What I have seen, heard and read has led me to conclude that many members of the Committee and probably many more members of the full House are conflicted in their thinking about the referral that has been presented. On the one hand, it is totally unacceptable to anyone interested in fair and equal justice to say that, if the President committed perjury in a federal court or before a federal grand jury, he should get away with it because he is President, the economy is good, or we are at peace. We cannot excuse perjury in the most highly publicized case involving the most powerful official if we expect the oath to be taken seriously by future witnesses. Let's be honest. No one here can or should bear the thought of witnesses lying under oath in the future and telling themselves that their lies are acceptable because of what they think the President did - namely, make a private judgment that it was more important to protect himself than to advance the search for truth.
Government is the great teacher.
We cannot permit it to teach us that lying under oath is acceptable. On the other hand, our Constitution uses carefully chosen words when it limits impeachable offenses to bribery, treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Although the debates on the impeachment language in the Constitution were sparse, there is solid support for the conclusion that the framers intended to limit impeachment to corruption of or abuse of office. There is a strong argument that perjury, as offensive as it is, does not amount to corruption of or abuse of office when the false answers relate to questions that do not address the President's official acts and duties. There is a clear danger to the Presidency of defining impeachable offenses too broadly, lest every opposition party seek to define every future instance of presidential misconduct as a crime in order to initiate an impeachment inquiry.