The recent tragedy in Santa Barbara reopened the moribund debate about gun control. The argument around guns, their easy availability, the gun culture, the deaths caused by them in the USA - 30,000 a year, America leading the field by miles in this arena in the civilized world, the NRA’s cynical murderous rationalizations, the furore with each mass killing, the President, Democrats and anti - gun lobbies’ efforts going nowhere, are all old hat. Then of course, there is intense focus on the lone “nut”. Implicit in the latter discourse that this is yet another freak instance that could not be avoided or should have been avoided and or can never be repeated!. Not forgetting, that of course, the chant the gun nuts rely on in the end when opposition begins to heat up - “Obama wants to take away our guns”. One is almost surprised that each of these mini holocausts, like Santa Barbara, even make the national news.
Jay H. Ell has blogged again and again the sombre statistics on the havoc guns reek in our society so he won’t repeat them. (Blogs; “The Tuscan Massacre and American Culture - Can There Be a Solution?”, “Guns, Obama, the NRA, GOP = Stalemate” and “Obama vs NRA = Political Win for Obama.)”
EVEN THE DEATHS OF TOTS IN NEWTOWN LED NO WHERE IN GUN CONTROL
After the savage attack in Newtown, when 20 kindergarden children and six of their teachers were brutally and senselessly murdered, the President pledged his full weight for change of this bedlam. “Can we say we are doing enough?”, he asked creating task forces and the like. Yet within a few weeks of Newtown over a 1,000 more were dead from gun violence. Nearly all of these are not of the national news making types involving one or two of someone’s father, mother, daughter, son, husband or wife. Never - the - less to each family and circle of friends and acquaintances the death represents a devastating disaster. Every two years there is another Vietnam’s worth of carnage with no national memorials erected only exhortations from the NRA to buy more guns, presumably to protect yourself from suicide or in an argument to enable the wife to shoot the husband first….
A DISTRAUGHT FATHER IN SANTA BARBARA TELLS IT ALL
Mr. Martinez, a bereaved father of the Santa Barbara massacre, over the body of his slain son, tearfully exclaimed, “Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” he said. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this?” He responded to politicians who were sympathetic by telling them he didn’t want their sympathies he wanted action.
Mr. Martinez summed up in a few sentences the whole inexorable mess this country finds itself in a whole host of disparate issues from gun rights, to contraception, to taxation, to a minimum wage, to health care, to equal rights for women, immigration, the death penalty, paying twice as much for medicines made in America as in they do in Canada, to mention just a few of the “madnesses”. As he says, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this’.
FOLLOW THE MONEY NOT THE CARNAGE
What all these issues have in common are powerful pressure groups supporting them, inevitably these are associated with vast sums of money. Several of these like gun control, minimum wage and equal pay for women have 70% - 75% public support but the “craven irresponsible politicians” are not interested. (Remember the Republicans are banking on a low turn out of 40% in the November elections and don’t forget that 25% of the electorate are their base, who are in favor of “this madness”. (Blog: 2014: DEMS and GOP’S Conflicting Strategies). The situation has become immeasurably worse now that the whole country can be bought by a few miserable billion dollars by a few miserable plutocrats.
The only relatively good news is that some big money is now chasing change in gun laws. The billionaire former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg has already had some success backing candidates who do support reform over those who proudly wear the badge of the NRA. He has vowed to continue but has a long long long way to go. Former Congressman Gabby Gifford, herself a victim, is also on the stump with husband Astronaut Kelly and their circumstances and status have gained donations and interest. Jim Brady who was wounded with President Reagan in an assassination attempt has worked long and hard for reform. He was rewarded by the introduction of the Brady Handgun Prevention Hand Gun Act in 1993 that introduced the background checks that are so sadly easy to evade. Even the near death of Reagan the Republican icon did not influence the NRA. Jim and Sarah Brady will welcome this new found support in their quest “to stop this madness”:.
And one tiny ray of sunshine the House of Representatives with support of some Republicans added a paltry $20 million to help the States with their background checks in the wake of Santa Barbara. There are also attempts to improve the currently inadequate mental health system where they is simply a glaring paucity of services to meet the needs.
However, this will not do enough to stem the overall death rate from guns because although the high profile mass murders are often perpetrated by mentally ill patients the total deaths from these sick sordid senseless incidents represent a small percentage of the 30,000 deaths. But it will make a dent by cutting down the deaths from suicide for example.
PROBLEMS OF FIXING GUN CONTROL PIECEMEAL
What the public does not realize that there is either a quick fix to problems like gun control or the path to unravelling it is long and arduous. The quick fix would be for the “craven irresponsible politicians” to pass comprehensive legislation that would cover every aspect of gun control and provide the finance and infrastructure to do it. Also they would have to frame the legislation in such a manner that the current Supreme Court would not deem it unconstitutional to deprive citizens of their unfettered democratic right to buy AK47s to hunt!.
Otherwise the reformers have in addition to Federal Law, 50 States to contend with, who appear to be more concerned with, in the words of Mr. Martinez, “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live?”.
