Clinton–Lewinsky scandal

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File:Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky on February 28, 1997 A3e06420664168d9466c84c3e31ccc2f.jpg

Clinton with Lewinsky in February 1997

The Clinton–Lewinsky scandal was a sex scandal involving Bill Clinton, the president of the United States, and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. Their sexual relationship began in 1995—when Clinton was 49 years old and Lewinsky was 22 years old—and lasted 18 months, ending in 1997.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Clinton ended televised remarks on January 26, 1998, with the later infamous statement: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. He was subsequently acquitted on all impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day U.S. Senate trial.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Clinton was held in civil contempt of court by Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving misleading testimony in the Paula Jones case regarding Lewinsky,<ref name="ppppava">Template:Cite news</ref> and was also fined $90,000 by Wright.<ref name="auto1">Template:Cite news</ref> His license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas for five years; shortly thereafter, he was disbarred from presenting cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref name="auto">Template:Cite news</ref>

Lewinsky was a graduate of Lewis & Clark College. She was hired during Clinton's first term in 1995 as an intern at the White House through the White House Internship Program and was later an employee of the 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In January 1998, Tripp discovered that Lewinsky had sworn an affidavit in the Paula Jones case, denying a relationship with Clinton. She delivered tapes to Ken Starr, the independent counsel who was investigating Clinton on other matters, including the Whitewater controversy, 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",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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".<ref name="ls-nh">President Bill Clinton Template:Webarchive, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 21, 1998.</ref>

This scandal has sometimes been referred to as "Monicagate",<ref>Rich, Frank. "Journal; Monicagate Year Two", The New York Times, December 16, 1998.</ref> "Lewinskygate",<ref>Rich, Frank. "Journal; Days of the Locust", The New York Times, February 25, 1998.</ref> "Tailgate",<ref>Hennenberger, Melinda. "The President Under Fire", The New York Times, January 29, 1998.</ref> "Sexgate",<ref name=barron>James Barron with Hoban, Phoebe. "Dueling Soaps", The New York Times, January 28, 1998.</ref> and "Zippergate",<ref name=barron /> following the "-gate" construction that has been used since the Watergate scandal.

Allegations of sexual contactEdit

File:Monica lewinsky.jpg

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In April 1996, Lewinsky's superiors relocated her job to the Pentagon, because they felt she was spending too much time around Clinton.<ref>Jeff Leen (January 24, 1998). "Lewinsky: Two Coasts, Two Lives, Many Images", The Washington Post.</ref> According to his autobiography, then-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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The American Spectator alleged that Richardson knew more about the Lewinsky affair than he declared to the grand jury.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Lewinsky confided in Linda Tripp about her relationship with Clinton.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Tripp persuaded Lewinsky to save the gifts Clinton had given her, and not to dry clean a semen-stained blue dress to keep it as an "insurance policy."<ref name=":0" /> Tripp reported their conversations to literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, who advised her to secretly record them,<ref>U.S. News & World Report, "The Monica Lewinsky Tapes", February 2, 1998, v.124 n.4 p.23.</ref> which Tripp began doing in September 1997. Goldberg also urged Tripp to take the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and bring them to the attention of people working on the Paula Jones case.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the fall of 1997, Goldberg began speaking to reporters (including Michael Isikoff of Newsweek) about the tapes.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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 admissionEdit

{{#invoke:Listen|main}} News of the scandal first broke on January 17, 1998, on the Drudge Report,<ref>"Newsweek Kills Story On White House Intern", DrudgeReportArchives, 1998.</ref> 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.<ref name="WP-21jan1998">Template:Cite news</ref> 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:<ref>Top 5: Political Quotes That Defined Presidencies, APOLITICUS.COM Template:Webarchive</ref>

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.<ref>Clinton, Bill. Response to the Lewinsky Allegations Template:Webarchive, Miller Center of Public Affairs, January 26, 1998.</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Pundits debated whether Clinton would address the allegations in his State of the Union Address. Ultimately, he chose not to mention them. Hillary Clinton remained supportive of her husband throughout the scandal.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On January 27, in an appearance on NBC's 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."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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 circumstantial evidence that proved the relationship despite Clinton's official denials.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Clinton admitted in a 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".<ref>Clinton, Bill. Address to the nation, PBS.org, August 17, 1998. Template:Webarchive</ref><ref>AP Archive (July 21, 2015). Template:YouTube</ref>

On August 20, 1998, three days after Clinton testified on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Operation Infinite Reach launched missile attacks against al-Qaeda bases in Khost, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, in retaliation for the 1998 United States embassy bombings.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Some countries, media outlets, protesters, and Republicans accused Clinton of ordering the attacks as a diversion.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="vick">Template:Cite news</ref> The attacks also drew parallels to the then-recently released movie Wag the Dog, which features a fictional president faking a war in Albania to distract attention from a sex scandal.Template:Sfn<ref name="Dirty">Template:Cite news</ref> Administration officials denied any connection between the missile strikes and the ongoing scandal,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and 9/11 Commission investigators found no reason to dispute those statements.<ref>9/11 Commission Report, p. 118.</ref> The missile strikes also caused Antisemitic canards to spread in the Middle East that Lewinsky was a Jewish agent sent to influence Clinton against supporting the Palestinians. This conspiracy theory would influence Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell and the September 11 attacks.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Perjury chargesEdit

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 perjurious.

