate, was to judge the President "guilty", or "not guilty".
At the time of the guilty verdict she voted for, she made this statement, which was entered into the Congressional Record on Feb. 12, 1999:
Lying is a moral wrong. Perjury is a lie told under oath that is legally wrong. To be illegal, the lie must be willfully told, must be believed to be untrue, and must relate to a material matter. Title 18, Section 1621 and 1623, U.S. Code.
There's not much wiggle room there, is there? And she sure seems to have the details down pat. She goes on to draw a parallel in Presidential honesty with the apocryphal story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, but with a sinister twist:
If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of 'lying,' but would not be guilty of 'perjury.'
If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be 'perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.
Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.
The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.
I'm not sure how this odd spin on Washington and the cherry tree, in which an innocent bystander is injured or killed, has much to do with President Clinton lying about an extramarital affair, but we'll take her at her word. And again, that word is clear: she considered perjury to be a very serious offense.
Dismissed Perjury as "Technicality"
Jump ahead to October 23, 2005, when Sen. Hutchison appeared on Meet The Press, hosted by Tim Russert. One of the subjects of discussion was special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the alleged revelation by senior members of the Bush Administration that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent. Rumors were circulating that Fitzgerald might bring charges of perjury and obstruction of justice against some of those top White House officials. When asked what she thought, Sen. Hutchison responded (emphasis added):
I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.
(See the full transcript, or watch a video clip of her response.)
What's that she said? A perjury charge is "some technicality", grasped at when they can't indict for any real crimes? That's certainly a different view than the one she lectured about in the Senate, back when it was her party on the attack.
Bottom Line
When the accused was a Democratic President, Sen. Hutchison railed against perjury as undermining the very foundations of our justice system. Remember, she said that ignoring perjury would "severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day." And that "the same standard should be imposed on our leaders." But later, when those accused leaders are top aides to a Republican Vice President, perjury suddenly stops threatening our legal standards, and instead becomes a charge that's little more than a loophole, a "gotcha" technicality, used to trip up otherwise innocent and well-meaning people.
It's one thing to be partisan in the political realm. Nobody expects Sen. Hutchison to campaign for Democrats or stop supporting Republicans. But in legal cases, whether they're impeachment proceedings or treason investigations, a Senator should operate at a higher level. She should rise above political grandstanding against political opponents. And she should also rise above being an apologist for political allies.
