Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974 (2/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974 (2/2)
[01.02.54] Mr. SEIBERLING....... what is in dispute are the conclusions we ought to draw from them. The evidence is largely circumstantial. but I remember the Writer Thoreau once said that, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Now, what have we found In this case ? We have found a fraudulent deed and I do not think there is any doubt of it at least I do not have any doubt about that in my mind. And that deed -was used to secure an enormous tax deduction. Now, the question is whether the President was involved in that fraud. The Internal Revenue Service has already determined that, he was involved in negligence and they assessed negligence penalties against him which be has paid. Now, the question is how do we decide whether there is sufficient, cause, to send it to the Senate for a trial? And my feeling, after considering all of the principal factors, is that we should do so and I would just, like to outline very quickly these because they have been thrown out in detail here. First is that the President signed income tax and by so doing verified that all of the facts therein were true to the best of his knowledge and that he personally read the return, Second we also have evidence that before he signed it he went over it, page by page with his lawyer. Third, we find that he failed to answer questions addressed to him by the Internal Revenue Service regarding certain key facts and he refused to answer them. The fourth point is that be has shown a habit of great attention to detail regarding his personal finances. Fifth of all, -We have the great size of this deduction, $576,000, a huge sum of money. And finally we have the testimony that if the ease had involved anyone other than the President itself it would have been referred to a grand jury for prosecution. Now, it seems, to me that we cannot have one standard for the President and another standard for all of the other taxpayers. Either we are going to have to hold him to the same standard and submit him to the same process, or we are going to have to lower those standards and make things easier on other taxpayers. Now, I maybe as a taxpayer and as taxpayers we would prefer to have it that way but I think that if we are going to protect the integrity of the system we are going to have to subject him to the same kind of scrutiny that any other taxpayer would be subject to, And that means, in my opinion a trial so that all of the facts can be brought out and that trial of course has to be in the Senate as far as this body is concerned. NOW, we have, not discussed with respect to San Clemente and Key Biscayne the benefits and emoluments and the fact that there is also an abuse of power aspect to this matter. The President clearly has used his power through his aides and personally over the General Services Administration and over the Secret Service to obtain which he would not otherwise have obtained. And this has been a source Of embarrassment to the GSA and the Secret, Service. And as I recall when the questions first were submitted to them by the clerk as to whether expenditures had been made for the President's personal benefit at, San Clemente, the GSA refused to answer on the grounds that the facts, were classified because of national security. NOW, the. Secret Service the next week released some of the facts so that they could not have been national security. But, this is an example of the spuriousness of the concept of national security to cover up embarrassing things such as we have seen in earlier discussions before this committee. And if I have any time left, I would like to ask the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Brooks. if he could give us the chronology of how the figures were gradually brought out as to the expenditure. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman has consumed 5 minutes. Mr. MEZVINSKY. I will give him another minute, Mr. Chairman. Mr. SEIBERLING. Thank you. I Would yield to the gentleman from Texas. [01.07.29]