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4.2.12 WC: 191694 Historically I think we can all agree that false statements have considerable variation and degree. The core concept of perjury grows out of the Ten Commandments, "bearing false witness," a term that consisted in accusing another falsely of a crime. Clearly the most heinous brand of lying is the giving of false testimony that results in the imprisonment of somebody who is innocent. Less egregious, but still quite serious, is false testimony that results in the conviction of a person who may be guilty, but whose rights were violated in a manner that would preclude conviction if the police testified truthfully. ...The least culpable genre of false testimony are those that deny embarrassing personal conduct of marginal relevance to the matter at issue in the legal proceeding. I then tried to place Clinton’s false statements in their proper place along this continuum. I think it is clear that the false statements of which President Clinton is accused fall at the most marginal end of the least culpable genre of this continuum of offenses, and would never even be considered for prosecution in the routine cases involving an ordinary defendant. I then blasted the Committee for having never conducted hearings on the corrosive problems never conducted hearings on the corrosive problem of police perjury—‘testilying.” If we really want to reduce the corrosive effect of perjury on our legal system, the place to begin is at or near the top of the perjury hierarchy. If instead we continue deliberately to blind ourselves to pervasive police perjury and other equally dangerous forms of lying under oath, and focus on a politically charged tangential lie in the lowest category of possible perjury, hiding embarrassing facts by evasive answers to poorly framed question, which were marginally relevant to a dismissible case, we will be reaffirming the dangerous and hypocritical message that perjury will continue to be selectively prosecuted, as a crime reserved for political or other agenda-driven purposes. I then warned that: [H]istory will not be kind to this committee. History will not be kind to this Congress. I think this committee and this Congress will go down in history along with the Congress that improperly impeached Andrew Johnson for political reasons. Following my testimony, Chief Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat, of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11" Circuit, was asked to comment about the different types of perjury I had discussed. He replied that “perjury is the same, regardless of the circumstances.” I then responded to Judge Tjoflat’s view: I think this committee is doing a terrible disservice to the rule of law and to the sanctity of the oath by trivializing the differences, as Judge Tjoflat said in one of the most 276 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017363