Let one take the State of California that have, to quote the NRA, the most “liberal” gun laws and they mean by “liberal”, strict. What could they have done to prevent the death of Mr. Martinez’s beloved son? In fact the police visited Mr. Rodgers, who perpetrated the Santa Barbara massacre, a short while before he committed these heinous crimes. It was a welfare check ignited by a worried family. The family had noted disturbing videos that he had put on U Tube relating to killings and suicide. Even if the police had found the guns they could have done nothing as Rodgers had never been committed to a psychiatric institution or had been reported to have been psychotic by a registered therapist. (Even if he had there is nowhere near the infrastructure available throughout the country to process these reports and then set about removing these guns).
Jay H. Ell was working in the ER one night when the Emergency Medical Services brought in a patient who had threatened to shoot himself. Everyone had got there in time but the police had no legal right to confiscate the gun! In earlier blogs Jay H. Ell outlined the technical and financial problems the provision of actually stopping those with mental disease who had manifested suicidal and or homicidal tendencies to not have weapons. Currently gun control is a sick joke. Even if you are not legally supposed to have one you can buy one at a gun show, for example.
The recent show of heavy weapons by the militia defending the rights of Cliven Bundy to defy the Federal Government is yet another example that the sale of guns has gotten out of control.
“CRAVEN IRRESPONSIBLE POLITICIANS” NEED TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM
Without going into too much detail the gun control issue requires a complete change of paradigm where the various legislatures regard the owning of a gun as a privilege rather than a right. Gun ownership should not be a right that allows one theoretically and in practice to commit wholesale murder. If this approach is not adopted the ongoing massacre of innocents akin to a war will continue. Unless there is a change gun rights advocates are going to continue trump “Chris’s right to live.”
The current interpretation by the Supreme Court, of the second amendment is incorrect, Jay H. Ell believes. It could not have been the intent of the Founding Fathers to give the unconditional right of all and sundry to bear muskets without interpreting that right without taking note of the conditional provision of being in the Militia. The Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”, then follows, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. This right was for the militia not all and sundry.
Thus what is needed is the registering of every gun in the USA and proof from those who have them that they are entitled to have them. The onus should not be on law enforcement that you should not have a gun rather the onus should be on the citizen as to why he or she is fit to have a gun. Then, even if the criteria that one can have a weapon are liberal, in the accepted sense of the word, the onus is on the individual to show proficiency and if necessary psychiatric proof that they are able to use it for the purpose it was intended and to store it safely. The penalty for having a gun without a permit and not having regular proficiency checks should be harsh.
All the rest is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Jay H. Ell is not to optimistic about any real change because at the end of the day the entrenched gun nuts and their “craven irresponsible politicians” will say, “You see Mr. Martinez, all Obama wants to do is to take away our guns. Just think that if your Chris would have had an AK47 he could have blasted Elliot Rodger off the face of the earth before he let loose………” .
Apparently three hundred million guns in the community aren’t enough for the NRA and their “craven irresponsible politician” backers who yearn for a rebirth of the Wild West where everyone needed guns and issues were resolved in a neighborly fashion with shoot outs. No need for big government rather settle problems locally.
TTEMPT?
Monica Lewinsky, after a 10 year absence, burst into the limelight with a piece in Vanity Fair. Most of the reviews were sympathetic to her plight and all of them mentioned that no-one mentioned Bill Clinton in this whole saga. Jay H. Ell was more even surprised that nobody mentioned that nobody mentioned Ken Starr whose over the top vindictive, malicious, unethical investigation had only one objective and that was to get rid of the powerful President Clinton. This he executed regardless of whose lives he ruined, chief among them being Monica Lewinsky. In his witch hunting no holds barred inquisition he spent tax payer money like a drunken sailor raking up an $80,000,000 tab.
Several commentators including, former Chief Justice Posner of the Seventh Circuit of Appeals stated that in his quest Starr wrongly conspired with Clinton haters. The Judge also questioned his methods. Judge Gerald Posner stated, “To conduct a sting operation against the President of the United States in concert with his partisan enemies is certainly questionable as a matter of sound enforcement policy. It is a potent argument against the independent council law without which such a scheme would be unthinkable”
All this adds up to “questionable and “unthinkable” tactics, including conducting a sting and an entrapment operation on the President, while conspiring with the President’s enemies to remove that President, elected by overwhelming popular vote and thereby changing the government of the day. In other words this could be akin to executing a de facto coup d’ etat. Attempting an overturn of government by “questionable and unthinkable” tactics under the cloak of law could technically amount to treason. Jay H. Ell contends that it could not have been the intent of the legislature, as broad as the act covering the Independent Council is, to allow illegal ploys to be part of his or her armamentarium. Short of physical torture and water boarding Starr broke every rule in the book.
As this is a very serious allegation Jay H. Ell makes no apology for the length of this blog in presenting the facts.
MONICA LEWINSKY’S RETURN TO THE PUBLIC ARENA
In truth there was nothing new in her lengthy opus but it’s very existence served to reopen one of the more sordid episodes in modern America history. She is understandably very aggrieved and bitter at the fate that befell her and that after all these years she feels that the stigma of the cause celebre has not allowed her to live an ordinary life.
