WASHINGTON -- Republican senators on Sunday said some of their colleagues may vote against removing President Clinton from office. House prosecutors, meanwhile, prepared to question Monica Lewinsky in a last-ditch effort to strengthen their case.
As Lewinsky waited at the Mayflower Hotel for her deposition Monday, cracks appeared in the unified Republican front on the perjury and obstruction charges against Clinton."The sense right now in just listening to members talk is that there are Republicans who either are not going to vote for perjury or the obstruction of justice" charge, Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., said in a telephone interview.
Hutchinson declined to estimate how many might vote to acquit, but he indicated that getting even 50 votes for conviction in a chamber controlled by 55 Republican senators is in doubt.
"You would get much closer to getting a majority in the obstruction (charge) than on the perjury charge" as the case now stands, he said.
House prosecutors have shifted their focus to the obstruction charge on the assumption that even among Republicans who believe that Clinton lied under oath, there is questionable support for the notion that the untruths were serious enough to warrant the president's removal, according to a knowledgeable official who demanded anonymity.
To that end, two of the three witnesses prosecutors will question this week -- presidential friend Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal -- go to the obstruction question, rather than the perjury charge.
And sources close to the committee have said that Rep. Ed Bryant of Tennessee, who will question Lewinsky, wants to elicit information on Clinton's efforts to conceal their affair from Paula Jones' lawyers and independent counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury.
But even as senators widely believe they don't have the 67 votes needed to remove him from office, Clinton's battles are far from over.
Starr is considering seeking the president's indictment before Clinton's term expires. A legal source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday that Starr's view "for some time" has been that a sitting president is indictable.
Bipartisanship showed a glimmer of life again as the White House and senators of both parties expressed dismay at a report about Starr's thinking in The New York Times.
"There is just no end to what this man is willing to do to continue to pursue the president," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
"I think it's unfortunate because it gets in the way or our focus on what our constitutional obligation is," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, on ABC's "This Week."
But Clinton's most immediate concern is the final chapters of the Senate trial.
Senators on the Sunday talk shows showed other signs of cracks in the GOP's unity that muscled through Republican plans last week to continue the trial and call witnesses.
Asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" how many Republicans would vote to convict Clinton on the perjury charge, Shelby, R-Ala. replied: "Not as many as a lot of people believe."
"I haven't polled anybody, but I hear a lot of people say that is the weakest" of the two charges. He added that the charge would draw "perhaps" fewer than 50 votes for conviction.
"A number of senators who believe that the president lied under oath but that his wrongdoing in that area does not constitute perjury because of the legal definition of perjury," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, also took to the airwaves Sunday, appearing on "Fox News Sunday" to discuss the Senate trial.
One prospective presidential candidate issued a stern warning from conservative circles to Republicans up for re-election next year who vote against the articles of impeachment.
"Senators who vote to acquit just naturally will end up facing primary challengers," conservative activist Gary Bauer said on NBC.
Even with conviction apparently beyond reach, senators continued to search for ways stop Clinton from walking away unpunished from the second impeachment trial in history.
A Republican proposal to pass a "finding of fact" that would state that Clinton lied under oath and impeded justice crossed party lines.
Senate Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., pushed for the plan as a way to "make the record clear for history and posterity that we have indeed not let this go unintended."
The proposal drew support from one of Clinton's biggest supporters on policy and harshest critics of the president's behavior.
"I for one would be hard-pressed to vote against it," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said on ABC's "This Week."
But other Republicans and Democrats still objected to the political cover such a proposal would grant to senators who vote to acquit.
"We ought to either convict the president and kick him out of office or we ought to acquit him," Shelby said. "This looks to me like somebody is trying to get around the Constitution, trying to have it both ways."