Clinton–Lewinsky scandal

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Clinton with Lewinsky in February 1997

The Clinton–Lewinsky scandal was a

U.S. Senate trial.[2]

Clinton was held in civil

Lewinsky was a graduate of

White House Office of Legislative Affairs. It is believed that Clinton began a personal relationship with her while she worked at the White House, the details of which she later confided to Linda Tripp, her Defense Department co-worker who secretly recorded their telephone conversations.[6]

In January 1998, Tripp discovered that Lewinsky had sworn an

Whitewater scandal, the White House FBI files controversy, and the White House travel office controversy. During the grand jury testimony, Clinton's responses were carefully worded, and he argued "it depends on what the meaning of the word is is",[7] with regard to the truthfulness of his statement that "there is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship".[8]

This scandal is sometimes referred to as "Monicagate",

"-gate" construction that has been used since the Watergate scandal
.

Allegations of sexual contact

Monica Lewinsky in May 1997

Lewinsky said she had sexual encounters with Bill Clinton on nine occasions from November 1995 to March 1997. According to her published schedule, First Lady Hillary Clinton was at the White House for at least some portion of seven of those days.[13]

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors relocated her job to the

United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson was asked by the White House in 1997 to interview Lewinsky for a job on his staff at the United Nations. Richardson did so, and offered her a position, which she declined.[15] The American Spectator alleged that Richardson knew more about the Lewinsky affair than he declared to the grand jury.[16]

Lewinsky confided in

Kenneth Starr and bring them to the attention of people working on the Paula Jones case.[19] In the fall of 1997, Goldberg began speaking to reporters (including Michael Isikoff of Newsweek) about the tapes.[20]

In the Paula Jones case, Lewinsky had submitted an affidavit that denied any physical relationship with Clinton. In January 1998, she attempted to persuade Tripp to commit perjury in the Jones case. Instead, Tripp gave the tapes to Starr, who was investigating the Whitewater controversy and other matters. Starr was now armed with evidence of Lewinsky's admission of a physical relationship with Clinton, and he broadened the investigation to include Lewinsky and her possible perjury in the Jones case.

Denial and subsequent admission

News of the scandal first broke on January 17, 1998, on the Drudge Report,[21] which reported that Newsweek editors were sitting on a story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff exposing the affair. The story broke in the mainstream press on January 21 in The Washington Post.[22] The story swirled for several days and, despite swift denials from Clinton, the clamor for answers from the White House grew louder. On January 26, President Clinton, standing with his wife, spoke at a White House press conference, and issued a denial in which he said:[23]

Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And I worked on it until pretty late last night. But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.[24]

Pundits debated whether Clinton would address the allegations in his

Today she said, "The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."[26]

For the next several months and through the summer, the media debated whether or not an affair had occurred and whether or not Clinton had lied or obstructed justice, but nothing could be definitively established beyond the taped recordings because Lewinsky was unwilling to discuss the affair or testify about it. On July 28, 1998, a substantial delay after the public break of the scandal, Lewinsky received transactional immunity in exchange for grand jury testimony concerning her relationship with Clinton.[27] She also turned over a semen-stained blue dress (which Tripp had encouraged her to save without dry cleaning) to the Starr investigators. The FBI tested the dress and matched the semen stains to a blood sample from Clinton, thereby providing unambiguous DNA evidence that could prove the relationship despite Clinton's official denials.[28]

Clinton admitted in taped grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998, that he had engaged in an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky. That evening he gave a nationally televised statement admitting that his relationship with Lewinsky was "not appropriate".[29][30]

On August 20, 1998, three days after Clinton testified on the Monica Lewinsky scandal,

anti-Semitic canards to spread in the Middle East that Lewinsky was a Jewish agent sent to influence Clinton against aiding Palestine. This conspiracy theory would influence Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell and the September 11 attacks.[39]

Perjury charges

In his deposition for the Jones lawsuit, Clinton denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky. Based on the evidence—a blue dress with Clinton's semen that Lewinsky provided—Starr concluded that the president's sworn testimony was false and perjurious.

During the deposition, Clinton was asked "Have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition Exhibit 1?" The judge ordered that Clinton be given an opportunity to review the agreed definition. Afterwards, based on the definition created by the Independent Counsel's Office, Clinton answered, "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky." Clinton later said, "I thought the definition included any activity by [me], where [I] was the actor and came in contact with those parts of the bodies" which had been explicitly listed (and "with an intent to gratify or arouse the sexual desire of any person"). In other words, Clinton denied that he had ever contacted Lewinsky's "genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks", and effectively claimed that the agreed-upon definition of "sexual relations" included giving oral sex but excluded receiving oral sex.[40]

Two months after the Senate failed to convict him, President Clinton was held in civil

United States Supreme Court.[5]

Impeachment

In December 1998, Clinton's Democratic political party was in the minority in both chambers of Congress. A few Democratic members of Congress, and most in the opposition Republican Party, claimed that Clinton's giving false testimony and allegedly influencing Lewinsky's testimony were crimes of

bombing campaign in Iraq
, the House of Representatives voted to issue two Articles of Impeachment against him which was followed by a 21-day trial in the Senate.