As sympathetic as Jay H. Ell is to her plight he believes that this latest “expose” will not help her achieve what she ostensibly wants - normality. It would be churlish to question her after what she has been through for what, in the ordinary course of events would have been forgiven and forgotten years and years ago. For example, she could not expect empathy from the “aggrieved” wife Hillary Clinton who she takes to task for calling her a “loon”.
Jay H. Ell is also unsure what she expected feminists to have done to help her cause at the time. What they did do was not attack Clinton for political reasons. Megan Carpentier of the Guardian considers Ms Lewinsky the Hester Prynne of the Scarlett Letter, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of d’Urberville, the Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair and Flabbert’s Madame Bovary. All these fictional females reflect the double standards that women are subjected too in matters sexual. Similarly at the time of the “ Clinton scandal” disproportionate abuse was heaped on her behavior and less on Clinton’s sexual escapades per se. Clinton is now supposedly “forgiven” and society will not let her in. Implicit in that is that the double standard still exists and it sadly does. But Ms. Lewinsky is not without support as has been manifested in the media visual, auditory and in print and Clinton can hardly be blamed for redeeming himself.
She manifested powerful positive even heroic behavior in that vile period. Attributes, such as loyalty and refusing to snitch when under the most coercive threatening pressure that she would spend decades in jail if she did not cooperate, showed rare caliber and spunk. She endured tactics that hardened criminals have succumbed too.
One can only hope she finds what she is seeking, whether that be a high profile vocation and recognition for her very positive features or “normalcy”. Anyone who smears her today, and there are few if any that do, is very likely a hypocrite.
THE GENESIS OF IT ALL.
This was not an illicit love affair story of a woman scorned and a man rendered blameless, this was a saga of a group of people that were determined to get rid of a President or to so wound him to render him ineffectual. In retrospect it is hard to look it in any other way and although those involved may cry this was not their intent but rather the pursuit of justice, the facts speak otherwise. At best they should have known that they would be open to that accusation. Even if all the “officers of the court” involved in this maintain that the motive for their actions was not political they had a responsibility to note the political impact of their decisions. While each individual action and decision was rationalized and defended but in sum the irresistible conclusion is that “the target” literally and figuratively was Clinton as sure it was JFK in Dallas.
TIMELINE.
Allegations of impropriety against the Clintons
1993: It all started from the very beginning of the Clinton Presidency when there were repeated accusations in the Republican media and by their politicians that both Hillary and Bill Clinton were involved in an illegal land deal with their friends the McDougals in the 1980s in Arkansas. The whole episode became known as “Whitewater”. In addition to those accusations it was alleged that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster, a former law partner of Hillary, and who followed them to the White House. The alleged motive for the murder was that Foster new about the Clintons’ involvement in Whitewater. On its face to make these allegations about a 20 year old land deal and then imply that the Presidential couple murdered to cover it up is outrageous.
Clinton instructs Reno to appoint a Special Prosecutor.
The criticisms reached a fever pitch and an unprecedented hysteria. Bill Clinton took the drastic step of asking the Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint an independent council or special prosecutor to investigate these issues. Hillary had served as a junior council in the Nixon impeachment so the Clintons knew the wide powers such an office had. So they must have felt pretty secure that nothing related to the deal could harm them.
January 1994: Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske as Special prosecutor. He was a full time appointee in the Department of Justice and politically a “moderate” Republican. His mandate was wide in that he could investigate anything and everything that pertained to the Clintons’ possible involvement in Whitewater and Foster’s death.
Paula Jones and David Brock
May 1994: Paula Jones, with wide backing from anti Clinton forces, initiated a charge of sexual harassment against Clinton. The incident took place in 1991 and she claimed that the only reason she filed her case 2 days before the Statute of Limitations ran out was that an article on the matter was published by a David Brock in a conservative Newspaper, “The American Spectator”. David Brock subsequently admitted that he was part of a “right wing conspiracy” that was paid to get the Clintons. In 1998 in an article in Esquire he apologized to the Clintons. The article was entitled, “I was a Conservative Hit man”.
Throughout Jone’s litigation she was stage - managed by conservative operative Susan Carpenter Mc Millan. The Rutherford Institute a Conservative legal organization subsequently became Jones’s attorneys.
(In an article in Time of January 9, 2009 Jones stated that she had one regret that she was used as a political pawn by the “conservatives” out to get Clinton. She charged that the “conservatives” pressured her to refuse Clinton’s first offer of settlement. “It was their agenda to make it seem that I was trying to bring down the President”, complained Jones).
With Jones’s “regret” and David Brock’s “confession” there is direct evidence that a right - wing and or conservative person or persons unknown orchestrated and perpetuated the Paula Jones’s litigation in the midst of the special prosecutor’s investigation into Whitewater.
Special Prosecutor Fiske exonerates Clinton and is fired by Special Court
June 1994: Special Prosecutor Robert Fiske produced a preliminary report exonerating the Clintons from any involvement in the Whitewater scandal, the death of Vince Foster and related “scandals”
August 1994: Due to changes in the Statutes the manner in which the Special Prosecutor/Independent Council was to be reappointed was no longer at the discretion of the Attorney General but rather by a panel of three judges to be chosen by Chief Justice Rehnquist of the Supreme Court. ( For the record Rehnquist was an unashamed Republican conservative who inter alia abstained in the unanimous decision that Nixon produce the infamous tapes). He appointed as head of the panel Judge David Sentelle, a Reagan appointee. The latter had replaced Antonin Scalia on the DC Court of Appeals. Up to then Sentelle had only gained attention by overturning the convictions of Iran Contra participants Oliver North and John Pointdexter on the technical argument that their fifth amendment rights had been violated.