During the deposition, Clinton was asked "Have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition ExhibitTemplate:Nbsp1?" 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.<ref>Tiersma, Peter. "The Language of Perjury", languageandlaw.org, November 20, 2007.</ref>

Two months after the Senate failed to convict him, President Clinton was held in civil contempt of court by Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving misleading testimony regarding his sexual relationship with Lewinsky, and was also fined $90,000 by Wright.<ref name=ppppava/><ref name="auto1"/> Clinton declined to appeal the civil contempt of court ruling, citing financial problems,<ref name=ppppava/> but still maintained that his testimony complied with Wright's earlier definition of sexual relations.<ref name=ppppava/> In 2001, his license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas for five years and later by the United States Supreme Court.<ref name="auto"/>

ImpeachmentEdit

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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 obstruction of justice and perjury and thus impeachable offenses. After a delay due to a brief 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.<ref name=WaPo02131999>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.

AftermathEdit

Effect on 2000 presidential electionEdit

The scandal arguably affected the 2000 U.S. presidential election in two quite different ways. Democratic Party candidate and sitting vice president Al Gore said that Clinton's scandal had been "a drag" that deflated the enthusiasm of their party's base, and had the effect of reducing Democratic votes. Clinton said the scandal had made Gore's campaign too cautious, and that if Clinton had been allowed to campaign for Gore in Arkansas and New Hampshire, either state would have delivered Gore's needed electoral votes regardless of the effects of the Florida recount controversy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Polling showed that the scandal continued to affect Clinton's low personal approval ratings through the election,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Other analysts sided with Clinton's argument, and argued that Gore's refusal to have Clinton campaign with him damaged his appeal.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Beyond the Recounts: Trends in the 2000 US Presidential Election, Cairn.info</ref>

Collateral scandalsEdit

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 Template:Nbsp... the publisher of Hustler magazine, offered a $1Template:Nbspmillion rewardTemplate:Nbsp... 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. [...Template:NbspAlthough] 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 LouisianaTemplate:Nbsp... abruptly retired after learning that Mr. Flynt was about to reveal that he had also had an affair.<ref>Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Porn king offers $1m for US political sex scandal" The Guardian, London. Retrieved September 21, 2009.</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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Henry Hyde, Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee and 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).<ref>Talbot, David. "This hypocrite broke up my family", Salon, September 16, 1998.</ref>

Republican congressman Bob Livingston had been widely expected to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in the next Congressional session.<ref>"Robert Livingston, The Heir Apparent With a Black Belt". The New York Times, November 10, 1998, p. A24. Retrieved September 21, 2009.</ref> 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 extramarital affair. 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.<ref name="Spoiler">McCaffrey, Shannon. Will Bob Barr be the Ralph Nader of '08?, Associated Press (via CBS News), June 22, 2008.</ref>

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 improprietiesTemplate:Nbsp..."<ref>Baker, Russ. "Portrait of a political 'pit bull'", Salon, December 22, 1998.</ref> In 1998, Burton admitted that he himself had had an affair in 1983 which produced a child.<ref name="Indy-Fact">"Rep. Dan Burton—Member of Congress representing Indiana's 5th District" Template:Webarchive, Library Factfiles, Indianapolis Star, updated January 2007. Retrieved February 25, 2007.</ref>

Newt Gingrich (R-GA) US Representative, Speaker of the House and leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994,<ref>"Gingrich Expects 'Republican Revolution'", news4jax.com, October 28, 2010.</ref> 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,<ref>Jacobs, John. "The Gingrich affair: Hypocrisy and betrayal", http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-Gingrich-affair-Hypocrisy-and-betrayal-3057206.php,

November 22, 1999</ref> at the same time as he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury regarding an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.<ref>Schneider, Bill. "Gingrich confession: Clearing the way for a 2008 run?", CNN. March 9, 2007. Retrieved December 29, 2009.</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Steven C. LaTourette (R-OH) US Representative, voted to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal while he was having a long-term affair with his chief of staff, Jennifer Laptook.<ref>Falone, Michael. CBS News. July 2, 2009, Politico, "GOP's Unlucky Class of '94" Retrieved June 21, 2010.</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal acceptanceEdit

Historian Taylor Branch implied that Clinton had requested changes to his 2009 biography, 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".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Legacy and retrospective assessmentEdit

The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was subject to widespread media coverage, resulting in considerable difficulties for Monica Lewinsky later in life as she attempted to find employment. In 2014, she publicly re-emerged as an activist against cyberbullying and public shaming after writing the essay Shame and Survival for Vanity Fair.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Subsequently, several prominent media figures who had covered or mocked Lewinsky during the scandal expressed regret at their role in it. David Letterman remarked "I feel bad about my role in helping push the humiliation to the point of suffocation".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>