WASHINGTON (BP)–Bill Clinton became the first United States president to be found in contempt of court when federal judge Susan Webber Wright issued a ruling April 12 saying he gave false testimony under oath.
In a 32-page opinion, Wright said the president gave “false, misleading and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process” in a January 1998 deposition she oversaw in the sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton by Paula Jones, according to excerpts of the ruling printed in The New York Times. The judge cited the president’s denials he had ever been alone with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and he had engaged in sexual relations with her.
Clinton’s testimony in the deposition “regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. Lewinsky was intentionally false, and the statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false, notwithstanding tortured definitions and interpretations of the term ‘sexual relations,'” Webber wrote.
In August 1998, Clinton, after denying an adulterous relationship with Lewinsky to the country, admitted in a national television appearance he had an improper relationship with her but said his answers in the deposition were “legally accurate.” Clinton was impeached on two counts by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate in February.
“The court takes no pleasure whatsoever in holding this nation’s president in contempt of court. … [There] is simply no escaping the fact that the president deliberately violated this court’s discovery orders and thereby undermined the integrity of the judicial system,” Webber wrote. “Sanctions must be imposed, not only to redress the president’s misconduct, but to deter others who might themselves consider emulating the president of the United States by engaging in misconduct that undermines the integrity of the judicial system.”
The judge ordered Clinton to pay $1,202 in fees for her expenses in traveling to Washington at his request for the deposition. He also will have to pay appropriate expenses, including attorney’s fees, to Jones. Wright also said she would refer the matter to the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Committee on Professional Conduct for appropriate action.
The suit by Jones was settled out of court.
Though Clinton attends Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, he remains a member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock.
