RUSH: We had a call from Rancho Mirage, California — last call in the previous hour — from John who wanted to draw the distinction, that (summarized): “Yeah, Susan Webber Wright did cite Clinton for contempt but that was in a civil case and he was never convicted on it and the fact he was not convicted of any of this during his impeachment hearings and so to go after Clinton here and try to say there was something different about Clinton that there is about these other cases is a bit of a stretch and Republicans are perhaps being a little hypocritical.” So let’s review, uh, ladies and gentlemen, some history, since this is what is sadly missing, sorely lacking in the mainstream press. They are ignoring their own record from 1998 and 1999 — and maybe they’re ignoring their own record because they knew it was lies back then. Hell, I don’t know! If somebody lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I sure as hell know this: It wasn’t Bush that did it for the first time because Clinton was out there saying it and Tony Blair was out there saying it, and a bunch of members of the UN Security Council are saying it, and all these international intelligence agencies were saying it. So if there’s lying about weapons of mass destruction, UN weapons inspectors were saying it. So if a bunch of people were lying about weapons of mass destruction, it all started before Bush — and if the press was reporting it back in 1998, and now they want to ignore their own reporting from back then, maybe they knew it was lies back then and maybe they knew it was just lies to cover up for Bill Clinton, who was trying to divert everybody’s attention away from a blue dress with semen on it and sordid tales about a cigar with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.
Does that pretty much catch you up as to where we are here?
Okay, so let’s look at a little history on this. Susan Webber Wright did indeed dismiss the case against Clinton but it went up on appeal, and she said in her decision that he committed contempt of court. He lied. She found him in contempt for lying under oath at a grand jury, and she gave him the right to a hearing to argue against her ruling — and Clinton refused. Instead, he accepted her decision and paid a fine. He did not refuse her contempt citation when given the chance to argue it. Judge Susan Webber Wright was a federal judge. She is a court of law, therefore. She, as a federal judge, held him in contempt; so he was held in contempt of court in a federal court, which went unchallenged by Clinton and is no different than a jury decision as a matter of law. The judge finds you in contempt, the jury finds you in contempt, it’s all part of the court. You have been pound in contempt — and Clinton was. The fact that the case was dismissed has absolutely no bearing on the fact of Clinton’s contemptuous conduct which was unchallenged by Clinton himself. The case went on appeal. Clinton settle it had for hundreds of thousands of dollars before the eighth Circuit Court could rule on the appeal of the case. He wanted it washed away. He wanted it done away with. So in the case he didn’t do anything and he was found in contempt but the case was dismissed, he still paid his fine, still paid the settlement and what have you. But the biggest difference here, folks, is that no one yet is accusing George W. Bush, the president of the United States, of obstruction. Nobody is accusing George W. Bush of perjury or the like.
Bush isn’t even the subject of any of investigation. Clinton was. He was the target. Bill Clinton appeared before a grand jury. It was videotaped, and we saw it, and he lied to a federal judge. Now, you can say all you want about, “Weeeell, this is no different than when Clinton…” It’s markedly different because we’re not even talking about President Bush here. The judge held Clinton in contempt, and let’s not forget why. The judge held Clinton in contempt because he assaulted the integrity of the judiciary. There is no right to a jury trial in such cases, but a hearing was offered Clinton, and he didn’t want to avail himself of it because he knew his lies would become even more apparent. She found him in contempt; he lied. She gave him a chance to conduct a hearing to disagree, and he said, “Nope.” He punted, paid the fine and went on his merry way because he knew that more scrutiny would uncover the fact and cement it in more and more people’s minds that he had in fact lied. She said she didn’t hold him in criminal contempt as opposed to civil contempt because she didn’t want to create a double jeopardy situation because Ken Starr was still investigating him for lying. That was why it was a civil contempt case and not a criminal contempt case. Now, we are looking for a <a target=new href=”http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/Clinton/wrightsorder13.html”>link to her decision</a> so I can put it on the website tonight so that you can read it, because there’s no reason to speculate on this, and there’s no reason to listen to people and their revisionist history on this. You can read what Judge Susan Webber Wright said — and, by the way, she was one of Clinton’s law school students. He was her professor at one time. People were talking about what a great irony that was.
We’re going to find this decision, if we can. We’re going to link to it at RushLimbaugh.com so that you can read all this yourself. I think Clinton paid $850,000 to settle the suit before the Circuit Court ruled. It wasn’t just us saying this. Even some Democrats — Barney Frank, for example — staunchly defended the president on the House judiciary committee during the House manager’s presentation of the case — well, during the House judiciary committee, the gathering of evidence. Barney Frank said it wasn’t a surprise. There was pretty good consensus he lied in the deposition. He did lie. We don’t have any evidence anybody’s lied yet, and we know that the president hasn’t even testified. So to say that, “Well, you know, the Republicans being awfully hypocritical. Now they’re saying perjury is no big deal.” We don’t even have the allegation yet, not officially. We’ve just got media leaks about it — and notice something else about this, folks. This president, during this investigation, has not claimed executive privilege or attorney-client privilege or Secret Service function privilege on his behalf or his staff in order to obstruct the investigation, either. Bill Clinton did everything he could, creating all kinds of new privileges to deny the grand jury any information or evidence that was part of this investigation. He made a mockery of the investigation, and it was all because he was trying to protect his lily-white ass.
That’s exactly what he was doing. You haven’t seen this president behave in this way at all. This president — love him or not, like it or not — has been out there talking about the integrity and the high quality of the investigation, and he’s not trampled on it at all. He’s not tried once, nor has anybody in his administration, to besmirch or impugn the prosecutor. Compare that to the Clinton administration, where Ken Starr was everything from a sex pervert to a Nazi murderer. I mean, this guy, they were out of control on Starr because that’s all they could do because their client was guilty — the president of the United States — and every time Clinton tried these privileges, he lost. He lost every time. Clinton went all the way to the Supreme Court with some of these claims of privilege and lost. George W. Bush has not tried this at all. We will put all this on the website tonight so when you get into your arguments, which I know will ensue with these libs who are going half cocked on clich?s, then you will be able to refute them with some facts and you’ll be able to draw some distinctions here between the way Clinton behaved, the way Bush has behaved. Clinton was the target. He suborned perjury. Bush was not a target. He’s not testified. He has not lied. The comparisons here are weak indeed — and I’ll tell you, you know, I marvel. Each time the left tries to bring up Bill Clinton has some paragon of virtue, they’re going to lose on that every time they try. But they don’t know any better.
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