Clinton–Lewinsky scandal
[4] 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.
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.
[17] Tripp persuaded Lewinsky to save the gifts Clinton had given her, and not to dry clean a semen-stained blue dress in order to keep it as an "insurance policy.
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.
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.
[25] 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.
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.
[29][30] 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.
[32][33] 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.
[34][35] Administration officials denied any connection between the missile strikes and the ongoing scandal,[36][37] and 9/11 Commission investigators found no reason to dispute those statements.
[38] The missile strikes also caused anti-Semitic canards to spread in the Middle East that Lewinsky was a Jewish agent sent to influence Clinton against supporting the Palestinians.
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").
[3][4] Clinton declined to appeal the civil contempt of court ruling, citing financial problems,[3] but still maintained that his testimony complied with Wright's earlier definition of sexual relations.
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.
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).
Before and after the 2000 election, John Cochran of ABC News connected the Lewinsky scandal with a voter phenomenon he called "Clinton fatigue".
[50] Republican congressman Bob Livingston had been widely expected to become Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in the next Congressional session.
[54] Newt Gingrich (R-GA) US Representative, Speaker of the House and leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994,[55] 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,[56] at the same time as he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury regarding an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
[57][58] 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.
[59] 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.
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] 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.