Sentelle’s panel took the extraordinary decision to replace Special Prosecutor Fiske, who was the Attorney General’s recommendation to continue his mandate. By all logic this was a bizarre ruling. Fiske had already investigated for 6 months and had issued an exculpatory preliminary report and had to be close to concluding the investigation. What would be the legal reason to appoint another jurist to the post failing impropriety by the initial investigator? On what basis did they believe that Starr would do a more thorough job than had already been done? They defied reason and ignored the AG’s recommendation and appointed the controversial Kenneth Starr.
1994- 1997:Starr the newly appointed Independent Council and Richard Mellon Skaife
The appointment of Starr was bound to raise eyebrows. He was granted the right to be the independent council, (special prosecutor), part time and to continue with his lucrative private practice. He was not regarded as a “moderate” Republican having been George Walker Bush’s Solicitor General and shown where he stood politically. This in addition to substantial ties with the Republican establishment. His firm was involved in litigation related to “Whitewater” which stood to gain if the Clintons were found to be involved.
The biggest concern was Starr’s ties to Richard Mellon Skaife. The latter was a billionaire who used his money for political purposes. He was the founder and the financier of the “Arkansas Project”. The latter was founded to investigate Bill Clinton’s past business and personal affairs. The principle objectives of the Arkansas Project were to investigate the death of Vince Foster, the Whitewater Affair and support Paula Jone’s sexual harassment charges against Clinton. (This mandate turned out to be exactly the same as Ken Starr’s Office of the Independent Council, (OIC).)
One of the first employees of the Arkansas Project was the self same David Brock who wrote the piece in “The American Spectator” precipitating the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Needless to say Skaife poured money into “The American Spectator” as well. He only stopped financing that newspaper when they attacked a book written by one of the Arkansas Project’s “hit men” that maintained Vince Foster was murdered.
Skaife endowed a new School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and in 1996 Starr accepted the first appointment as its Dean. This entailed Starr resigning as the Independent Council which he did but the furore that this created by the right wing forced him to retract. However, this whole interlude served to make two points:
1. Skaife who was spending millions on the same agenda as Starr just happened to spend more millions creating a Department at Pepperdine University that Starr just happened to want and the University just happened to agree to appoint him. As anyone who is involved with Universities, their Foundations and appointments of Deans knows, these circumstances just don’t happen. The irresistible conclusion was that there had to be collusion and discussion between these three parties or their representatives. In February 1997 Starr formerly took back his resignation and declined Pepperdine’s offer.
2. As the top priority of both these individuals was to get the target Clinton the fact was that as late as February 1997 Starr was getting nowhere.
The final cause for concern in relation to Starr’s ethical position, even at the early stages, was that it is not denied that he gave Jones’s lawyers an opinion that had to have influenced their decision to go as far as the Supreme Court to win the right to sue a sitting President on a matter not relating to his Presidency. This has to be the height of conflict of interest colluding with a Plaintiff in a case against the President who you have been empowered to objectively investigate!
Don’t officers of the court also take oaths? And if they do it would appear, on its face, that Starr violated his.
Furthermore as this piece progresses there will be other events that had to indicate collusion and cooperation between the Office of the Independent Council and Paula Jones lawyers, whose whole case was inspired and conducted by money from Starr’s patron Skaife and other Clinton hate groups as Paula Jones herself has verified.
1994 - 1998.Starr, Clinton,Lewinsky,Tripp and Jones.
Jones: In December 1994 Judge Wright threw out the Jones case in a summary judgement saying she had suffered no damages. In January 1996 the Appeals Court allowed the trial to go forward and their decision was ratified by the Supreme Court on May 27, 1997.
Starr: Since his appointment the Independent Council had been spinning his wheels going nowhere. It took him till February 1997 to confirm what Fiske had reported on June 1994 that Vince Foster had committed suicide. In his fishing expedition Starr had gained permission, from the three Judges, that had appointed him, to investigate the firing of the WhiteHouse travel personnel, potential abuse of confidential FBI files, Maddison Guarantee Saving and Loan and Hillary Clinton’s former law firm, Rose Law Firm. The fact that he had wanted out and had resigned and was pressured to come back is indicative that he was tired of finding nothing.
Lewinsky and Clinton: On November 15,1995 at a WhiteHouse party the intern Monica Lewinsky showed Clinton the thongs of her underwear and Clinton invited her back into the Oval Office and they started a sexual relationship that would rock the world. Both of them made decisions that they now profoundly regret. Between then and March 1997 they would have nine sexual encounters, none of which involved vaginal intercourse, when the relationship was finally ended.
Attempts were made to find Lewinsky a job ultimately in the private world by Vernon Jordan, Clinton’s close friend acting as the go between. These efforts started as early as mid 1996 after Ms. Lewinsky was transferred from the WhiteHouse to the Pentagon. Her desire was to be in the WhiteHouse. These efforts continued up until the time of the Clinton deposition in the Jones sexual harassment case.
