"HEAVENLY FATHER, WE ARE IN TROUBLE" - Daniel Akaka at Bill Clinton's Impeachment -- The Catbird's Forum

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Date Posted: 21:14:06 03/27/08 Thu
Author: Bob O. Link
Subject:

"HEAVENLY FATHER, WE ARE IN TROUBLE" - Daniel Akaka at Bill Clinton's Impeachment

From �THE BREACH: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton�, by Peter Baker � 2000:

CHAPTER 12

�Heavenly Father, we are in trouble�

The sergeant at arms moved to the center aisle of the Senate chamber and called out like some medieval town crier in a twentieth-century business suit. �Hear, ye! Hear, ye!� declared Jim Ziglar. �All persons are commanded to keep silent, on pain of imprisonment, while the House of representatives is exhibiting to the Senate of the United States articles of impeachment against William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States.�

All one hundred members of the United States Senate sat in their seats, tense and rigid, unusually attentive to every little detail, consumed by the gravity of the task awaiting them on this day, Thursday, January 7, 1999. The chamber that usually bustled with the motion of horse-trading legislators and aides and clerks was unnaturally still.... Most senators had figured the House would never impeach Clinton. Even once it did, many of the senators assumed some deal would be cut in the dead of winter to forestall an actual trial. But they were wrong, and now they had no choice but to confront the issue...

�Mr. President,� the silver-haired Hyde said from the well of the Senate, �the managers on the part of the House of Representatives are here present and ready to present the articles of impeachment, which have been preferred by the House of Representatives against William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States.�...

�Heavenly Father,� began Senator Daniel K. Akaka, delivering the opening prayer, �we are in trouble and we need your help. We�ve come to a point where we don�t know what to do.�...

Lott met with a dozen other Republican senators in his hideaway the next morning, Tuesday, January 12, to prepare for the beginning of opening arguments....

The same day, a financial officer at a Washington law firm cut a check for $850,000, slipped it into an overnight envelope, and officially put an end to Jones v. Clinton. Most painful to the president was that he was actually forced to use personal money for some of the payment. His fund-raiser, Terry McAuliff, and other advisors had told him he would not have to pay a dime of the settlement, only to discover that they could not tap into his legal defense fund because its bylaws permitted payments only for attorney fees and legal expenses.

Bob Bennett, Clinton�s lawyer in the Jones case, succeeded in convincing one of the president�s insurers, Chubb Group Insurance, to fork over $475,000 but failed to persuade the other one, State Farm, to contribute. As a result, the final $375,000 was withdrawn from a blind trust that contained the first family�s assets � money that had been made by the first lady when she was a lawyer in Arkansas.

The irony was lost on no one. Hillary Clinton had to pay for Bill Clinton�s problems with women financially as well as emotionally.

For more, go to...

http://www.kycbs.net/ChubbGroup.htm

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