Clinton's Whitewater Testimony Delayed Another Day

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AllPolitics, July 17) -- President Bill Clinton's videotaped testimony, expected today, will likely be played before jurors in the second Whitewater trial on Thursday, as cross-examination of his top aide Bruce Lindsey continued.

Lindsey acknowledged that Arkansas bankers allowed then-governor Clinton to delay repaying a $100,000 1990 campaign loan for two years. Lindsey also said he had discussed the Whitewater probe with Clinton, "when it came out that I was under investigation." Prosecutor W. Hickman Ewing Jr. seemed to imply that defendants Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert M. Hill, whose bank made the loan, would go to any lengths to accomodate Clinton. "Can you testify to anything you required that they ever said no to?" Ewing asked. "I can't think of a thing, no sir, " Lindsey replied.

Clinton's testimony is expected to bolster the arguments of the defense, and as in the first Whitewater trial, he is not a defendant. The jury of that case, bringing sweeping guilty verdicts against Clinton's former real estate partners Jim and Susan McDougal, and against former Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker, said the president's testimony was credible if largely irrelevant to their deliberations.

In this trial, Independent Whitewater counsel Kenneth Starr's prosecution team is trying to prove Branscum and Hill, both Clinton political supporters, conspired to hide campaign withdrawals from the IRS during Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign.

Lindsey, testifying as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, vehemently denied conspiring with Branscum and Hill. He did acknowledge that the campaign' 1990 report doesn't "precisely" detail how certain withdrawals were used, however. Later, Ewing suggested to reporters that Lindsey and Clinton's political circle concealed the purpose of some campaign expenditures, in part, to limit queries during a future Clinton bid for the presidency.

"We submit there can be a reasonable inference they weren't just concerned about the 1990 governor's election, but elections to come, like national elections," Ewing said.

Clinton's Whitewater Testimony Delayed Another Day

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