Lewinsky and Tripp: Lewinsky, who regarded Tripp as a close confidant and friend, told her of her unrequited love of the President and their affair. From September 1997 Tripp taped the conversations between them. She also persuaded Monica not to destroy her blue dress with Clinton’s semen on it. Tripp in many ways is a mysterious figure. She just happened to know everything that went on in Clinton’s WhiteHouse till she was transferred. Not only did she get the “goods” on Lewinsky she just happened to be outside the Oval Office when Kathleen Wiley exited and claimed that Wiley was in a disheveled state thereby being the sole witness to corroborate Wiley’s story that she had been sexually assaulted by Clinton. She then gave several stories as to why she taped Lewinsky and told her to not have her semen stained blue dress dry cleaned. She variously said she did this for own, Linda Tripp’s, protection. Then she told Lewinsky to her to keep the dress for her own, Lewinsky’s, protection and finally she claimed that she was told to do it all by Conservative operative Jonas Goldberg.
In October 1997, Jones’s lawyers Rutherford Foundation received anonymous phone calls about a possible affair between Lewinsky and Clinton. At the same time Tripp met with Michael Essekow of Newsweek accompanied by conservative operatives Jonas Goldberg and his mother to discuss the tapes. The Jones lawyers would have needed much more than anonymous phone calls to attack the President of the United States in his deposition. There had to have been intense consultation between Tripp and them. Tripp was subpoenaed by them a month later. How and why?
Jones, Tripp, Starr, Lewinsky and Clinton: On November 24, 1997 Tripp is subpoenaed in the Jones case. Clinton receives subpoena for documents relating to his Lewinsky relationship and Lewinsky receives a subpoena. Up to the beginning of January 2008 Clinton and Lewinsky collude as to their stories. Lewinsky prepares a statement denying an affair with the President.
On January 16,1998 Starr gets permission, within a day of asking, to expand his Mandate so that he can investigate the Lewinsky affair. (He apparently had received the tapes 4 days earlier).The same day Linda Tripp lures Monica Lewinsky into a trap where she is confronted by several FBI agents.
On January 17,1998 Clinton is set a perjury trap in his deposition in the Jones case and denies “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky. The traps set for both Lewinsky and Clinton one by Starr and the other by Jones’s lawyers confirm the ongoing collusion between the two sets of lawyers. Particularly when the Starr’s investigators made it impossible for Lewinsky to warn Clinton.
STARR UNLEASHED
The events of the 16th and 17th January 1988 unleashed one of the most vicious, comprehensive, vindictive investigations ever undertaken by a Prosecutor in such a circumstance. At kindest it was prosecutorial misconduct and at worst it was an outright attempt to remove a President from Office under the flimsiest of legal pretenses while improperly colluding with lawyers and backers who unashamedly had the same political intent. Some of these same backers that already had spent millions in funding in what could have resulted in a prestigious University position for Starr.
Eighty million dollars of tax payer money was spent to pursue a lie told by Clinton. A lie told by Clinton as a result of an entrapment set up by Starr. Starr had finally hit pay dirt. After three years hanging around he finally had something on the Clintons.
Robert W. Gordon a distinguished academic jurist at Yale writing in the Yale Law Faculty Scholarship Series in an a legalistic treatise entitled, “Imprudence and Partisanship: Starr’s OIC and the Clinton - Lewinsky Affair”, stated:
“ Starr and his mercenaries ran wild like mercenary gunmen, who hired to keep order, were shooting up the town”
THE CRIME OF PERJURY
Starr’s whole referral to the House of Representatives for impeachment flowed from one belief and one belief only that Clinton lied in the Jones deposition and that lie constituted perjury.
It was Starr’s assumption that Clinton by lying committed perjury. However, even a first year law student would know that for perjury to be significant it has to be material. By that it is meant it has to be relevant. The lie had to pertinent to the legal action in question. It was not material to the Paula Jones case. Paula Jones was suing for sexual harassment and whatever happened between Lewinsky and Clinton was consensual. Starr himself thought so because he later asked that Clinton’s deposition be removed from the Paula Jones case. Even he would not have had the audacity to do so and be seen to so openly using Paula Jones to the extent that she could not win her case. Judge Wright overseeing the Jones case agreed. In fact she once again threw the whole case out on April 1,1998. The irresistible inference again is that this whole deposition was political and the lawyers must have known that too.
Put another way the deposition in the Jones case which occurred as a result of collusion between Starr and lawyers who were paid by backers out to get Clinton was only of use to Starr .
The argument that Clinton lied or not is thus irrelevant in a legal sense. He maintained that he didn’t lie because there was no vaginal sex and that was Lewinsky’s impression of the liaison too as heard on the Linda Tripp’s tapes. There is even an argument that Clinton could have knowingly lied as he knew it was not material to the case.
Again put another way why would one expect Clinton to admit to a consensual sex affair in a case where he was being accused of sexual harassment? Starr in his entrapment of Clinton knew this but he would magnify Clinton’s response and turn into grounds for impeachment.
So Clinton did not commit material perjury.
