Tens of thousands of pages detailing the case for impeachment against former President Bill Clinton have remained locked away from the public for almost 20 years.
Although many believe that the report issued by then Independent Counsel Ken Starr revealed the final findings of his investigation of Clinton in the late 1990’s, around 60,000 pages of documents seen by only a few people describe the House Judiciary Committee’s case against the 42nd president.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde hired Chicago attorney and Democrat David Schippers to be the Chief Investigative Counsel to help prosecute the committee’s case against Clinton. Schippers described to American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios Friday how the evidence against Clinton was stored and studied by Congress at the time.
Ureleased Evidence Against Bill Clinton Is Still Sealed In Congress
“It was a locked guarded room. The rules were only members of the committee–not their staff–nobody else–only members of the committee had access to that room. They had to sign in and sign out. They could take nothing in with them and they could bring nothing out,” Schippers said.
Schippers and his team were responsible for going through all of the evidence collected by Starr and Starr’s investigative team on the various Clinton scandals at the time.
He continued, “When they announced they had all the materials in the room, I put my staff together and said, ‘Alright-look, if this is nothing but Monica Lewinsky—if this is nothing but sex, we’ll be out of here in a couple of weeks. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna look at everything. We’re gonna listen to everything. We’re gonna read every word. Each one of us is going to do it.’”
He added, “There were some 60,000 documents in there plus telephone calls–all kinds of stuff.”
Schippers described his reaction when they first read about Juanita Broaddrick.
“We came across a very thin file on a woman named Juanita Broaddrick. I was the first one to read that and I said, ‘Oh my God.’ Now it happened back in the 70’s. So I immediately called the Attorney General of the state of Arkansas. I asked what the statute of limitations on rape in the state. He said five years. So that was that.”
Schippers continued, “We had no information that she was anyhow connected to what we were investigating. So we just set it aside, although it was there for everybody to read. The rest of it–you know the real problem, is that after the impeachment trial they put all that stuff in executive session and put it into the archives. So everybody’s mouth is clamped shut. We can’t talk about specifics of what’s in there.”
Schippers says that after two weeks he sat his team of investigators down and asked each one for their reaction to what they read.
“And one by one they said, ‘He’s gotta go. The man’s a perjurer. He’s been after women. He’s been doing everything in his power to shut everybody up. The man should be impeached.’ So, I went to Henry Hyde and I said, ‘They’re going to recommend an impeachment inquiry,’” Schippers said.
Only 65 House Members And Zero Members Of The Senate Read The Evidence Against Clinton
Schippers recalled that only 65 members of the House, in a period of over one week, bothered to read the materials collected by Starr’s investigative team and many of them walked into the room ready to vote against impeaching the president.
Critics of Clinton both in the House and the Senate were targeted by Democratic opposition researchers looking for evidence of extra-marital affairs while allies of the Clintons attacked Starr and called him a “peeping tom” among other names for even leading the investigation.
“I would say five times a day congressmen would come in and say ‘Dave we’re doing this for Henry, but I’m telling you right now I’m not voting for impeachment.’ [I said] ‘that’s OK just take a look.’ And I remember one time one of those men who said that to me and I saw him in the room. He had his head in his hands and reading something and he was just muttering, ‘My God. My God. How bad can it get?’ Of that 65, 64 ended up voting for impeachment once they saw what was in there.”
He added, “Not one senator, though it was open to all of them, not one senator came over and looked at that material. I think they didn’t want to look at it because they were afraid of what they were going to find.”
Republican Senator: Even If Clinton Committed Rape And Murder The Senate Will Not Remove Him
Schippers described the situation in the Senate of the fix being in long before the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice went to the upper chamber from the House.
During a meeting with the leadership from both parties in the Senate, Schippers remembered Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, blocking him from giving his case to the members as well as a powerful Republican senator who told him that there would not be enough votes to remove Clinton from office.
“We were in there with three Democrats and three Republicans. One Republican was very vociferous. And the first thing Henry Hyde said was, ‘Well we are asking Mr. Schippers to be our attorney and that he put the witnesses on.’ And Senator Biden, who is now the Vice President, said, ‘No way that guy is going to open his mouth in the Senate.’”
Schippers asked Hyde later what Biden had against him and Hyde replied, “He said he heard what you said in the House and he wasn’t going to have that happen in the Senate.”
The meeting continued and a Republican senator made an objection when Hyde asked to bring in some of the witnesses.
“’I don’t care what happens. You are never going to get 67 votes,” Schippers recounted the senator saying. Henry Hyde responded, according to Schippers, “Well you know you go over there and Dave has information that the president committed a brutal rape.”
The same senator, according to Schippers, replied, “I don’t care if you could prove he raped a woman and stood up and shot her dead. You are not going to get 67 votes.”
Schippers explained, “Well I raise my hand which I was prone to do at various times and said, ‘Senator may I ask a question?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, what?’”
“I said, ‘Yesterday I saw 100 senators raise their right hand to God and swear to do equal and impartial justice. Are they going to ignore their vow too?’ And he said, ‘You’re right they are.’ And then I said, ‘Well the system doesn’t work.’ And that was that. It was Senator Stevens from Alaska. He’s dead now. God rest his soul.”
The Senate acquitted Clinton on both articles of impeachment on February 12, 1999. The perjury charge went down with 55 “not guilty” votes and 45 “guilty” votes. The Senate was split 50-50 with the obstruction-of-justice article.
Hillary Clinton Is Really The ‘Evil’ One Of The Two
Schippers, who is legally gagged from revealing what he learned about Hillary Clinton from the evidence in the room but can talk about his own investigation, said that she was “all over” her husband’s scandals.
“From our investigation, she was all over it. She was the one who was orchestrating all the attacks on the people that she called ‘the bimbos.’ ‘There was another bimbo eruption so let’s go and destroy them.’ I talked to every one of those ‘bimbos,’” Schippers said.
“And they were decent honorable good women. All of them were in some way threatened or attacked directly and I’ll tell you something. At one point someone said to me, ‘My God, how evil is that guy?’ and I said, ‘No, no he’s kind of a…boob. He just can’t control himself.” He added, “’But if you want to talk about real evil, it’s her.’ It was a terrible time. She was the one that did everything to destroy the women.”