Class News
Joe Lieberman ’64 on the impeachment trial
The investigations: Lieberman looks back
Published by The Washington Post, in the “Power Up” section
January 16, 2020
[Note from Tony Lavely, ‘64 Class Secretary: Both Howard Gillette and Paul Manchester emailed to flag this article about Joe Lieberman. Please let me know whenever you see classmates in the news, so we can share with other classmates.]
Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman leaves the West Wing of the White House in 2017.
More than 20 years ago, then-Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman broke from the Democratic Party by delivering an extraordinary and emotional public lashing of President Clinton for his "immoral" behavior deserving of "public rebuke and accountability." Now, Lieberman says it's up to Republican senators to put country over party to ensure a fair and impartial impeachment trial of President Trump.
In an interview with Power Up, the 2000 vice presidential nominee — who later became an independent — told us he was asked by a friend to express his unorthodox opinions yet again. This time, as a participant in the defense of Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, which will begin in earnest on Tuesday after today's swearing-in and reading of the articles.
Lieberman said he was asked by "a friend of mine who is supportive of the president but does not work in the White House" to "consider making a statement to the Senate during the time allotted to the President’s Defense Team about my understanding of the law of impeachment based on my experience in the trial of President Clinton." (A source who spoke with Trump last week told Power Up that the president raised the prospect of Lieberman's involvement in the upcoming trial.)
Lieberman told us he declined the request: “Because I spend much of my time these days, including serving as Chair of No Labels, working to bring bipartisanship back into our national government, I thought it would not be constructive for me to step into the middle of an impeachment trial that will inevitably be partisan.”
No position on Trump's actions — yet: Lieberman, for his part, has yet to come to “a conclusion about either impeachment article and will not until after the Senate trial is done.”
Lieberman, despite his criticism, ultimately did not vote to find Clinton guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors: “I worked a lot on this in the Clinton trial, and I had a point of view about what the president did, but I also had a point of view that it didn’t amount to an offense basis of taking him out of office,” he added.
The former Connecticut attorney general who called us from his New York law firm was skeptical that today's Senate will ultimately be able to replicate the efforts by then-leaders Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to work together in the deeply partisan environment.
“It’s going to be a heavy lift, for the current Senate to do the same as we did in ‘99,” he told us. “But [it] really requires Sens. McConnell (R-Ky.) and Schumer (D-N.Y.) to have a meeting of the minds in the same way that Sens. Lott and Daschle did in ’99. Otherwise, it is going to be very hard to create a process that most, if not all senators can agree on.”
While Lieberman said while he understands the political risks today in crossing Trump, he hopes Senate Republicans commit to an impartial process, which to him includes calling witnesses.
Then-Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) talks to
reporters about a bipartisan effort to open
the vote on President Clinton's impeachment
to the public in Feb. 1999. He's joined by
then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), left,
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and
then-Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), right.
“I would say that there probably should be some witnesses, particularly if they weren’t heard in the House they are not part of the House record,” he said of the battle raging between McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Democratic leadership.
Lieberman ultimately struck a middle path on Clinton: Lieberman worked closely with his Republican colleagues in a GOP-controlled Senate to conduct the trial in a bipartisan manner. The chamber voted to acquit Clinton 55-45 in February 1999. Lieberman made an unsuccessful push for a separate Senate censure resolution to express “contempt for the President's misconduct.”
“Such a censure would not amount to a punishment, nor would it be intended to do so,” Lieberman said then. “What it would do, particularly if it united Senators across party lines and positions on removal, is fulfill our responsibility to our children and our posterity to speak to the common values the President has violated, and make clear what our expectations are for future holders of that highest office.”
The apology pulpit: Lieberman had one piece of advice for Trump that he believes could make a difference in tempering the political firestorm we're seeing on Capitol Hill: To apologize and express regret for his actions in Ukraine. He pointed out that apologies made a difference not just for Clinton but for President Ronald Reagan, too.
Clinton delivered multiple expressions of regret and remorse about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but he made a last-ditch apology in December 1998 where he said he was “profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.”
While the House still voted to impeach Clinton the following day, Lieberman told Power Up it was “a critical moment.”
Perhaps a more comparable moment to Trump's current predicament is the Iran-Contra scandal, Lieberman told us: People were “beginning to talk about a possible impeachment of President Reagan.”
But after Reagan contritely accepted responsibility during a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office in 1987, “the personal opposition to him totally dissipated,” Lieberman told us.
No dice: Lieberman doesn't “expect an apology from President Trump,” and isn't sure if “it would have altered enough votes to stop the impeachment in the House.” Still, Lieberman notes that Trump “probably would have picked up some Democratic votes in the House and would have made it a lot easier for some of the Republicans in the Senate who are struggling with this now to vote without hesitation to acquit him.”
He's praying for them: Lieberman hopes that once senators enter the chamber after taking the oath of impartiality, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, that “it will have kind of the inspiring effect it had on the current Senate to rise above the partisanship” and that lawmakers will rise to their “historic responsibility.”
The gravity of the situation will hit soon: “This brilliant hybrid that the framers of the Constitution created?” Lieberman added of impeachment, “we all felt different, I think, and ultimately less partisan. This was a unique moment in history as it will be when this Senate convenes. So, I wish them well, and I will pray for the senators and for the republic.”
THEN AND NOW: Our chief correspondent Dan Balz covered Lieberman's break with Clinton in 1998. He wrote Power Up with some reflections on that moment.
The bottom line: “This is different territory today than when Lieberman made his speech in September 1998,” Dan writes:
Sen. Joe Lieberman’s public rebuke of Bill Clinton was one of those rare moments in Washington, when a trusted ally of a president turns against him and in the plainest language possible condemns his behavior in the most public of settings.
The criticism came after Clinton had admitted on national television of an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky on the evening when he had given testimony to independent counsel Ken Starr — an admission that he had been lying to the American people for most of the year.
Imagine how the current White House might react if a Republican senator went out in public as the impeachment trial begins and offered criticism approaching Lieberman’s. Which is why it is far less likely that members of the president’s party will take such a step, regardless of their personal and private feelings.
Lieberman gave voice to what many Democratic lawmakers were feeling about Clinton at the time. As Lieberman put it, what the president had done — both in his sexual encounters with Lewinsky and his “intentional and premeditated” denials — was immoral, disgraceful, and deserving of rebuke. What he didn’t say, but others did, was that many others in Clinton’s party felt the same way.
Whatever their private feelings about the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine, Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to offer any public criticism of Trump. To the contrary, they have gone in the other direction, claiming they saw no essential wrongdoing. Only a few have expressed any criticism.
It’s possible that as the trial unfolds, a few of them might speak out more forcefully about the president’s conduct, but the cost of doing so today is far greater than it was for Lieberman in 1998. This president plays by different rules and in every case to date, those who have strayed from the strict party line have felt the wrath of the president and his supporters.