As Robert Gordon, in the seminal legal argument on Starr’s biased behavior, points out there was material perjury in the Jones Case committed by Paula Jones. She maintained that she had suffered adverse consequences as a result of Clinton’s alleged advances. This was a material lie as it was the basis of her claim. In fact she had received merit pay and promotions. Why did the zealous prosecutor not suggest her prosecution?
OBLIGATION TO WARN CLINTON THAT HE COULD COMMIT PERJURY
According to several legal authorities Starr had an obligation to inform Clinton prior to his deposition in the Jones case of Lewinsky’s testimony. Starr “officially” knew of Tripp’s tapes 5 days before his deposition in the Jones litigation. Not only did Starr not warn him he deliberately set a perjury trap for him. It is not the duty of a prosecutor to entrap individuals and be the cause of a crime. Their duty is to prevent crime. Senior Federal Appeal Judge and author of several books on Jurisprudence, Judge Gerald Posner stated, “To conduct a sting operation against the President of the United States in concert with his partisan enemies is certainly questionable”.
This is a devastating indictment against Starr. The fact that the unbridled power of the OIC allowed him to employ problematic tactics does not exonerate his unethical behavior. The fact that one can get away with murder is no reason to execute it. If anything one would expect a distinguished and respected jurist to be mindful not to overstep the bounds of common practice. Instead he acted like a thug. And January 16th and 17th was the beginning of a journey into behavior more akin to a “legal’ process in a totalitarian state.
As Posner added, “We expect better from our prosecutors - they are not supposed to hate their guy”.
“IMPRUDENCE” IN PROSECUTION.
Even if Starr really believed that Clinton had committed material perjury Robert Gordon argues that he violated the ethical standards and obligations of “prudence”. The latter applies to prosecutors instituting prosecutions for relatively minor abrogations of the law. This especially so when the pursuing of the minor abrogation is outweighed by the fact that it might prejudice or waste time of the judge. Starr really agreed with that otherwise he would not have applied to have Clinton’s deposition removed from the Jone’s litigation.
Gordon maintains that the “crime” Clinton may have committed was of a lesser order than someone claiming a full reduction of a business luncheon when sometime was spent on non - business discussion.
Starr was unwilling to commit himself to the House Judiciary Committee that the facts that he had submitted to them would warrant criminal prosecution. So it is obvious that Starr at some level agreed that prosecuting Clinton criminally for perjury would violate ethical standards and obligations of imprudence and would not necessarily result in conviction.
STARR’S REFERRAL FOR IMPEACHMENT.
The bar for impeachment of a President is extremely high. The standard required is that the President should have committed “Treason, Bribery, High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Historically there are only three occasions where this has even reached the House Judiciary Committee. The 17th President of the United States Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868. This has been widely acknowledged as a political action by historians and a battle between the more moderate and radical Republicans. He was acquitted by the Senate. Richard Millhaus Nixon avoided impeachment after a bipartisan vote in the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach him. He was approached by the Republican House and Senate leaders as well as Barry Goldwater who “persuaded” him to resign. The third occasion was Starr’s referral to the Congress to impeach William Jefferson Clinton.
The blatant partisanship of Starr’s decision was made all the worse by the fact that there was no onus of the OIC to make a referral for impeachment. Starr made this decision and created 11 counts on the basis of a “lie” told by Clinton that even he admitted he was unsure that his argument would warrant criminal prosecution. In that conclusion Starr was ad idem with all the serious jurists who thought the crime, if it was one, didn’t warrant prosecution. Starr however ostensibly believed that this was serious enough to unseat a branch of government!
STARR THE PORNOGRAPHER.
The graphic detail that Starr described the sexual encounters that Clinton had with Lewinsky raised more than a few eyebrows. If this had nothing to do with sex but rather perjury ,obstruction of justice and abuse of power, Starr’s referral had far more to do with sex than it had to do with perjury. He chronicled in sordid detail each of the encounters. This included the oral sex, the oral anal sex, the notorious cigar incident where Monica reported that Clinton put a cigar in her vagina and stated that it tasted good, Monica’s orgasms and Clinton masturbating into the sink. He could have merely stated in clinical terms, even if that was necessary, that according to Lewinsky sexual encounters took place and in the event of Clinton denial he had semen on Lewinsky’s dress.
This compelling detail added nothing to what case Starr had and can only be interpreted to make Clinton look bad. Whether or not this was disgusting, and even the most ardent Clinton supporter cringed at these gratuitous revelations, it was irrelevant. Starr by putting this in a report available to all and sundry became a pornographer - a purveyor of filth.
Megan Carpienter of the Guardian makes the point that he became the Hunter Moore of her generation. Hunter Moore was facing jail time for revealing the private details of the intimate detail of the sex lives of individuals on the internet. Carpentier maintains that Starr acted like a revenge porn king and did this for the titillation of the public. She is being generous to Starr. Starr believed it would strengthen his political case even though he maintained it had nothing to do with his legal case. But it had everything to do with Clinton and if Lewinsky’s life would be ruined in the process so what. In the words of Judge Posner Starr hated Clinton.
