These charges stem from allegations surrounding the President that he denied the Lewinsky affair and tried to obstruct justice during the Paula Jones' harassment case brought against him. An important precedent was set here by Walter Nixon, a Mississippi judge. He was the last US official to be impeached in 1989, for lying to a grand jury trial over marijuana-smuggling. Republican Congressman Sensenbrenner believes this case could prove a decisive precedent. A person commits perjury in US law when they wilfully subscribes to any matter he does not believe to be true.
Subornation of perjury is when a person induces another to commit perjury.
It is very rare for perjury to be applied in civil cases, like the Paula Jones harassment case, because lawyers accept that lying is endemic. So, Clinton supporters argue that charges of perjury against the President are tenuous. The committee chairman Henry Hyde has stated that he does not expect to extend the impeachment inquiry to encompass all the allegations examined by Prosecutor Kenneth Starr during his four year investigation. Starr has also looked at the alleged misuse of FBI files, campaign funding abuses and the Whitewater land deal, involved Clinton before he became President. In American criminal inquests, grand juries collect evidence to decide whether someone should be charged with a crime.