Thaindian News

Washington, Mar 28 (ANI): Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has said that it was not hypocritical for him to accuse former US President Bill Clinton while cheating on his own wife, because he never lied under oath.

“I don’t know what you would have had me do, because…the President of the United States was committing perjury. Remember, he’s a lawyer! This was not some accidental thing. And I thought the outcome was about right,” Politico quoted Gingrich, as saying.

Although he admitted that his own extramarital affairs would be an issue in the coming campaign, he expressed hope that voters ‘will, if they don’t forgive or forget, at least look the other way’.

“We’ll find out six months or a year from now whether people are forgiving and whether they put in context events that are 10 and 15 years old,” he said.

The former House speaker from Georgia said he had spoken against Clinton because the latter had broken the law.

“Look, obviously it’s complex and obviously I wasn’t doing things to be proud of. On the other hand, what I said very clearly, and I knew this in part having gone through a divorce, I had been in depositions. I had been in situations where you had to swear to tell the truth. I understood that in a federal court, in a case in front of a federal judge, to commit a felony - which is what he did - perjury was a felony. And the question I raised was very simple. Should a president of the United States be above the law? Now I don’t think the president of the United States can be above the law,” Gingrich said. (ANI)