Senate Agrees To Trial Rules Agreement Puts Off Decision On Whether To Call Witnesses

Eager to avoid the political antagonism that befell the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate forged a bipartisan agreement Friday to proceed with the impeachment trial of President Clinton that gives senators a chance to end the trial in less than three weeks.

The arrangement, brokered in private by all 100 senators, also leaves open the possibility that witnesses such as Monica Lewinsky will be called to testify, thus extending the trial to an indeterminate point.

The crucial moment will come the week of Jan. 25, after House prosecutors and the president’s lawyers argue their cases. At that point, senators will have a chance to vote whether to dismiss the case, seek testimony from witnesses or, if both those efforts fail, to vote to convict or acquit the president on the articles of impeachment.

A simple majority of 51 votes could end the trial or accept witnesses. It would take 67 senators to convict the president and oust him from office.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., called the bipartisan agreement “a good sign for the Senate” and a positive way to end a rancorous first week of the congressional session.

“It’s certainly a good sign on the trial … that we will be able to handle this with some dignity,” Murray said after the agreement was unanimously approved. “We have a resolution that everyone feels will be fair to all sides.”

Murray said she does not believe the Senate needs to call witnesses in the trial, but can instead decide based on some 60,000 pages of documents compiled by the House.

But whether there will be witnesses is really up to Republicans, she added.

“They have the votes to bring witnesses,” she said. If that happens, “we are going to open this trial up for months of testimony.”

Under the agreement, senators will convene Wednesday to vote on any motions that White House lawyers or House prosecutors may file. It is unlikely that the White House will file motions to dismiss the case at this point.

On Thursday, House prosecutors will begin to present their case, based strictly on the public evidence presented to the House Judiciary Committee by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. Significantly, the Senate agreement prevents them from delving into new evidence during this opening phase, as they had threatened to do.

The House team will have up to three days to make its case. The president’s lawyers then will have three days, tentatively set to begin Jan. 19 - the same date the president is scheduled to give the annual State of the Union address - to present their defense.

The agreement, passed 100 to 0, was a rare moment of political unity in a process that created deep fissures in the House. The agreement essentially postpones the hard decisions on witnesses for a later day, in favor of moving forward to end the yearlong impeachment saga by mid-February. Though the agreement mirrors an original plan circulated by Republican senators, Democrats said they were convinced that Republicans would not try to prolong the trial with numerous witnesses or embarrass the Senate by encouraging salacious testimony.

“We may all decide that we don’t even want witnesses. We’re all sick and tired of this thing,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

White House lawyers and Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the leader of the House prosecution team, had little choice but to accept the Senate’s terms.

“We are optimistic, we are confident, that the senators, once they see and hear this defense in this opening phase of the trial, will conclude that the articles do not justify or warrant conviction or removal from office,” said White House Special Counsel Greg Craig.

Hyde, who has maintained that witnesses are essential to the prosecution, said in a statement: “We intend to use the time we have been provided to present a compelling case. We also look forward to the opportunity - with Senate concurrence - to call witnesses in support of the evidence.”

At the heart of the Senate plan is a bipartisan agreement that will make it more difficult for House prosecutors to prolong the process by elaborating their case with a succession of witnesses.

The witness issue - whether to call any - has been hot because of the unpredictability of possible testimony from Lewinsky and others, and the likelihood that hearing a succession of witnesses could drag out the trial for weeks or even months.

The House prosecutors had wanted the Senate to agree to allow them to use as many as 15 witnesses while making their basic case against the president or, failing that, to call as many individual witnesses as it liked after the initial arguments.

Instead, the Senate agreed Friday that the prosecutors and the president’s lawyers would present their cases over the next two weeks without witnesses. A debate on whether to dismiss the charges will be held at the same time a proposal to call a set number of witnesses is discussed.

It was also agreed that no witnesses would be called until after they were deposed and a second Senate vote is taken. That means the prosecutors must win three votes, including a vote to dismiss, before the first witness is called.

By crafting the deal, sealed by conciliatory words across the ideological divide, the Senate succeeded where the House failed in finding unity on how to launch its part of the constitutional impeachment process. The House began its investigation in October with a largely party-line vote that set the tone for weeks of discord and culminated in two articles of impeachment passed almost exclusively by the Republican majority.

That was an example senators were determined to avoid.

“I hope we’ve got a hundred happy campers now,” said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who helped bring the two parties together. “We’re probably not going to after we start the trial perhaps, but we do now.”