November 20, 1998
(Fox News)

Alan Colmes: I'm Alan Colmes. With us in Washington is Alan Keyes, host of the radio show "America's Wake-Up Call" and a former Republican presidential candidate, and defense attorney Keith Waters, former president of the National Bar Association.

Dr. Keyes, look, there's not a great stomach in Congress for impeachment. I've heard estimates of anywhere from 50 down to 8 Republicans that, according to the Los Angeles Times, tomorrow, as Matt Drudge is reporting, 8 House Republicans told the L.A. Times that based on current evidence they would vote against impeachment, and I've heard estimates of more than that. It seems like it is not going to go forward, and the Republicans can't wait to get rid of this problem, can they?

Alan Keyes: I think that any Republicans who vote against impeachment are risking their careers, even as they are risking the Republican Party . . .

Colmes: You really believe that?

Keyes: This vote is not about politics, it is about integrity. And if they show no integrity, believe me, the people at the grass roots of the Republican Party will not forgive or forget this travesty. The people who went to the polls to vote FOR the Republicans, and put them back in the majority, are the ones they should be thinking of right now. And many of them only voted for (the Republicans) because they thought this would mean we would get a vote with integrity on impeachment

Colmes: Dr. Keyes, I read the election very different than you. It seems like the far-right Republicans--people like Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina, Fob James in Alabama--were voted out of office. I don't see how, given the results of this election, the Republicans would be hurting their careers if they don't go ahead with voting for an impeachment.

Keyes: I won't even get into that discussion. The election said NOTHING about the right, the left, or anything else. Fitzgerald wins in Illinois--you ignore that. Dunning wins in Kentucky--you ignore that. We had good, pro-life, conservative victories, we had a few people who lose--this is elections. It doesn't change anything about the serious question of constitutional integrity that the Republicans face. Politics has nothing to do with this vote. And if they don't stand as the party of integrity, they will fall. They will lose their base. And I predict that in the year 2000 the Republican Party will vanish from the national scene just the way the conservatives did in Canada.

Sean Hannity: Keith Waters, let me ask you this. I know your party, the Democrats, all day yesterday were trying to put Ken Starr on trial. And I find it pretty amazing here that in all that we heard from the Democrats, they spent less than 60 seconds dealing with the substantive issues of wrongdoing by this President. And even if all the charges against Starr were true--and we know they are not true--it doesn't take away from what the President did, his reckless behavior, his lying under oath, his lying before a grand jury in a judicial proceeding. Isn't that what we should be dealing with here?

Keith Waters: Ken Starr, by his own admission, didn't interview hardly any of the witnesses, didn't collect any evidence himself--how could the Democrats attack Ken Starr on the merits?

Hannity: Did you read the President's words in the deposition? Did you see the grand jury report? Did the President lie under oath that he was alone with Monica Lewinsky, that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky? Did the President coach his secretary, Betty Currie, or is she a liar, as all these other women are liars?

Waters: The President has admitted wrongdoing in this. It is not like the President is without blame. The question is--the ultimate question is--what the Congress debated a couple of weeks ago: is this an impeachable offense?

Hannity: Then why did the Democrats, Alan Keyes, put Ken Starr on trial, if it is about the President's wrongdoing? And is it coaching a witness when you say to your secretary, the day after you gave your deposition, a woman who can contradict your lies, "you were always there when she was there, right, Betty?" "We were never alone, right, Betty?"

Keyes: The Democrats are acting like good Mafia lawyers. They know their clients are guilty as sin. They are themselves complicit in the wrongdoing. And therefore they are doing the only thing you can--you try to get him off on a technicality.

It turns the stomach of the American people when people who are obviously guilty get off on legal technicalities, but that is now the ploy of the Democrats in the Congress, because it is all they've got left. They have shown no integrity in these hearings whatsoever; they put on a little uncontrolled licentious riot yesterday.

Hannity: We have got to take a break. I know Keith is champing at the bit. Keith, it's your floor when we get back.

(break)

Hannity: Keith Waters, I want to go to the words of Dr. Keyes, who is with us. It turns the stomach the stomach of many people. The President is getting off on a technicality. Isn't that exactly what is happening?

Waters: No, I don't think he is getting off on a technicality. The President is paying a very high price for this ordeal, you know, in terms of his family, his personal reputation, finances--they've all been battered. But yesterday was a big turning point, because Ken Starr came in and essentially exonerated him from three investigations . . .

