As the debates got started in the House Judiciary Committee, Graham maintained that Clinton’s behavior was not simply a personal matter. “If this is just about sex with an intern,” he said on November 8, 1998, “and being caught off guard and making false statements but not really having a criminal heart about it, then that’s one thing. But if it’s really about gran- jury perjury, then we’ve got to say, given the context of the situation, is the political death penalty warranted?”
The political death penalty, he said, is impeachment.
To make their case for impeachment to the House, Graham and other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee held a nine-hour meeting on December 1, 1998, about the consequences of perjury. They hosted two women who were punished for lying under oath about sex. One, Pam Parsons, a former women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina, had been imprisoned for four months after a perjury conviction related to a civil libel lawsuit. A second witness, Barbara Battalino, was a psychiatrist for Veterans Affairs who lied in a civil deposition about a sexual relationship with a military veteran who came to her for help. She was still serving under house arrest when she appeared in the House.
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