believable, very sincere, and that was, of course, very different from the way the democrats had demonized him. of course, democrats were less impressed. ken starr s testimony, at the end of the day, was a nothing burger. if there was ever an opportunity to change the arc of that fall, that day was it. and he didn t accomplish it. judge starr was cross-examined by david kendall, president clinton s lawyer, and endured hour after hour of questions from committee members. democrats demanded to know why his referral focused only on lying about sex. it is clear to me that if this case, as it seems to be, and as it seems clear to me, is only about sex and lying about sex, that it will never be found impeachable by congress. nor should it be. they tried to turn the tables and shift the focus from the president to the independent counsel. we did get him to say many, many times, i don t recall. and part of the case that he
january 17 paula jones deposition and heard the misleading answers that brought him to this point. and i d like you to listen to the president s deceptions for yourself. at any time, have you and monica lewinsky ever been alone together in any room in the white house? i think i testified to that earlier. i think that there is a. it is. i have no specific recollection life was so much simpler before they found that dress, wasn t it? there were four articles of impeachment that were referred from the judiciary committee to the full house. the first two articles involved perjury in front of the grand jury and in the paula jones case. article iii charged the president with obstruction of justice by trying to conceal evidence, and article iv with abusing his office by lying to congress in his answers to the 81 questions. many in congress had still been hoping for some sort of an escape hatch from the looming
article iii is adopted. the adoption. at 1:22 p.m., by a party-line vote, the house approved articles of impeachment alleging perjury and obstruction of justice against president william jefferson clinton. for the first time since 1868, the president had been impeached. when the speaker brought down the gavel on article i with a majority of votes, it was a very quiet moment in the chamber. people were not applauding. people were not clapping. i think we were all very sober. a stunned congress and nation had just witnessed a day in washington unlike any other. it was a very, very serious and.and emotional day in many ways for a lot of people. and we were mesmerized by these events. you don t see a leader of the house of representatives go down on the same day a president is impeached very often. so, this was, you know, huge news. following the vote, president clinton addressed his supporters from the white house rose garden.
bite and the look on his face when he gave that answer. he was never going to explicitly answer some of the questions that we had for him because doing so would absolutely implicate him. nothing else summarizes quite so clearly the fact that this is a man who is lying and who is simply using wordsmithing to avoid saying the obvious. amazingly, after the tape s release, the president s approval ratings ticked up another notch. to republicans in congress, this was an ominous sign because a major decision was looming. on capitol hill, the house judiciary committee is expected to vote in two weeks on whether to start a formal impeachment inquiry. when you have a cold, stuff happens.
go to an impeachment proceeding. it was almost unanimous, this feeling that the public should have a right to see this. without conducting any formal review, in a bipartisan vote of 363 to 63, the house of representatives decided to publish the full report on the internet. if i d been a duly elected member of congress, i d have said, i ve got some reservations about that. it was only supposed to go a select group of people in congress. and it was supse bre people cout but they couldn t take it out. we had no inkling that there was going to be as much graphicness, and had we reviewed the report in advance, we would have seen judge starr s referral that said, you might want to take a look at this before you toss it out there in public. the 455-page report reads more like something you d find inpenthousemagazine than a grand-jury investigation. it is filled with explicit details about the president and monica lewinsky. the tawdry details played into the argument that