THE “INVESTIGATION” - A SERIES OF VINDICTIVE PROSECUTIONS
Starr then unleashed an investigation the likes of which have never been seen for what at worst was a minor misdemeanor. Parts of it were linked to Whitewater but the central issue was finding corroboration of sexual misconduct by Clinton. By his own argument and accepted throughout the impeachment process this had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with perjury, abuse of power and obstruction of justice tra la la. But Starr maintained his disconnect from the word go.
It would be seen that several of his behaviors were intimidating in so far as they were seen to be directed against those critical of the OIC or even questioning it. A “concerned” citizen who believed that Linda Tripp should be investigated in Maryland for illegally recording Lewinsky received visitations from the FBI of his troubles. (Starr had, "fortunately" for Tripp, given her immunity for this breach of the law).
He set up an Arkansas grand jury that deliberated for 30 months and whose seminal achievement was to indict Susan McDougal twice for civil and then criminal contempt.
Webster Hubell
Jay H. Ell will not go into detail about the depths Starr sunk to find something, anything on the Clintons regarding Whitewater as this piece is about Starr’s egregious malfiscience and partisanship related to the sexual topics in his investigation. However his persecution of Webster Hubell, a former partner of Hillary Clinton’s law firm whom he prosecuted three times, once illegally and unethically using data provided by Hubell to him in a plea bargain, cannot pass by unnoticed. In one case that he pursued Hubell to the Supreme Court where he afforded the latter to have one of their rare 8 - 1 decisions, against him. Although Hubell went to prison on an unrelated account he never provided the information that Starr sought from him and never for one moment did it cross Starr’s fettered mind that there was nothing to find.
Jim McDougal
Jim McDougal a former partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater venture was jailed for numerous felonies in the process of being investigated. McDougal received a lesser sentence at Starr’s behest in return for cooperating with the OIC. McDougal apparently did this, according to his ex wife, Susan McDougal because the Clintons wouldn’t help them. Needless to say Starr could obtain nothing on the Clinton’s from McDougal. Ms. McDougal blamed Starr directly for his subsequent death, saying he lay in his cell dying begging Starr to get him his medicines.
So much a for a smattering of Starr’s investigation into matters not sexual. Even after Starr quitted his post after 5 years he had not finalized his Whitewater report and reached the conclusion that Fiske had in 6 months.
PRESSURE ON THE LADIES.
It is known that Starr scoured Arkansas for corroborating witnesses to Lewinsky’s experience. He needed women in the work place. Gennifer Flowers was not much use to him. Why he needed women in the work place for his Whitewater and his misguided Lewinsky investigation could only to be help Paula Jones and her anti Clinton backers in their litigation because remember this had nothing to do with sex but perjury, abuse of power, obstruction of justice tra la la.
Julie Hyatt Steele and Kathleen Wiley
Ms. Steele was approached by Kathleen Wiley who maintained that the President had sexually assaulted her in the Oval Office. Ms. Wiley asked Ms Steele some time afterwards to state that she had told her immediately after it happened. Initially Ms. Steele agreed to help her friend but realizing the enormity of the situation and the evidence that was emerging to make Ms. Wiley’s story improbable, she retracted and said Ms. Wiley had told her nothing of the sort. Ms. Steele never gave this evidence under oath and this was a to and fro with the media.
Starr as was his wont started harassing Steele. She was brought before the Grand Jury and stuck to her story that Wiley had asked her to perjure herself. Starr started investigating the circumstances of Steele’s adoption of her Rumanian child. Steele hit back criticizing Starr. For her pains she was charged by Starr for perjury and obstruction of justice. This all because she disagreed with Wiley’s story. According to the Boston Post, Starr’s star witness, Harolyn Cardozo, whom Wiley also contacted after the alleged assault, said that Wiley sounded pleased about being with the President and hoped to have an affair with him. Starr then, allegedly tried to dig up dirt about Cardozo’s father. In the end Cardozo was dropped as a prosecution witness.
(Interestingly enough Linda Tripp’s fortuitous first hand experience with Wiley appeared not to have been very persuasive).
Julie Hyatt Steele was acquitted and Kathleen Wiley proved to be, at kindest, an unreliable witness
Susan McDougal.
Susan McDougal refused to answer any questions put to her by Starr. She stated that if she didn’t answer the way Starr wanted her too she would be charged for perjury like Julie Hyatt Steele. She told the grand jury that she would answer all questions to any other prosecutor other than Starr. McDougal claimed that Starr’s interrogators told her that they could get Clinton on a sex charge if she agreed to admit to having had an affair with him.
McDougal was sent to jail for civil contempt for 18 months, 8 months of which was spent in solitary confinement. On her release, Starr obviously angered by McDougal’s persistent unwillingness to risk perjury, then recharged her this time for criminal contempt. This charge was so outrageous under the circumstances that the jury opted for a rare verdict called “nullification”. The latter is a circumstance where the jury believe the defendant is guilty as charged but because the law is so unjust they discharge the accused.
Monica Lewinsky and the set up.
Of all the egregious behavior committed by the OIC in their pursuit of Clinton, the treatment meted out to Ms.Lewinsky has to be the most horrendous because of not only the deceit, lies and deception involved because this was to be the lynch pin that Starr would entrap the President. As Starr had failed in every other endeavor that he had been mandated to investigate he would base an impeachment argument on offenses that he set about creating.
