Whitewater Trials and Impeachment of a President: 1994-99

White House Council Charles Ruff opened for the defense on Tuesday, January 19. "We are not here to defend William Clinton the man," he said. "He, like all of us, will find his judges elsewhere. We are here to defend William Clinton, the president of the United States, for whom you are the only judges." Ruff said that in their "rush to judgement" the managers had become "convinced by their own rhetoric."

White House Counsel Gregory Craig noted that the managers had made "many, many allegations of grand jury perjury that the independent counsel declined to make."

Then Deputy Counsel Cheryl Mills argued that the obstruction-of-justice charge was invalid. "The president's intent," she said, "was to manage a looming media firestorm, which he correctly foresaw." Turning to the allegation that Bettie Currie, the president's secretary, had furtively retrieved gifts that Lewinsky had received from Clinton, attorney Mills observed that "it is an insult to Ms. Currie to suggest that loyalty breeds dishonesty."

Clinton's longtime friend, former senator Dale Bumpers, in a speech charged with emotion, closed the defense by entreating the senators to consider how much personal anguish Clinton's "terrible moral lapse" had caused him. "The American people," he concluded, "are asking for an end to this nightmare."