House Prosecutors

WASHINGTON -- With their position eroding in the face of a strong White House assault on their impeachment case, the House prosecutors in the last two days have stepped up their attacks on the defense offered by President Clinton's lawyers.As the White House team began to make headway Wednesday with its argument for a quick end to the impeachment trial, the 13 increasingly frustrated House prosecutors adopted a more aggressive approach, taking to the airwaves with point-by-point responses to the defense.

IN his nationwide search for a housing commissioner, Mayor Martin O'Malley should insist on an individual who has a battle plan for two dire neighborhood problems:How to deal with owners, large and small, who ignore city codes and let their property deteriorate horribly.How to stop the city government from spreading neighborhood decay through its neglect of derelict properties it controls.In many areas of Baltimore, these are huge, interconnected problems. Why should a private property owner heed codes when city properties next door are in violation and have been for years?

WASHINGTON -- The Senate resoundingly rejected yesterday an appearance by Monica Lewinsky at President Clinton's impeachment trial, instead allowing House prosecutors to present portions of the videotaped depositions of Lewinsky and two other witnesses when the trial resumes tomorrow. Twenty-five Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic front to deal House prosecutors their first real defeat since the trial began last month, signaling that the yearlong impeachment process will draw to a close by the end of next week.

WASHINGTON -- Ending a tumultuous year of political scandal, the Senate acquitted President Clinton of high crimes and misdemeanors yesterday, after House prosecutors failed to muster even a bare majority of senators in favor of removing the nation's 42nd president from office.Five weeks after the Senate convened the second presidential impeachment trial in history, 50 senators voted to convict the president of obstruction of justice -- far short of the 67 votes needed to oust him. Five Republicans -- all of them Northeastern moderates -- joined all 45 Democrats in finding Clinton not guilty of obstruction.

WASHINGTON -- Recognizing that they have little chance of convicting President Clinton, the 13 House Republican prosecutors say they are continuing to press their case with vigor so that future generations cannot conclude that the prosecutors shirked an unpopular task."

WASHINGTON -- As the White House prepared to launch a vigorous defense of President Clinton before the Senate this week, Democrats insisted yesterday that witnesses were not necessary and would only prolong the president's impeachment trial, to the dismay of the country.With Clinton's lawyers hoping to deflate the case for removing the president made last week by the House managers, administration allies argued yesterday that the Republican call for witnesses such as Monica Lewinsky -- and the president himself -- was politically motivated and would shed little new light on the facts.

WASHINGTON -- The 13 House Republican prosecutors in President Clinton's trial, who sit together day after day at a table on the Senate floor, are clearly losing ground in their fight to keep the proceedings going.Isolated not only from public opinion but also from some of their fellow Republicans in the Senate, a House prosecution team that says it is utterly convinced of the certainty of its case alternated yesterday between expressions of confidence and pique.Some of the prosecutors seemed to strain to argue that however unpleasant and seemingly futile the proceedings have been, the Constitution requires a full-scale trial and a formal vote on the impeachment articles.

WASHINGTON -- Summing up their case with a withering attack on President Clinton, House prosecutors implored senators yesterday to "cleanse" the White House of a man who has made himself "a notorious example of lawlessness" -- or risk leaving the presidency "permanently damaged.""You have got to put him back in bounds," Rep. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said of the president. "Remove him."For three days, 13 House members -- serving as prosecutors in the second presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history -- have tried to chip away at the president's support.

WASHINGTON -- Under pressure from both the White House and House prosecutors, senators seeking a quick end to President Clinton's impeachment trial appeared stalled last night by a high-stakes dispute over witnesses.The senators emerged last night after 4 1/2 hours from a closed-door debate on a motion to dismiss the trial saying there were no negotiations. "It was pure speeches," said Sen. Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican.It appeared that a bipartisan deal on an exit plan might not be possible until after the Senate votes tonight or tomorrow on whether to take the first step of allowing witnesses to be deposed.

WASHINGTON -- In seeking the testimony of Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and Sidney Blumenthal, the Republican House prosecutors said yesterday that they wanted the Senate to hear from witnesses who represented "the basic heart of the obstruction of justice case" against President Clinton.The witnesses are necessary "for the Senate to be able to make the ultimate conclusion of what is the truth," said Rep. James E. Rogan of California.Aside from the unexpected call from the House prosecutors for Clinton himself to give a deposition -- a request the White House was quick to reject -- the pared witness list submitted yesterday presented a major surprise: the absence of Betty Currie, Clinton's secretary, who is central to several obstruction of justice charges against the president.

