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Lewinsky scandal
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The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial.
In 1995, Monica Lewinsky, a graduate of Lewis & Clark College, was hired to work as an intern at the White House during Clinton's first term.
As Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton became more distant and after she had left the White House to work at the Pentagon, Lewinsky confided details of her feelings and Clinton's behavior to her friend and Defense Department co-worker Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their telephone conversations.
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The Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial.
In 1995, Monica Lewinsky, a graduate of Lewis & Clark College, was hired to work as an intern at the White House during Clinton's first term.
As Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton became more distant and after she had left the White House to work at the Pentagon, Lewinsky confided details of her feelings and Clinton's behavior to her friend and Defense Department co-worker Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their telephone conversations. When Tripp discovered in January 1998 that Lewinsky had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying a relationship with Clinton, she delivered the tapes to Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who was investigating Clinton on various other matters, including the Whitewater scandal, Filegate, and Travelgate.
Allegations of sexual contact
Monica Lewinsky alleged nine sexual encounters with Bill Clinton:
- November 15, 1995, in the private study of the Oval Office
- November 17, 1995, while Bill Clinton was on the phone with a member of Congress
- December 31, 1995, in a White House study
- January 7, 1996, in the Oval Office
- January 21, 1996, in the hallway by the private study next to the Oval Office
- February 4, 1996, while Clinton was meeting in Oval Office
- March 31, 1996, in the hallway near the study of the Oval Office
- February 28, 1997, near the Oval Office; this is when the blue dress stains were created
- March 29, 1997 (Clinton denied that this day's encounter actually happened)
According to her published schedule, First Lady Hillary Clinton was at the White House for at least some portion of five of these days.
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 UN. Richardson did so, and offered her a position, which she declined. The American Spectator provided evidence that Richardson knew more about the Lewinsky affair than he declared to the grand jury.
Denial and subsequent admission
News of the scandal first broke on January 17, 1998, on the Drudge Report website, 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. 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 forceful denial:
Pundits debated whether or not Clinton would address the allegations in his State of the Union Address. Ultimately, he chose not to mention them. Hillary Clinton publicly stood by her husband throughout the scandal. On January 27, in an appearance on NBC's Today she famously said, "The great story here for anybody willing to find it, 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."
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. She also turned over a semen-stained blue dress (which Linda Tripp had encouraged her to save without dry cleaning) to the Starr investigators, thereby providing a smoking gun based on DNA evidence that could prove the relationship despite Clinton's official denials.
Clinton admitted in taped grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998, that he had had an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky. That evening he gave a nationally televised statement admitting his relationship with Lewinsky which was "not appropriate".
Perjury charges
In his deposition for the Jones lawsuit, Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky. Based on the evidence provided by Tripp, a blue dress with Clinton's semen, Starr concluded that this 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, as modified by the Court?" 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 stated that he believed the agreed-upon definition of sexual relations excluded his receiving oral sex.
President Clinton was held in contempt of court by judge Susan D. Webber Wright. His license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas and later by the United States Supreme Court. He was also fined $90,000 for giving false testimony which was paid by a fund raised for his legal expenses.
Impeachment
Most Republicans in Congress, who held the majority in both Houses at the time, and some Democrats, believed that Clinton's giving false testimony and alleged influencing Lewinsky's testimony were crimes of obstruction of justice and perjury and thus impeachable offenses. The House of Representatives voted to issue Articles of Impeachment against him which was followed by a 21-day trial in the Senate. President Clinton was acquitted of all charges and remained in office. He was not given any penalty beyond attempts at censure by the House of Representatives.
In popular culture
The Blue Dress, a low-budget film about the scandal, began casting in December 2008.
External links
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- Discusses Lewinsky in detail.
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