Impeachment had to be his objective as why otherwise would he do this? Why too would he make a referral that he was not constitutionally mandated to do on a matter that had nothing to do with his original investigation? Why would he behave in the fashion he did and would continue to do if this was not his intent?
Starr acted in a conspiratorial manner. He obtained permission from the three Judge Panel, that originally had appointed him, to investigate the Lewinsky matter and almost immediately he put a sting on Monica Lewinsky with the aid of the ever helpful Linda Tripp. The sting was timed on January 16,1998 the day before Clinton was to be deposed in the Paula Jones case. Lewinsky would not be able to tip the President off as she had not time.
Starr thus colluded to this degree with the acknowledged enemies of Clinton. The Jones lawyers would give him the goods to get Clinton. In Jones’s own words. It was the conservative lawyers who used her to get at the President.
So Tripp set up a meeting with Lewinsky who was immediately confronted by 6 deputy prosecutors. Their first illegal act, was to meet with a target that has a lawyer in this matter with her lawyer not being present and talk to the client directly. This basic precept was exacerbated by their stalling of her to prevent her calling until his office was already shut. She was threatened with 27 years in prison if she did not cooperate. Had she called her lawyer she could have prevented her perjurious statement being submitted. They harassed her for 11 hours and scoffed at her when she wanted to call her mother. They said she would get immunity if she would wear a wire and spy on the President. It speaks volumes to her strength of character of this confused young lady, who had just been betrayed by her best friend, that she hung in there as the Starr gang trampled all over rights and threatened her a life time in prison.
Later that year Starr had her testify to the grand jury for two full days going over each and every sexual encounter in minute detail.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE.
In Robert Gordon’s scholarly treatise he maintained that a prosecutor had a responsibility, in pursuing a crime, using major weapons, to ensure the crime was serious enough to justify the collateral damage that his investigation would cause. Needless to say Starr took no note of that. He entrapped Clinton into committing a minor crime and then pursued him and anyone in radius without regard to their rights as if he was investigating Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 mastermind. The costs were not only emotional and carried baggage for the victims, everyone that Starr’s band picked on needed lawyers that don’t come cheap.
As outlined by Gordon, Starr subpoenaed Clintons’ lawyers and family members of targets to put pressure on children, reporters to rat on their sources, forced secret service officers to reveal personal lives and subpoenaed ex lovers of Lewinsky to learn what she had told them. He stooped low enough to extract Lewinsky’s psychiatric records from her computer and threatened to try Lewinsky’s mother for an unrelated crime. In addition to scouring fruitlessly for Clinton affairs in Arkansas he attempted to find out if Hillary had had an affair with Vince Foster. He threatened witnesses with imprisonment and financial ruin peering into their sexual lives. No snooping was below Starr as he subpoenaed bookstores and libraries to check out reading material.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW
Paula Jones according Time is happily bringing up her children while Linda Tripp has married and Jay H. Ell is sure is no longer “Tripp” and apparently she had a facelift. Monica has obviously taken a decision to redeem herself in the public eye. To do so she has to realize, if she finds a vocation, such as a non profit organization, people may gawk in the beginning but before long she will be accepted for what she is. She has to believe that she is the one that has to throw away the beret and the blue stained dress and come to terms with the fact that she needs to put this behind her not everyone else.
As for Bill Clinton he is the most popular politician in the US at the moment and an iconic International figure. Hillary is odds on favorite to be the next President. So Starr did not do a very good job.
As for Starr he has gone as far as he can go - the President of a major Southern University. Dashed are his hopes that he will be a Supreme Court Judge. Why Baylor chose him as their President their Board only knows. Would you send your child to Baylor or be a Faculty member there where he has autocratic powers and determines “What is in the Best Interests of the University’? Perhaps his appointment was accompanied by vast donations to the University. Those eventualities have known to have happened before.
STARR’S RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE LEWINSKY INVESTIGATION
Starr’s retrospective comment on the Lewinsky investigation is that he should have handed to someone else. In making this claim he acknowledges his blatant bias. But far more significantly he forgets that without him there would have not have been a Lewinsky investigation. If Linda Tripp indeed, out of the blue, played him the tapes he should have adjudged that this had nothing to do with Whitewater, Foster and Travelgate and the like. He could have advised Tripp to give it to the Jones lawyers. If he was indeed the brilliant jurist that he is claimed to be he would have told her not to waste her time as this was a consensual relationship and not material to the Jone’s case. But instead he conspired with her and Clinton’s enemies to entrap him because, as Jay H. Ell has tried to argue, his agenda could lead to a change in the Executive arm of the Government.
One day someone may tie this all together. Or will it remain the unresolved mystery that the JFK assassination still is?
One thing is for certain is that Starr, colluding with forces who were anti Clinton entrapped him to commit what Starr then deemed an impeachable offense. That in itself means Starr conspired to have the head of the Executive Branch of the Government removed and was party to the circumstances that caused it. In so doing he used in the words of a former Chief of a the 7th Circuit Federal Appeals Court “unquestionable” and “unthinkable” behavior. Conspiring to remove a Head of Government in the latter circumstances could be considered an attempt at a coup d’etat.