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican prosecutors and White House lawyers turned the impeachment trial over to the Senate jury yesterday, after prosecutors implored senators to rise above their political interests, ignore White House "spin" and remove President Clinton from office.But Charles F. C. Ruff, the White House counsel, warned that a conviction of the president would rip a hole in the constitutional fabric that has clothed American society and will clothe future generations for "millennia to come."

WASHINGTON -- Armed with hours of videotape, House Republican prosecutors will enter the august Senate chamber today and give the world its first view of Monica Lewinsky as she discusses her intimate relationship with the president of the United States.But their last-ditch effort to convict President Clinton is unlikely to sway anywhere near enough votes to produce the two-thirds majority of the Senate needed to remove Clinton from office.Transcripts released yesterday indicate that today's presentation of three videotaped depositions could support Clinton's acquittal perhaps as much as it does the case for conviction.

WASHINGTON -- She was a guarded witness who let it be known that her "mixed feelings" for the president had no business in a Senate impeachment trial. She was an indignant young woman who asked her questioner not to describe her encounters with President Clinton as "salacious." She was a flip observer who teased a room full of suits about how she wouldn't mind quitting early for the day and how she would never object to lunch.But for everything Monica Lewinsky was in her videotaped deposition to House prosecutors, what was most striking is what she was not. Instead of the giggly musings about world leaders and dress sizes that Linda Tripp recorded, Lewinsky yielded cautious observations almost lawyerly in tone.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate resoundingly rejected yesterday an appearance by Monica Lewinsky at President Clinton's impeachment trial, instead allowing House prosecutors to present portions of the videotaped depositions of Lewinsky and two other witnesses when the trial resumes tomorrow. Twenty-five Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic front to deal House prosecutors their first real defeat since the trial began last month, signaling that the yearlong impeachment process will draw to a close by the end of next week.

WASHINGTON -- Recognizing that they have little chance of convicting President Clinton, the 13 House Republican prosecutors say they are continuing to press their case with vigor so that future generations cannot conclude that the prosecutors shirked an unpopular task."

WASHINGTON -- Monica Lewinsky was questioned by House prosecutors for about four hours yesterday about President Clinton's alleged efforts to keep her from testifying about their affair, but the deposition ended early because Clinton's lawyers chose not to use their allotted time.Instead of asking Lewinsky any questions, one of the president's lawyers, Nicole Seligman, read her an apology on behalf of the president for the ordeal she has been through since civil and criminal investigations of her affair with Clinton began more than a year ago, according to sources familiar with the proceeding.

WASHINGTON -- With the calling of trial witnesses increasingly likely, House prosecutors pleaded yesterday with the Senate to question what one of them called just a "pitiful three" witnesses to help prove their case that President Clinton should be removed from office.The prosecution's pared-down list included Monica Lewinsky, Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan and senior White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, as well as a last-ditch invitation to the president to testify at his own impeachment trial.

WASHINGTON -- Few points of difference between the two sides in the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton are as potentially decisive as their divergent views about the lawsuit that started the scandal: the Paula Corbin Jones sexual misconduct case. The president's defense team began outlining its view yesterday. Lyle Denniston of The Sun's national staff examines the differences.Jones' lawsuit was dismissed in April by a judge, and her appeal ended Dec. 2 after the suit had been settled out of court.

WASHINGTON -- On the eve of Monica Lewinsky's deposition for President Clinton's impeachment trial, House prosecutors were lowering expections that she might provide explosive new evidence.Facing almost certain defeat in their quest for Clinton's removal from office and growing restlessness among the Senate jurors, House prosecutors were taking care not to overpromise for fear of losing the chance to call Lewinsky and other witnesses to testify in person before the Senate."I don't want anyone to think there's some huge bombshell here," said Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum, one of the prosecutors.

WASHINGTON -- In the rush to put an end to the impeachment trial of President Clinton, the Senate Republicans' decision to limit the House prosecutors to three witnesses invites even more ridicule of the whole exercise than existed before.The omission by the prosecutors of presidential secretary Betty Currie as one of the three challenges the seriousness of their efforts to clarify issues in the article of impeachment charging Mr. Clinton with obstruction of justice.Ms. Currie, who was a go-between for Mr. Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, is essential in constructing the case that the president tried to shape what she would say to a federal grand jury.