Lewinsky scandal
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Image:Clintonlewinskytimecover.jpg The Monica Lewinsky scandal (informally Monicagate, various 1) was a political sex scandal emerging from a short-term sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a then 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 Bill Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his acquittal for charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial.
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Background
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. She had long admired President Clinton, and fantasized about him romantically. After much flirting, the two became engaged sexually, and secretly performed sexual acts on each other in closed quarters of the White House, including approximately nine incidents of oral sex, more than a dozen incidents of phone sex, and Clinton penetrating Lewinsky vaginally with a cigar which he continued to smoke afterwards.
As Lewinsky's relationship with the President became more distant and after she had left the White House to work at the Pentagon, Lewinsky confided details of her feelings and the President's behavior to her presumed friend and Defense Department co-worker Linda Tripp. Unbeknownst to Lewinsky, Tripp was recording their telephone conversations and after she discovered in January 1998 that Lewinsky had signed an affidavit denying the relationship in the Paula Jones case she delivered the tapes to Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who was investigating the president on various other matters including the Whitewater scandal, Filegate, and Travelgate.
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 when it hit 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, a visibly flustered President Clinton addressed the public in a White House press conference and issued a forceful denial:
- "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."
Pundits debated whether or not Clinton would address the allegations in his State of the Union Address. Ultimately, he chose not to, which may have helped his image with the American people through his strategy to appear more "presidential" and above the fray. First Lady Hillary Clinton publicly stood by her husband throughout the scandal. On January 27, in an appearance on NBC's The Today Show 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, pundits and the media endlessly debated whether an affair had occurred and 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. After this substantial delay after the public break of the scandal, Lewinsky received transactional immunity on July 28, 1998 in exchange for grand jury testimony concerning her relationship with Clinton. Under oath she admitted that her relationship with Clinton involved oral sex, including oral-anal contact, as documented in the Starr report, which eventually led to President Clinton's impeachment, on the basis of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding the affair. She also turned over a semen stained blue dress (which 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 finally 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 he "misled people" about his relationship with Lewinsky which was "not appropriate".[1]
Allegations of perjury
In his deposition for the Jones lawsuit, Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky. Based on the evidence provided by Tripp, Starr concluded that this sworn testimony was false and perjurious.
The issue was greatly confused by an unusual definition for sexual contact that was ordered during the initial questioning which led to the perjury allegations. [2] 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, Clinton answered "I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky." Clinton later stated that he interpreted the agreed upon definition of sexual relations to exclude his receiving oral sex.
Impeachment
Image:Senate in session.jpg Under the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives issues Articles of Impeachment, which the Senate must then consider as a panel of judges. Impeachment is a means of removing criminal officials from high office. The Constitution provides for impeachment in cases of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." It is unclear as to whether the Framers intended that the felonies of perjury and obstruction of justice qualify as "high Crimes" in a Constitutional context. Republicans, who controlled both houses of Congress at the time, believed that Bill Clinton's suspected offenses qualified as impeachable high crimes.
As part of the impeachment inquiry, House Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde sent a list of 81 questions to Clinton on November 5, 1998. Formal impeachment hearings began on November 19. After receiving Clinton's answers, the Judiciary Committee commended four articles of impeachment to the full House. In summary, they were the following:
- Article I: Perjury before grand jury on August 17, 1998
- Article II: Perjury in Paula Jones case on December 23, 1997 and January 17, 1998
- Article III: Obstruction of justice related to Paula Jones case
- Article IV: Abuse of high office
Article I was passed by a vote of 228-206. Article III was approved by a vote of 221-212. Article II failed by a vote of 205-229. Article IV was rejected by a vote of 148-285. On December 19, the House of Representatives forwarded articles I and III of impeachment (perjury and obstruction of justice) to the Senate. The two articles that were passed made Clinton the first elected president in U.S. history to be impeached. The only previous impeachment was the unelected President Andrew Johnson (who had succeeded the assassinated Abraham Lincoln) in 1868. President Richard Nixon had resigned under the threat of impeachment in 1974.
