Asymmetrical Information

What are the relative penalties for a perjury conviction and for contempt?

While Christmas shopping at Borders, my eye caught Susan McDougal's book in the Politics aisle. A book. I mentally blocked out the irrelevant title but managed to momentarily comprehend an entire book devoted to absolving one's evasion of testimony (before I practically ran from the shelf). Page after page, it's probably an opaque, obfuscatory litany not unlike the circular argument Buck describes.

At my best friend's house, I have seen cigarette butts and empty cartons. I think I might have even caught a wiff of cigarette smoke on his clothes. However, I've never seen him with a cigarette in his hands, and he has never told me, "I smoke".

The special anti-smoking prosecutor comes to me with video tapes of my friend buying cigarettes. He hints that people I know nothing about have given him statements that they saw my friend smoking, but the prosecutor has no direct proof that my friend smokes. He says "Tell me about your friend's smoking habits". I say I have never seen him smoke but I have seen cigarette butts and empty cartons. He comes back with "You're lying. You have a special relationship with him. You have to *know* that he smokes, and I can prove that you *know* it."

I'm telling the truth, but now I am in a position that no defendant is in, of proving that something did *not* happen. Certainly if the anti-smoking prosecutor can prove that I am perjuring myself, he should also be able to prove that my friend smokes without my testimony. So why is my testimony necessary?

I don't like to defend any of the extended Clinton clan, but I think that Susan deserves a little more pity than contempt. She made some bad choices and got hung out to dry like more than a few of people that the Clintons used and abused on their climb up the ladder.

Hubbell got paid almost a million (that we know of) not to talk. That would tend to make one think that Susan got paid off as well. She has a long track record of dishonesty and sleaze. Why would anyone think that her refusal to talk was noble when all the rest of her life has been a scam?

She was a sleaze. Her husband was a sleaze. Their partners were sleazes. Given all the crimes Susan committed, even if she was somehow wrongly jailed by Starr, she still hasn't served anywhere near the time she should have.

How can someone have sympathy for her?

The only thing I remember about seeing that book is the picture of her in cuffs, And the little blurb "Foreword written by Helen Thomas" I knew then that Toilet paper has begun to rise in price..

She WASN'T jailed by Starr. She was jailed by that woman judge whose name escapes me at the moment. It was her court that McDougal was holding in contempt by her refusal to testify.

But was she too crazy to fly?

I don't trust my recollection much (I'm not un-jetlagged yet), but I seem to remember reading that she also didn't testify because she didn't know of anything they did that was illegal.

Since when has that been the WITNESS's job to determine? Not as good as the quoted excuse, but it struck me funny.

I'm operating completely on memory here, but my impression at the time was that Susan McDougal was either a) being paid off by the Clintons or b) so supremely pissed off at Starr that she would go to jail rather than help him.

As for keeping herself into trouble, isn't that what the Fifth Amendment is for? I doubt that I'll read the book to find out.

Susan McDougal always struck me as more of a sad than a contemptible figure. Just one more person who paid a price for their association with them.

Susan McDougal was convicted on May 28, 1996 of four counts of fraud and conspiracy by defrauding SBA and sentenced in September 1996 to three 24-month prison terms to run concurrently, plus three years' probation on the fourth felony charge. During this trial David Hale alleged that Bill Clinton discussed an illegal $300,000 loan with himself and McDougal(the story doesn't specify which McDougal). Both Jim and Susan McDougal were tried together, along with Jim Guy Tucker.

Jim McDougal decided to cooperate with Starr and received a reduced sentence. McDougal died in March 1998.

Susan McDougal refused to cooperate, leading to her being sentenced to 18 months in jail for civil contempt by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright.

She served a portion of her fraud sentence following the 18 month civil contempt sentence before being released in July 1998 on medical grounds.

She was tried and acquitted in California in 1998 on embezzlement charges. The judge forbid any mention of the Whitewater or Starr cases during this trial. Her defense had suggested that this prosecution was engineered by Starr to press McDougal to testify.

On April 23, 1998 Susan McDougal was once again called before the Little Rock Whitewater grand jury. She refused to answer certain questions and was indicted in May 1998 for obstruction of justice and criminal contempt. At her trial, Julie Hiatt Steele testified in McDougal's defense, saying that she had been pressured by Starr to backup Kathleen Wiley's charges of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton. McDougal took the stand and answered the questions that she spent 18 months in jail for refusing to answer. She testified that she had never spoken to Bill Clinton about the alleged illegal loan and that he had tesified truthfully about the 1996 Whitewater land deal. She further accused her ex-husband of lying when he cooperated with the Whitewater prosecuters.

The prosecution attempted to trace a money trail that lead to the illegal loan. McDougal was found not guilty of obstruction, the jury deadlocked on the contempt charge and the judge declared a mistrial.

CNN Summary

Chris,

Thanks for jogging my memory. I recall in 1998 when Susan McDougal testified, that it seemed convenient that her husband had died. Sort of like in the Reagan administration, when Casey died, it suddenly turned out that everything was his fault.

Given that she wouldn't answer questions to stay out of jail in 1996, but did answer them in 1998 after her husband died, you have to wonder about who really did what.

I'd imagine if I was being hounded with a political prosecution trying to use me to bring down a President, I'd be kind of paranoid too.

It's funny to see people sympathize with McDougal, though, who actually did break the law.

Henry, if you come back, you asked "What are the relative penalties for a perjury conviction and for contempt?" There is not really an answer, because unless otherwise dictated (as the judge in this case did) contempt incarceration lasts until the judge/court says you are no longer in contempt.

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