On Dec. 19, 1998, President Bill Clinton became the second president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House of Representatives.
Nearly 21 years to the date before President Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the former Democratic president faced a similar fate — but for something much more personal. Clinton, now 73, had engaged in an extramarital affair in the Oval Office with a White House intern and lied to Congress about it.
Starting in 1994, special counsel Ken Starr was investigating Clinton on wide-ranging abuse allegations, including the pre-presidency Whitewater controversy, the firing of White House travel agents, and the alleged misuse of FBI files. Around the same time, Paula Jones filed a lawsuit accusing Clinton of sexual harassment when he was still the governor of Arkansas. Despite Clinton’s attempts to avoid a trial, Congress concluded that he was not exempt from civil lawsuits.
During the pretrial discovery process in the Jones case, her team of lawyers worked to add to their list of witnesses women who had similar claims against Clinton in order to prove he had engaged in a pattern of behavior. In 1997, White House employee Linda Tripp began recording her conversations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, then 22, who revealed to her that she was involved in a sexual relationship with Clinton.
When Tripp shared her recordings with Jones’s lawyers, the attorneys added Lewinsky, now 46, to their witness list. In early 1998, Tripp tipped off Starr that Lewinsky was about to commit perjury in the Jones trial by concealing her relationship with the president. Clinton had also begun preparations to hide the affair, including suggesting to Lewinsky that she file a false affidavit. Starr then gained approval to expand his investigation to the Lewinsky scandal.
Lewinsky and Clinton both testified in grand jury proceedings that they had not had a sexual relationship, with Clinton famously perjuring himself by saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Starr later offered Lewinsky immunity in order to convince her to admit to the affair. On television, the president also went on to admit the relationship occurred himself.
Meanwhile, Starr submitted his report on his investigation to Congress, which contained salacious details including that a dress of Lewinsky’s contained samples of the president’s DNA. He also claimed to have evidence of 11 impeachable offenses, including perjury.
With a Republican-controlled House, lawmakers launched an impeachment process on Oct. 8, 1998, and drafted two articles of impeachment, obstruction of justice, and grand jury perjury in the Jones case, which had at that point been dismissed by a judge. Clinton later reached an out-of-court settlement with Jones for $850,000.
Despite efforts by the president’s team to convince legislators that his behavior was “morally reprehensible” but “not impeachable,” the House voted 258-176 to impeach Clinton that December. Clinton’s Senate trial began on Jan. 7, 1999, but he was acquitted in the end on both articles after each failed to gain the 67-vote threshold outlined in the Constitution to remove a president. The first article received just 45 votes in favor of removal, and the second was hit with a 50-50 split vote.
Clinton went on to finish out the remainder of his second term with a virtually unchanged approval rating and left office in January 2001 following the election of President George W. Bush. Lewinsky, on the other hand, faced public shaming over the affair, something she has since spoken out about. In the #MeToo era of the late 2010s, much of the public rallied behind Lewinsky, finally recognizing her as a victim of Clinton’s abuse of power.
While Clinton has issued Lewinsky a public apology, he has said that he doesn’t believe he owes her one in private. In late 2018, Lewinsky said during an interview that she would apologize again to former first lady Hillary Clinton, who initially chalked up the scandal to a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” if the two were to cross paths. The Clintons did not divorce after the affair was revealed and remained married to this day.
Almost a full 21 years after the Clinton impeachment, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on Dec. 18, 2019, nearly along party lines following the scandal surrounding his July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine. During the call, Trump asked the foreign leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads the pack of 2020 Democrats. The president was accused of conditioning military aid to the country on the investigation.
His Senate trial is expected to begin in January 2020, but some Democratic lawmakers in the House have indicated that they could hold up the proceedings indefinitely by postponing sending the articles of impeachment to the upper chamber. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that the Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans, will vote to convict and remove Trump.
Aside from Clinton and Trump, the only other president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson, who was also acquitted in a Senate trial. Former President Richard Nixon came close to being impeached in the 1970s, but he resigned from office before the measure reached the full House for a vote.