Clinton was acquitted on both counts as neither received the necessary two-thirds majority vote of the senators present. Between 45 and 50 senators voted to convict, depending on the charge, short of the 67 votes needed for conviction and removal from office.[41] All the Democrats in the Senate voted for acquittal on both the perjury and the obstruction of justice charges. Ten Republicans voted for acquittal for perjury: John Chafee (Rhode Island), Susan Collins (Maine), Slade Gorton (Washington), Jim Jeffords (Vermont), Richard Shelby (Alabama), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Ted Stevens (Alaska), Fred Thompson (Tennessee), and John Warner (Virginia). Five Republicans voted for acquittal for obstruction of justice: Chafee, Collins, Jeffords, Snowe, and Specter.

President Clinton was thereby acquitted of all charges and remained in office. There were attempts to censure the president by the House of Representatives, but those attempts failed.

Aftermath

Effect on 2000 presidential election

The scandal arguably affected the

electoral votes regardless of the effects of the Florida recount controversy.[42]

Political analysts have supported both views. Before and after the 2000 election, John Cochran of ABC News connected the Lewinsky scandal with a voter phenomenon he called "Clinton fatigue".[43] Polling showed that the scandal continued to affect Clinton's low personal approval ratings through the election,[44] and analysts such as Vanderbilt University's John G. Geer later concluded "Clinton fatigue or a kind of moral retrospective voting had a significant impact on Gore's chances".[45] Other analysts sided with Clinton's argument, and argued that Gore's refusal to have Clinton campaign with him damaged his appeal.[46][47][48][unreliable source?][49]

Collateral scandals

During the scandal, supporters of former president Clinton alleged that the matter should remain private, and called some supporting Clinton's impeachment hypocritical. A highly publicized investigation campaign actively sought information that might embarrass politicians who supported impeachment. According to the British newspaper The Guardian,

Larry Flynt ... the publisher of Hustler magazine, offered a $1 million reward ... Flynt was a sworn enemy of the Republican party [and] sought to dig up dirt on the Republican members of Congress who were leading the impeachment campaign against President Clinton. [... Although] Flynt claimed at the time to have the goods on up to a dozen prominent Republicans, the ad campaign helped to bring down only one. Robert Livingston—a congressman from Louisiana ... abruptly retired after learning that Mr. Flynt was about to reveal that he had also had an affair.[50]

lead House manager, also had an affair while in office as a state legislator. Hyde, aged 70 during the Lewinsky hearings, dismissed it as a "youthful indiscretion" (he had been 41).[51]

Republican congressman Bob Livingston had been widely expected to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in the next Congressional session.[52] Then just weeks away after Flynt revealed the affair, Livingston resigned and challenged Clinton to do the same.

Bob Barr (R-GA) another Republican House manager, had an affair while married. Barr had been the first lawmaker in either chamber to call for Clinton's resignation due to the Lewinsky affair. Barr lost a primary challenge less than three years after the impeachment proceedings.[53]

Dan Burton (R-IN) said, "No one, regardless of what party they serve, no one, regardless of what branch of government they serve, should be allowed to get away with these alleged sexual improprieties ..."[54] In 1998, Burton admitted that he himself had had an affair in 1983 which produced a child.[55]

Newt Gingrich (R-GA) US Representative, Speaker of the House and leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994,[56] admitted in 1998 to having had an affair with then House Agriculture Committee staffer Callista Bisek while he was still married to his second wife,[57] at the same time as he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury regarding an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.[58][59]

Lewinsky scandal
while he himself, was having a long-term affair with his chief of staff, Jennifer Laptook. (2003) [60]

Republican Helen Chenoweth-Hage from Idaho aggressively called for the resignation of President Clinton and then admitted to her own six-year affair with a married rancher during the 1980s.[61]

Personal acceptance

Historian

The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, regarding Clinton's revelation that the Lewinsky affair began because "I cracked; I just cracked." Branch writes that Clinton had felt "beleaguered, unappreciated, and open to a liaison with Lewinsky" following "the Democrats' loss of Congress in the November 1994 elections, the death of his mother the previous January, and the ongoing Whitewater investigation".[62] Publicly, Clinton had previously blamed the affair on "a terrible moral error" and on anger at Republicans, stating, "if people have unresolved anger, it makes them do non-rational, destructive things".[63]

See also

References

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Further reading

External links