Alex Fitzsimmons complains in a May 12 NewsBusters post that MSNBC’s Martin Bashir “admonished” Newt Gingrich’s “hypocrisy” for “criticizing former President Bill Clinton’s adulterous behavior while he was engaging in sexual transgressions of his own,” but “failed to mention even once that the Democratic president didn’t just cheat on his wife, but committed perjury to cover up the affair.”
In fact, as we’ve previously pointed out, Clinton was never convicted of perjury in either a criminal court or in his Senate impeachment trial. In the civil case Paula Jones filed against Clinton, the judge ruled that Clinton gave “intentionally false” testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky — which is not perjury.
Not all lying in court is perjury, which has a specific legal definition. It’s simply inaccurate for Fitzsimmons to use that term to describe what Clinton did.