Free High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton by Ann Coulter

ineffective assistance of counsel.” 3
    Months earlier, Ginsburg’s peculiar strategy had already set off quiet but incessant murmurings among criminal lawyers. “It’s mind-boggling what a poor attorney [Ginsburg] is, and equally mind-boggling is the public’s lack of realization [of that fact].” “Ginsburg has a very bizarre view of how these things usually work. He appears to have learned criminal law from a 1950s crime movie.” “[Starr] offered her immunity [on the first day] if she wore a wire—what lawyer in his right mind would turn that down?!” “[Ginsburg] has done such an awful job, blabbering like he’s some brilliant technician. But all the talking heads are fawning over him because they want to interview him.” “He looks a lot like my Uncle Irv. I think that’s the only thing that explains it. This is probably what my Uncle Irv would do.”
    These were just some of the comments from criminal lawyers on the strange behavior of William Ginsburg. Naturally, therefore, the media was focused like a laser beam on the legal behavior of... Independent Counsel Ken Starr. To set the record straight, Starr had Lewinsky over a barrel. Lewinsky had only one defense, which her own lawyer almost completely sabotaged.
    It was a common misconception that fickle little Monica held the whole ball of wax with her decision about whether to make a clean breast of it, and that if she pleaded the fifth, everyone would pack up and go home. If Starr wanted her testimony, he would get it. Starr could have compelled her testimony before the grand jury (and in any trial other than her own). He could have simply unilaterally imposed limited federal immunity on her testimony, forcing her to waive her Fifth Amendment rights.
    All the Fifth Amendment requires is that a person not be compelled by the government to give self-incriminating statements and then be criminally prosecuted for those very statements. Any immunity granted pursuant to a compelled waiver of the Fifth Amendment simply returns things to the status quo ante. Any evidence the government knew about or later learns about—independent of Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony—could be used against her in a criminal prosecution.
    If Lewinsky was compelled to testify and she did not tell the whole, complete truth in her compelled testimony, she could have faced additional prosecutions for perjury or false statements in that testimony. Starr can also compel her testimony in any subsequent prosecution against, say, Vernon Jordan or President Clinton. Moreover, since Starr is the independent counsel he has all the powers of the attorney general. If he alone decided he needed her testimony, he would get it, or she would go to jail—just as another Clinton “close friend,” Whitewater partner Susan McDougal, did when she refused to testify.
    If Lewinsky had had an attorney who knew something about criminal law, he would have immediately demanded that she throw herself on Starr’s mercy and sing her little heart out to the grand jury for days on end. Even if she had done all that, she would still have had to keep her fingers crossed. As with compelled testimony, all she would have immunity from is Starr’s use of her own testimony before the grand jury in any subsequent prosecution against her. He could still have prosecuted her for perjury, suborning perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, with all the evidence he had, apart from her own statements to the grand jury.
    The “full immunity” Ginsburg kept demanding on television talk shows doesn’t technically exist under federal law. It exists in 1950s crime movies. The only advantage Lewinsky would have gained by cooperating was that Starr might have agreed to sign an informal letter agreement stating that he personally would not prosecute her for certain crimes. Typically, such letter agreements do not forswear prosecution for all of a witness’s crimes, just the most serious ones. It is a myth