The charges quickly passed through the House and this speed allowed the so-called "lame-duck" Republican and Democratic congressmen to participate. By the time the charges reached the Senate, the charges had been updated, and this allowed the Prosecution in the Senate impeachment proceedings to read into the record lurid details from the Lewinsky testimony that would have been irrelevant to the charges recommended in the Starr report.
The Senate trial began on January 7, 1999. The prosecution relied on two basic forms of argument: "The President must have been thinking about topic X at the time that he testifies that he was thinking about topic Y" and simply lying about the order and facts of events thus committing perjury.
During what amounted to a "discovery phase" of the trial, several issues of fact were resolved and on Friday, February 12, 1999, the Senate rejected both of the articles of impeachment. The perjury charges were rejected with 55 not-guilty votes and 45 guilty votes, and on the obstruction of justice charges the vote was 50-50. A two-thirds majority (67 guilty votes) was required for a conviction on either charge. The vote fell largely along party lines. For the perjury vote, 10 Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting not-guilty. On the obstruction of justice charge, 5 Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting not-guilty.
Contrary to a popular public misconception, Clinton was successfully impeached (that is, the House did successfully send him to be tried by the Senate). He was not, however, successfully convicted of any of the charges (which is why he was not removed from office), nor was he given any penalty (beyond the censure of the House of Representatives).
The perjury allegations provoked the Arkansas Supreme Court to suspend Clinton's law license in April 2000. Clinton agreed to the 5-year suspension and to pay a $25,000 fine on January 19, 2001. The following October, the U.S. Supreme Court once again suspended Clinton's law license and gave him 40 days to convince them that he should not be disbarred permanently. Clinton surrendered his law license in response to these actions. Clinton has since made a living as an author and speaker, and arguably is no more than symbolically affected by the loss of his license.
Public opinion
In early January of 1998 the news broke in various media outlets (see Drudge Report) that the President had had an affair. On January 26, 1998 on American television, Clinton denied he had "sexual relations" with Lewinsky, but did not admit to the actual nature of their relationship.
The components of the scandal, including:
- extramarital sex;
- sex with an underling many years his junior;
- sex with an intern, indicating for some a possible abuse of power;
- sexual acts considered outside of the mainstream in the United States, including anilingus;
- perjury allegations;
- Linda Tripp's 'betrayal' of Lewinsky's friendship;
- the President's misleading public disavowal;
- the President assuring his own cabinet the allegations were untrue;
- the allegations of impeachable offenses;
coupled with increasingly hostile media coverage and general partisan feeling led to spirited and emotional public debate. Some saw the President as dishonest, but the exposure of the scandal and subsequent humiliation of his family as a greater crime; some argued that the perjury allegations were insignificant but the public disavowal a disgrace; some hated Lewinsky for seducing the President, some hated the President for being seduced, and some hated Linda Tripp the most for betraying friendship.
The affair, and its sordid details, led to a period of cultural celebrity for Lewinsky; as an unlikely sex symbol, and as a younger-generation nexus of a political storm that was both lighthearted, and extremely serious at the same time. Some mild use of the name "Lewinsky" still exists as a term for oral sex, though Lewinsky references and jokes have long cooled in the public interest.
International affairs
Some allege that Operation Infinite Reach (August 1998), Operation Desert Fox—which was launched in December of 1998 and actually delayed some of the House of Representative votes relating to the impeachment process—as well as Operation Allied Force—which commenced operations on March 17, 1999 but which had been on the table since the Racak incident on January 14, 1999—were embarked upon primarily to shore up the authority and stature of the President in the face of the domestic challenges (populations tend to increase their support for leaders in times of war) or even to distract media and public attention from the scandal. See: Wag the Dog
Notes
- Note 1: Among the names used in reference to the scandal are Zippergate and Fornigate, as well as other less flattering or more sexually explicit names.
