The Impeachment Trial of President William Clinton

by Douglas O. Linder (2005)

　　In 1999, for only the second time in United States history, the Senate conducted an impeachment trial of a President. The acquittal of William Jefferson Clinton on February 12 came as no great surprise, given the near party-line vote on impeachment charges in the House of Representatives leading to the trial.

　　Despite its predictable outcome, the impeachment trial of President Clinton is well worth studying, both for what it says about the failure of the judiciary and political institutions to respond adequately to an unprecedented situation, and what it tells us about the failures of Bill Clinton, the all-too-human occupant of the nation's highest office. The trial also raises fascinating questions about the distinction between public morality and private morality.

　　Background: The Paula Jones Sexual Harassment Suit

　　The impeachment saga of President Clinton has its origins in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought in Arkansas in May, 1994 by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. In her suit, Jones alleged that on May 8, 1991, while she helped to staff a state-sponsored management conference at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, a state trooper and member of Governor Clinton's security detail, Danny Ferguson, approached her and told her that the Governor would like to meet her in his hotel suite. Minutes later, Jones, seeing this as an opportunity to advance her career, took the elevator to Clinton's suite. There, according to her disputed account, Clinton made a series of increasingly aggressive moves, culminating in his dropping his pants exposing an erection——and then asking Jones to "kiss it." Jones claimed that she stood and told the Governor, "I'm not that kind of girl." As she left, Clinton stopped her by the door and said, "You're a smart girl, let's keep this between ourselves."

　　Lawyers for Clinton argued that the Jones suit would distract him from the important tasks of his office and should not be allowed to go forward while he occupied the White House. Clinton's immunity claim eventually reached the United States Supreme Court. The Court ruled unanimously in May, 1997 against the President, and allowed discovery in the case to proceed. As Federal Appeals Court Judge (and Reagan appointee) Richard A. Posner noted in An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton, the Court's "inept," "unpragmatic," and "backward-looking" decision in Clinton v Jones, and an earlier decision by the Court upholding the constitutionality of the act authorizing the appointment of independent counsels, had major consequences:

　　"Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, an affair intrinsically devoid of significance to anyone except Lewinsky, would have remained a secret from the public. The public would not have been worse for not knowing about it. There would have been no impeachment inquiry, no impeachment, no concerns about the motives behind the President's military actions against terrorists and rogue states in the summer and fall of 1998, no spectacle of the United States Senate play-acting at adjudication. The Supreme Court's decisions created a situation that led the President and his defenders into the pattern of cornered-rat behavior that engendered a constitutional storm and that may have embittered American politics, weakened the Presidency, distracted the federal government from essential business, and undermined the rule of law."

　　As a result of the Supreme Court's action, Judge Susan Weber Wright allowed discovery to proceed in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Judge Wright ruled that lawyers for Jones, in order to help prove her sexual harassment claim, could inquire into any sexual relationships that Clinton might have with subordinates either as Governor of Arkansas or as President of the United States. A critical moment in the cascade of events that would eventually lead to impeachment came on December 5, 1997 when Jones's lawyers submitted a list of women that they would like to depose. Included on the list the name of Monica Lewinsky.

　　The President and Monica Lewinsky

　　Monica Lewinsky came to Washington in July 1995 to work as a White House intern at age 21, newly graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland. In her first few months on the job, the aggressive and sexually experienced Lewinsky met and flirted with the President, but no opportunities for close personal contact arose. In November 1995, however, Lewinsky was assigned to the West Wing and she soon found herself alone with Clinton. He asked if he could kiss Lewinsky. She quickly consented. Later that evening, the two would have the first of what eventually would be ten sexual encounters over a sixteen-month period. After eight of the encounters had taken place, in April 1996, Clinton's deputy chief of staff——most likely aware of the threat the young intern posed——reassigned Lewinsky to the a position in the Department of Defense. The following month Clinton told a disappointed Lewinsky ("He was my sunshine," she later told a grand jury) he was ending the relationship, but he revived it briefly in early 1997.

　　The encounters followed a predictable pattern. Generally they occurred on weekend mornings in and around the Oval Office (including a study, a hallway, and a bathroom), when few people except Clinton's personal secretary, Betty Currie, would be around the West Wing. Although many private meetings between the two involved no sexual activity, when they did they generally included Lewinsky fellating the President and the President fondling her breasts and genitalia. On three occasions, Lewinsky performed oral sex while the President talked on the phone to members of Congress. Lewinsky told Clinton she would like to have vaginal intercourse with him, but he resisted. He also terminated the oral sex sessions before ejaculation until their last two encounters.

　　When Clinton again told Lewinsky in May 1997 that their sexual relationship was over, she redoubled efforts that began the previous year to enlist the President's assistance in finding employment. Lewinsky received a job offer from U. N. Ambassador Bill Richardson several months later, but she turned it down, preferring to find private sector employment. Clinton golfing buddy and power broker Vernon Jordan, acting at what he presumed to be the President's request through Betty Currie, met with Lewinsky to discuss employment possibilities in November 1997.

　　Less than two weeks after Lewinsky's name appeared on the Jones deposition list, Clinton told her the news. He advised her that filing an affidavit might avoid the necessity of a deposition (but only, he need hardly have said, if she denied a sexual relationship), and he reminded her of their "cover story" for her frequent trips to Oval Office——that she was just delivering documents. Two days after discussing the matter with Clinton, Lewinsky received a subpoena to appear for a deposition in January 1998. She called Vernon Jordan, who again met with her and referred her to an attorney, who proceeded to draft an affidavit that reflected her denial of any sexual involvement with the President.

　　Just after Christmas, Lewinsky spoke again with Clinton, raising her concern that the subpoena had requested that she bring to the deposition any gifts——and there were many——that she had received from him. Although Clinton apparently informed Lewinsky that she was obligated to give the lawyers for Jones any gifts in her possession, a call came later that day from Currie, indicating that she understood Lewinsky had some items she'd like to give her for safekeeping. (Currie, in her testimony, disagreed with Lewinsky's version of events and claimed that the call about the presents came from Lewinsky, not her.) Currie drove to Lewinsky's home and carted away a box of Clinton gifts and put them under her bed.

　　In early January 1998, Lewinsky signed an affidavit, with the intent of filing it for the Jones case, claiming her relationship with the President was non-sexual. The day after Lewinsky showed the affidavit to Vernon Jordan, Jordan made a call to Ronald Perelman, a friend and member of the Board of Directors of Revlon, encouraging him to hire Lewinsky. The job offer from Revlon came just two days later.

　　Linda Tripp Gets Involved

　　The source of the information that put Monica Lewinsky's name on the deposition list for the Jones case was Linda Tripp. Tripp had served in the Bush White House, and was held over in her job when Clinton became president in 1993. Tripp came to despise Clinton. In 1996, when she considered how to expose what she considered to be West Wing scandals, she contacted a conservative literary agent and self-described Clinton-hater, Lucianne Goldberg. Goldberg urged Tripp to write an expose', but at that time Tripp's concern with keeping her job caused her to reject the suggestion.

　　Tripp's name came to public attention in August 1997 when it appeared in a Newsweek article in which she recalled running into a White House volunteer, Kathleen Willey, shortly after Willey had been kissed and fondled by Clinton in his private office. (Willey, according to Tripp, was "happy and joyful" and the incident was "not a case of sexual harassment.") Paula Jones's lawyers, of course, took note of Tripp's account——and undoubtedly determined at that time to add Tripp to their list of potential witnesses.

　　Months before the Willey story broke, however, Tripp learned from her then-friend, Monica Lewinsky, that