Hannity: Keith, did he lie under oath? Did the President lie under oath?

Waters: Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate--Ken Starr exonerated him. The very next day Ken Starr gets blown out of the water by his ethics adviser . . .

Hannity: Keith, I want to ask you this question: did the President of the United States lie repeatedly? Did he premeditate--as Ken Starr said yesterday and in his report--did he premeditate his lies, or do you still buy into this notion that it is legally accurate?

Waters: I've said for a long time, I think the President was not truthful when he testified about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Hannity: Did he lie under oath?

Waters: I don't think he committed perjury.

Hannity: Did the President put his hand on a bible, swear to tell the truth, and lie consciously, repeatedly, and in a premeditated way under oath?

Waters: For the sake of brevity, I'll agree with you. But I'm disagreeing with you as to the consequences of that.

Hannity: Are people in jail, presently, as we speak, for doing that same thing--Pam Parsons, Barbara Bartolino--all in civil cases, all lying under oath about those things?

Waters: And the President may have to be prosecuted one day, and that might be a way to get out of this thing.

Hannity: Dr. Keyes.

Keyes: I think that the suggestion that you let a President commit crimes in office and prosecute him later is stupid, and absurd, and dangerous.

Waters: Well, you're gonna have to change the Constitution. That's the way the law is right now.

Keyes: That's a lie. The Constitution does not say the President has the right to commit any crimes whatsoever. And that notion, which Dershowitz and others have put forward, is poison for our liberty.

Colmes: Hold on. No one is saying that he has the right to commit crimes, but that he can be prosecuted after the fact.

Keyes: He cannot, because look at the present situation. He commits the crime needed to cover up his wrongdoing. Are we so stupid that we do not understand that if, we give the President license to commit crimes, among the crimes he will commit will be the crimes needed to cover up his crimes?

Waters: Yeah, sex and lies. That's a big crime.

Keyes: If you set this precedent for any President whatsoever, the nonsense that it will be confined to sex crimes is so short-sighted that you must not care for our posterity at all. I thank God that our Founders were aware that the precedents they established would last for generations.

Waters: You need to read the Federalist Papers.

Colmes: This idea, Dr. Keyes, that if we happen to disagree with you, or if we happen to feel that there are larger constitutional issues at stake and the President should stay in office--somehow if you disagree with that view you are either less patriotic, or don't understand the Constitution, or don't care as much for this country, is absurd, and unfair to those who have honest differences of opinion.

Keyes: If you are going to let the President of the United States have a license to commit crimes while in office, those crimes will include the abuses that are needed to cover up his crimes, and you will create a tyrant that will stand to oppress the American people.

This is unacceptable and dangerous. This unfit character must be removed from office.

(break)

Colmes: Right now we're talking about Ken Starr's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee with former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and criminal defense attorney Keith Waters. Dr. Keyes, you like to talk about the integrity of the republic, of the judicial system. And I propose to you that we are much more damaged by an overreaching prosecutor, and the questions about whether he refused to let Monica Lewinsky consult an attorney, whether he swapped information with the Paula Jones attorney, whether or not he used money, or money from Richard Mellon Scathe went to David Hale, a star witness--these kinds of questions go to the very heart of the integrity of the judicial system, and if a prosecutor is allowed to overreach, we are all in danger, sir, in this country.

Keyes: If this prosecutor was allowed to overreach, then Janet Reno should be impeached. She had the responsibility to oversee him. An oversight office existed in the Justice Department. They constantly reviewed all of his actions, and found no wrongdoing.

This is a political ploy. It is a political argument. If anything had been wrong, she has, under the statute, the authority to challenge and remove him. And he was not challenged; he was not removed. And Sam Dash, in his letter today, completely exonerated him for all of those actions.

Waters: No he didn't. He said he abused his office.

Keyes: He did NOT. When he went before the committee--they had a disagreement about what he did before the committee, not about ANYTHING he had done in the course of the investigation. And that was clearly stated in the letter.

Colmes: Keith Waters, the problem that Sam Dash has is that Ken Starr, the Independent Counsel, should not be an advocate for impeachment. He should present the facts.

