Questions Are Brewing Among Silent Senators

WASHINGTON — After silently enduring five days of legal presentations, most of the 100 senators sitting in judgment of President Clinton are bursting with questions for the lawyers in his impeachment trial.

They are about to get their chance.

And when such questioning, scheduled for Friday, begins, the trial will enter a whole new phase--the first of many in the coming days when spontaneity, unpredictability, confusion and heightened partisanship will likely replace the well-scripted scenario that has unfolded so far in the Senate chamber.

Senate impeachment rules bar the lawmakers from speaking during the questioning period. So they must submit their questions in writing to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who as the presiding officer will read each query.

Beyond that, an array of uncertainties looms over the procedure. For instance, even the basic issue of how much time a lawyer will have to answer a question has not been specified, although some Senate aides think Rehnquist may have some discretion “in moving that along.”

Beyond the scheduled 16 hours of questioning lurk even larger and more divisive issues.

According to a trial blueprint unanimously agreed upon by senators, a Democratic motion to dismiss the case against Clinton may be filed as early as Monday. That proposal, currently seen as unlikely to prevail, is to be quickly followed by a vote on whether to call witnesses.

A new wrinkle surfaced Wednesday when two Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, vowed to wage a floor fight to open to the public the Senate’s debates on those two matters, which under existing rules are to be held behind closed doors.

Oral Arguments to Conclude Today

The most pressing issues will arise immediately after White House lawyers conclude their oral arguments today.

As the trial resumes Friday, Republicans and Democrats will have up to eight hours apiece to question any of the 13 House Republican prosecutors or the seven White House lawyers.

According to Senate legal counsel Thomas B. Griffith, little is known for sure about the process beyond these facts:

* Rehnquist may not edit the questions.

* Either legal team may object to a question. But a simple majority of the Senate can overrule Rehnquist’s finding on such an objection.

* Senators may submit follow-up questions.

Both Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), have created a process to screen questions to minimize redundancy and to organize them by topics.

Under that procedure, Republicans have been asked to send their questions to Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Mike DeWine (R-Ohio). On the Democratic side, Daschle and his staff will do the work.

“All we’re setting up is a databank--to avoid duplicative questions and to try to see if we can have some semblance of order,” Hatch said.

Ultimately, the screeners can only make recommendations to their colleagues.

“Keep in mind, anybody can do anything they want to do,” Hatch warned. “We’ll make recommendations, but they don’t have to be followed.”

As he and his colleagues sort through the questions they already have received--now numbering about 70--Hatch is making editing changes “to better phrase things.”

“We just want to make sure we don’t have 10 people asking the same questions,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the minority whip.

“The idea is not to interfere with anybody asking any questions. It’s just to try to bring some order to the questions,” DeWine said.

“And my guess is that there’ll be attempts to be flexible enough with time to give somebody a follow-up question. But as a practical matter, a follow-up may be an hour apart,” he added. “It’s a strange process.”

Each side is expected to use its eight-hour period in two-hour blocks, according to Hatch.

Hatch, like most senators, declined to discuss the questions he may want to pose.

But Harkin, perhaps Clinton’s fiercest Senate defender, had no such qualms. He said he intends to grill the House Republican prosecutors on their version of events surrounding efforts by lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the president’s close friend, to find Lewinsky a job.

“I just want to know why the prosecution overlooked” certain details, he said, adding that he also wants House prosecutors to address the issue of whether “circumstantial evidence and inferences are enough to convict a president.”

Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) said he wants a more compelling explanation of why the House GOP majority did not call witnesses while considering impeachment.

“This is about as serious a move as a legislative body makes. How can you say that you’re going to impeach somebody but you’re not going to go out and dig up all the information that you could possibly need?”

The House prosecution’s explanation to date, Kohl said, “just doesn’t hold water. I think they need to explain that one a lot more clearly to satisfy me.”

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said he has developed “about a dozen” questions so far, mostly focused on the obstruction of justice allegations against the president.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said he wants to hear a more in-depth discussion of whether, in an impeachment trial, a president should be held to a different standard from a federal judge.

“I have many questions,” he said. “But I know that in the end I’ve got to probably give Tom [Daschle] two or three questions.”

The questioning of lawyers is scheduled to end Saturday, followed next week by consideration of various motions.

To begin with, the legal teams will have two hours, evenly divided, to argue in open session a Democratic motion to dismiss, probably to be offered by Daschle.

Democrats do not expect to prevail. But they hope to demonstrate a united front--with perhaps all 45 Democrats voting to dismiss the case. Such a show of force against conviction--since it would take 12 Democrats to join all 55 Republicans to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to oust Clinton--could lead to a bipartisan search for an alternative to a full-length trial, complete with witnesses.

All Votes in Open Session

After arguments by lawyers for both sides on such a dismissal motion, senators are to privately debate the issue.

But at that point, Harkin and Wellstone plan to try to persuade the Senate to open the debate on such a motion, a rule change that would require a two-thirds majority. Ironically, the debate on opening the debate must be in closed session. All votes in the trial are to be held in open session.

The procedure could repeat itself on the question of whether to have any witnesses. That is expected to be a multi-step undertaking, although how it will unfold remains undecided.

The widely ballyhooed unanimous Senate agreement on Jan. 8 to proceed with the trial deferred such issues, precisely because there was no agreement on them.

The first question would be whether any witnesses at all should be deposed in private by lawyers in the case. If a simple majority votes affirmatively, a separate vote would be taken on which specific witnesses to call.

Still down the road is the question of whether the deposed witnesses would be called to provide live testimony. The Senate would consider each witness one by one, according to Senate aides.

Times staff writers Janet Hook, Marc Lacey and Richard A. Serrano contributed to this story.