Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [261]
Now Fisher attempted to move in for the kill, asking the question as he looked directly at the president:
FISHER: Did you have an extramarital sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky?
CLINTON: No …
FISHER: If she told someone that she had a sexual affair with you beginning in November of 1995, would that be a lie?
CLINTON: It’s certainly not the truth. It would not be the truth.
FISHER: I think I used the term “sexual affair.” And so the record is completely clear, have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition Exhibit 1, as modified by the Court?
Bennett waved his hand, bringing the questioning to a halt. “I object!” he bellowed. Judge Susan Webber Wright, watching the legal jousting from her side of the oval table, glanced down at her copy of Exhibit 1. She ruled: “Well, it’s real short.… I will permit the question and you may show the witness definition number one.”
After studying the typed definition, the president pushed the piece of paper away and answered, with a tone of adamancy, “I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. I’ve never had an affair with her.”
President Clinton himself would later protest that the questions about “other women” propounded by the Dallas lawyers were grossly unfair, because they had absolutely nothing to do with obtaining discoverable evidence relating to Paula Jones’s claim. Rather, he said, the questions were clearly designed to embarrass him and to place his head in a meat grinder. “You know,” Clinton later explained, recalling that uncomfortable day, “[if] you’re really trying to find out ‘Is there some sort of pattern of sexual harassment here?’ you ask a whole different set of questions than you do if you’re trying to get something that you can smear someone in public with.”
The proper line of inquiry, President Clinton insisted, would have been to ask him “whether I was alone with certain people and what was the nature of my relationship and did I ever sexually harass them? Then they would have gone and asked the women that. But, you know, that was not what it was about. It was about trying to elicit some admission from me that they could then leak.”
Jim Fisher, however, believed that the line of questioning was perfectly proper. The federal judge presiding over the Jones case had specifically authorized him to ask questions about the nature of Clinton’s relationship with other women. Now, President Clinton had chosen not to answer these questions truthfully. As to the assertion that this was a perjury trap, Fisher would say, “I’ve been amused by this term ‘perjury trap.’ Well, I’m sorry, but that’s what just about every deposition is. That’s what it’s all about, if you’re deposing your client’s adversary.” Said Fisher, in a quiet but firm voice, “Yes, I was hoping he’d commit perjury and I’d catch him.”
To the extent that some would later criticize the Dallas lawyers, saying that any married man put in Clinton’s position would deny having an extramarital sexual affair, Fisher would express no sympathy. “Well, I guess my response to that is [Clinton] forfeited the right to have people feel bad for him when he told the American people he was done doing that sort of thing, but continued to do it under circumstances that to me are really disappointing as a citizen.” Fisher added, his voice unwavering, “No, I didn’t feel bad. I’m an advocate, and I was trying to win. That’s my job.”
Yet Fisher was up against a master. To the extent he avoided asking sexually explicit questions to show respect for the presidency, instead relying upon the murky “sexual relations” definition to corner Clinton, he may have committed a major strategic blunder. “You could visually see Clinton in the deposition, locking into the deposition,” said one observer. “He could see that he had running room. He had an out.” That observer concluded: “The lack of specificity of questions