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Jewish World Review/ Jan. 20, 1999/ 3 Shevat, 5759
Linda Chavez
Ken Starr as Mark Fuhrman?
(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) HAVING ALL BUT CONCEDED defeat in their efforts to block witnesses in the
impeachment trial, Senate Democrats are now hoping to turn the tables by
threatening to call Ken Starr to testify.
"Front and center is going to be Kenneth Starr. ... We're going to put the
system of justice on trial," warned Sen. Robert Torrecelli, D-N.J. It's the
O.J. Simpson trial redux, with the independent counsel cast as the Mark
Fuhrman of the impeachment proceedings. If neither the facts nor the law
favor acquittal, put the prosecution on trial -- the tactic is well known to
defense lawyers stuck representing guilty clients.
When Simpson's lawyers determined they couldn't win their case by refuting
the overwhelming physical evidence against their client, they decided to put
the Los Angeles police department on trial. Their most difficult challenge
was to explain how the victims' blood ended up on a glove recovered at O.J.
Simpson's residence and how a few drops of Simpson's blood were found at the
crime scene. If O.J. were indeed innocent, the only way the incriminating
blood evidence could have materialized is if it were planted.
The defense decided to put Mark Fuhrman on trial. If they could prove
Fuhrman was a racist, they might be able to persuade the jury he planted
evidence. As irrelevant as Fuhrman's racism was to O.J.'s guilt or
innocence, the tactic nonetheless worked and O.J. walked.
Apparently Democrats hope a similar strategy will allow Bill Clinton to
keep his job. They will try to make it appear as if Ken Starr entrapped the
president. Democrats would like to change the subject from Bill Clinton's
lying under oath and witness tampering to Ken Starr's investigation
techniques.
Ever since Clinton loyalist James Carville promised to wage war on the
president's opponents, Democrats have tried to destroy Starr. As both
Torrecelli and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have promised, Democrats will try
to use their time to attack Starr for prosecutorial abuse.
Of course, the administration already has the power to remove Starr if he
has engaged in any wrongdoing -- the attorney general can simply fire him.
If there were one iota of evidence that Starr had done anything improper as
independent prosecutor, she would have done so by now and saved the country
and her president the agony of the last year.
Firing the independent counsel, however, would force the attorney general
to offer the three-judge panel that appointed Starr real proof of his
alleged misbehavior. Since she lacks such proof, the White House will try
Starr by innuendo on the Senate floor instead.
But the strategy could backfire, as it did in the House Judiciary
Committee, when Democrats turned the impeachment hearings into an onslaught
against the independent counsel. The argument turned off most moderate
Republicans and a few conservative Democrats as well. It could be worse in
the Senate. While there may never be enough Democrat votes to remove
President Clinton from office, a mere four or five Democrat votes for
conviction would make it impossible for the White House to claim that the
proceedings were simply a partisan witch hunt.
The White House continues to treat impeachment as a public-relations
exercise. So long as the polls show the president remains popular, White
House lawyers believe they can engage in whatever legal shenanigans they
choose to get their client off.
But the U.S. Senate is not the O.J. jury. The White House would be
ill-advised to insult the intelligence and integrity of a Robert Byrd,
D-W.V., Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., or Bob
Kerry, D-Neb. But what these senators most want is an admission by the
president that he lied and encouraged others to do so and a strong case by
his lawyers that these offenses do not rise to the level of impeachable
crimes.
Ken Starr isn't on trial, the president is, and his lawyers had better not
try to fudge the
In other words, the defense had to make jurors believe a conspiracy existed
to frame O.J. Simpson for the murder of his estranged wife and an
acquaintance. But Simpson's lawyers needed a motive to make such a case
remotely plausible.
Starr
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