Jim Sensenbrenner: “let us talk about fairness to the American taxpayer that paid for the independent counsel's investigation. The American…”

“let us talk about fairness to the American taxpayer that paid for the independent counsel's investigation. The American public, to be fair to them, ought to be able to see what the independent counsel has sent to Congress, pursuant to the independent counsel statute, free from spin doctors, free from talking heads, free from media hype. Let them see it in the form that it was sent by the independent counsel. I would point out that nobody is going to have a 1-minute advantage and a heads-up on this, because this will be released simultaneously to the American public, to the Congress, and to the President of the United States. Now, the 35 of us who are members of the Committee on the Judiciary have an awesome constitutional responsibility in discharging our duties and evaluating this evidence to see whether or not the President has committed an impeachable offense or not. I am not asking for a leg-up to start working on this awesome responsibility. I am asking for fairness. I am asking for an ability to be able to reach my own conclusions, free from the advice of people on the outside who have got axes to grind, and that is why I think that this resolution is fundamentally fair, because it strikes a balance between the openness that the American public expects this proceeding to be done, as well as the request that Independent Counsel Starr has made to protect certain individuals from undue conclusions, who are not involved in this process at all.”