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To establish probable cause for perjury or any other crime, you must be able to describe the crime in terms of the actions the accused took to commit the crime. Thus to establish probable cause for perjury you must be able to specifically describe the testimony you believe is perjurious. Stated differently, the most fundamental component of describing perjury are the exact words or phrases you believe are perjurious.

Lewis acknowledged that she understood in 1992 that her work on the Madison Guaranty referral could affect the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election if it became known that the Clintons were involved, even as mere witnesses, in a criminal investigation.²¹ But Lewis testified that her "own conservative [political] views" caused her to hold herself to an even higher standard of professionalism in her work on the Madison Guaranty case than the standard to which she held herself in other cases.²² Lewis denied any intention of creating an "October Surprise" through the submission of a pre-election criminal referral naming the Clintons.²³

Initially, Lewis told the Committee that she had no memory of having made this comment to Irons.²⁶ Then, after being confronted with Irons' contemporaneous notes, Lewis testified that if she did tell Irons that she planned to alter history through the pre-election submission of her referral, she probably did so sarcastically.²⁷

Irons flatly contradicted Lewis' testimony on this point. Fully supported by his contemporaneous notes of the conversation, Irons testified that Lewis' comments about her desire to "alter history" were "very dramatic" and that, in his mind, the comments clearly related to Lewis' identification of the Clintons as witnesses in the referral.²⁸ As discussed below, Lewis' conduct in the period immediately following her September 1, 1992 submission of the criminal referral compels the conclusion that Lewis sought to use the referral as a vehicle to alter the course of history by affecting the outcome of the 1992 Presidential election.

Lewis' efforts to press the FBI began almost immediately following her submission of the referral on September 1, 1992. In the course of the next "few days," Lewis tried on several occasions to contact Irons "to ask what the FBI was doing with [the] referral."⁴⁷ Apparently frustrated by her inability to reach Irons, Lewis called again on September 9, 1992 and spoke with Irons' secretary, who left the following written message for Irons:

Irons returned Lewis' call on September 10, 1992. In response to an inquiry from Lewis, Irons stated that the FBI and the United States Attorneys Office had not made a decision about the Madison Guaranty referral and that they were not going to be in a position to provide status reports in the future.⁴⁹

Lewis soon began contacting the United States Attorneys Office in Little Rock about the Madison referral. United States Attorney Charles Banks testified that he was aware of four or five calls that Lewis made to the office between early September and October 16, 1992.⁵⁴ Assistant United States Attorney Mac Dodson testified that Lewis called him "fairly often" between September and November 1992 and that Lewis gave him the impression that she thought prosecutors were not acting on the referral fast enough:

Lewis explained to Dodson that it was "standard" RTC practice to make a follow-up contact six weeks after the submission of a referral to make sure the referral had been received and to find out if any clarification or assistance was needed.⁵⁶ Like the explanation Lewis had given to Special Agent Irons for her repeated attempts to contact the FBI, Lewis' statement to Dodson was contradicted by the sworn testimony of Lewis' supervisor, Richard Iorio; as set forth in greater detail above, Iorio testified that the RTC's general practice was to wait 90 days before contacting the FBI or the United States Attorneys Office to follow up on a referral.⁵⁷

The evidence established that it was Banks' steadfast refusal to capitulate to Lewis' pressure that kept the referral out of the public domain prior to the election. Banks' October 16, 1992 letter to Pettus concluded:

Another federal prosecutor had complained that Lewis had made a mistake that led to a significantly diminished civil recovery from a financial institution in Paragould, Arkansas.¹⁵⁸ In 1992, Lewis had refused to cooperate with the senior RTC attorney who had been assigned to handle a fidelity bond claim. Lewis failed to inform RTC attorneys about a criminal referral she had sent to the U.S. Attorney's Office.¹⁵⁹ Lewis and an Assistant U.S. Attorney arranged a plea agreement with a "target defendant" that did not incorporate any requirement of restitution or cooperation by the defendant. Consequently, "the interests of the RTC were wholly unprotected"¹⁶⁰ and resulted in a loss to the RTC of approximately $200,000.¹⁶¹