Waters: But, you know, he says very clearly in that letter . . . imagine this: this is Ken Starr's biggest day. All the cameras in the world are watching him. The very next morning he has this damning letter saying his actions were unlawful, abuse of office, and I will not associate my name with them.

Keyes: Don't mischaracterize the letter. He says SPECIFICALLY that nothing that was done in the course of the investigation was the subject of his letter. And he CONFINES his disagreement to the question of whether or not he should have testified and become an advocate.

And that, by the way, is an absurd remonstration.

Hannity: Well, we are at this moment in time going to say goodbye to Keith Waters. He has to run. Keith, it's always good to see you. Thank you for being with us.

Ambassador Keyes, I'll turn the questioning to you. You said before that it turns the stomach that the President is going to get off on a technicality. Now, I'm going to ask you--I just want to run through a series of things here: the polls show--and I don't know if you agree with polls or not; you can tell me if you don't--that 67% of the American people give the President a high job approval. The polls show most Americans don't want him impeached. How did we get to a point where the President can do all these things, his poll numbers hold up, the father of the 21-year-old intern is more mad at the prosecutor than he is at the President. The speaker ends up resigning. They gain seats. How did all this happen?

Keyes: This is entirely a consequence of the fact that the Republicans, from the beginning, did not make clear the serious nature of this crisis. They acted as if this was business as usual for almost all of the last several months. And I think they paid a heavy price for not dealing seriously with this constitutional crisis.

This is an adversarial system; it is like a court room. The jury cannot come to a proper judgment if one side refuses to present its case, and that is what the Republicans have done on this for several months.

Hannity: Well, let's then talk about it, because we started the early part of the program--I spoke with a former Congressman from New York today, and he said that any Republican that doesn't vote for impeachment, should be removed from the Republican Party, that a strong stand ought to be taken for the rule of law, and that if they don't take that stand--he said it is a litmus test--they are gone.

Keyes: Oh yes. I agree. I stated in a speech in Pennsylvania, when I talked about Mark Souder, that I believed that, and that I would personally join in an effort to make sure that every Republican who votes against impeachment faces a primary challenge that will be well funded and that will make clear the point that people who act without integrity at critical moments, when our constitutional lives are at stake, cannot be excused.

Hannity: Ambassador, let's look forward a little bit here. Robert Bennett will be going before the House Judiciary Committee, the attorney for the President. Bruce Lindsey, Daniel Gecker, Nathan Landau. What do you anticipate, especially as it relates to Bob Bennett. Because this is the guy, now, who knows that the President affirmed a false affidavit of Monica Lewinsky, and also affirmed a false statement that HE made under oath, that he needed to correct with the judge--that is, that they never had sex in any place, any manner, any shape, any form.

Do you think that even that will resonate with the American people, or are they too busy in their lives, paying 50% of their income in taxes, to pay much more attention to this.

Keyes: I think that the key question right now is what is going to resonate with the Congress. They have a constitutional responsibility. The evidence is clear.

The judgment required right now is also clear. Even the Democrats: they want cross-examination; they want all of these things that are characteristic of a trial. That means that a trial is needed. And the Constitution provides the place for it--in the Senate of the United States. They must do their duty and make sure it COMES to trial, as is required.

Colmes: That's not likely to happen. Dr. Keyes, I want to get back to what Sam Dash said, because there is a question about whether Ken Starr did break the law. Here's what Sam Dash said. In his letter today he stated: "You have violated your obligations to the independent counsel statute, and have unlawfully intruded on the power of impeachment."

That is a pretty strong statement. That is more than a gentle rebuke, as Ken Starr characterized it earlier today.

Keyes: That is an absurd statement.

This Sam Dash business is an unprofessional and suspect maneuver on his part. He has no grounds for it.

Colmes: How is it unprofessional? Why is it unprofessional.

Keyes: Ken Starr was operating under a statute that required that he make a referral to Congress. He made that referral, and the CONGRESS requested that he come before them to explain it. Not to explain his own actions with respect to anything, but to explain the contents of that referral. In the course of that explanation he must present to the Congress his reasoning for believing that what he presents them may be substantial and credible evidence for impeachment. That is required by the statute. He acted not only within the law, but he acted pursuant to his obligation, and at the request of the Congress.

Colmes: Not everybody would agree with that, but, sir, we will give you the last word. Thank you for being with us tonight.