Lewis's testimony contained numerous inconsistencies and implausible statements. Lewis testified, for example, that the recorder that taped her entire conversation with April Breslaw on February 2, 1994, turned on by itself.¹⁷⁰ In explaining this unlikely phenomenon, Lewis admitted that the tape recorder was not a voice-activated machine¹⁷¹ but testified that the tape recorder was "eight years old at that point, it didn't always function as it was expected to."¹⁷² The Committee issued a subpoena for that tape recorder, but Lewis testified that after the recorder "died" in mid-February 1994, she purchased a new tape recorder and discarded the old one, which had supposedly taped conversation with Breslaw.¹⁷³ In response to the Committee's request for documentation of the purchase of the "new" recorder, Lewis's attorney sent a November 7, 1995 letter to the Committee indicating that "Ms. Lewis has reviewed her bank statements . . . and determined that the following entry . . . reflects the purchase of the tape recorder:

The evidence, however, contradicts Lewis's assertion. Office Depot, the store that sold the new tape recorder to Lewis, subsequently provided records that proved that Lewis purchased other office supplies, not the new recorder, on February 17, 1994. The Office Depot records incontrovertibly established that Lewis had actually purchased the new tape recorder on January 17, 1994, over two weeks prior to the taping of the conversation with Breslaw.¹⁷⁴ Thus, Lewis's explanation of the tape recorder turning on by itself -- which strained credulity in the first place -- is refuted by the fact that she had already purchased the new tape recorder and, by her own admission, had discarded the old recorder when she purchased the new one.

In addition, it was improper for Lewis to have taped this conversation without first obtaining Breslaw's consent. Lewis denied deliberately setting out to surreptitiously record her conversation with Breslaw. Nevertheless, Lewis admitted that she was aware from the beginning that the conversation was being recorded and that she consciously decided to continue taping the conversation.¹⁷⁵ To insure that Breslaw remained unaware that the conversation was being taped, Lewis sat on the same side of her desk as Breslaw so that Breslaw "would not see the tape recorder."¹⁷⁶ Former RTC General Counsel Ellen Kulka testified that this clandestine taping of Breslaw was one of the justifications for placing Lewis on administrative leave.¹⁷⁷ *

Another example of Lewis's implausible testimony before the Special Committee occurred when Lewis stated that she never attempted to profit from the Madison investigation.¹⁷⁸ Lewis later conceded she attempted to market versions of copyrighted shirts and products containing the acronym "B.I.T.C.H.," which stood for "Boys I'm Taking Charge, Hillary" or "Bubba, I've taken charge. Hillary."¹⁷⁹ Lewis provided her RTC office telephone number to potential investors so that she could pursue her business interests while at work.¹⁸⁰ Lewis testified that the use of the word "bitch" was "in no way intended to denigrate the First Lady."¹⁸¹ Lewis refused to acknowledge the impropriety in conducting personal business affairs in her governmental office, or in marketing a product that disparaged people she had identified as witnesses in the course of her investigation.

Finally, Lewis leaked confidential RTC information during her February 18, 1994 meeting with Republican Congressman Jim Leach. The release of this confidential information directly violated RTC policy. The RTC's Director of the Office of Investigations and several members of the RTC's Office of the General Counsel issued a June 17, 1993 Memorandum that stated, "All referrals are sensitive and must be handled with appropriate confidentiality and care."¹⁸² James Thompson, an RTC vice president in the Kansas City region in 1993, testified that criminal referrals and their exhibits are confidential material, and that such materials "would not be disclosed to Congress" from "the regional level."¹⁸³ Nevertheless, Lewis provided Congressman Leach with material she knew to be confidential, such as internal RTC memoranda and correspondence regarding the Madison referrals, as well as documents from Madison Guaranty, Madison Bank and Madison Financial Corporation gathered by the RTC during the course of its investigation. Lewis also provided Congressman Leach with a summary of her conversation with Breslaw after playing the tape recording for Congressman Leach, even though she recognized that the conversation contained confidential information.¹⁸⁴ Predictably, Congressman Leach then released all of these documents to the public on March 24, 1994. Thus, Lewis's unilateral decision to leak RTC documents to Congressman Leach directly resulted in the public dissemination of confidential information in the middle of the Special Prosecutor's investigation of Madison-related matters.

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