Clinton–Lewinsky Scandal: Impeachment, Trial, and #MeToo Legacy

The Clinton–Lewinsky scandal was a sexual relationship between President Bill Clinton and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky, kept secret from 1995 until early 1998, whose exposure — through secretly recorded phone calls and a separate sexual harassment lawsuit — led to Clinton denying the affair under oath, being impeached by the House for perjury and obstruction of justice, and being acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. The fallout reached well beyond the trial: Clinton was held in civil contempt, lost his Arkansas law license for five years, and resigned from the Supreme Court bar rather than face disbarment.

How the Affair Began and How It Surfaced

Lewinsky arrived at the White House as an unpaid intern in June 1995. The relationship with Clinton began that fall and continued, by most accounts, into early 1997.¹ During the summer of 1996, Lewinsky began confiding about the affair in Linda Tripp, a Pentagon employee she had befriended.²

Acting on the advice of literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, Tripp began secretly recording her calls with Lewinsky. The first recorded call was on October 3, 1997, and the taping continued through December 22.³ Tripp also persuaded Lewinsky to hold onto a blue dress that would later become a central piece of physical evidence.⁴

The story might never have gone public without a separate case. Paula Corbin Jones had sued Clinton in 1994 for sexual harassment, and her lawyers, seeking to establish a pattern of behavior, subpoenaed Lewinsky in December 1997.²

The Denials Under Oath

On January 7, 1998, Lewinsky signed an affidavit in the Jones case denying any sexual relationship with the President.¹⁵⁶ Those answers became the foundation of the perjury charges that followed.

News broke publicly on January 21, 1998. Five days later, standing beside Hillary Clinton at the White House, the President pointed at the camera and declared: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”²

Starr’s Investigation, the Immunity Deal, and the Dress

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had been investigating the Clintons since 1994, originally on the Whitewater real estate deal.⁷ On January 12, 1998, Tripp turned over her tapes to Starr’s office. Four days later, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals authorized Starr to expand his probe to cover potential perjury, obstruction, and witness tampering tied to the Jones lawsuit.¹ The FBI wired Tripp for a face-to-face meeting with Lewinsky at a Virginia shopping mall.³

On July 28, 1998, Lewinsky and Starr’s office reached an immunity agreement granting her blanket protection from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.⁸ As part of the deal, she turned over a navy blue dress she had kept. Its existence had been reported in January 1998 but denied by her then-lawyer, and FBI agents had missed it during a search of her apartment; Lewinsky had sent it to her mother in New York, and prosecutors threatened her mother with felony charges for concealing evidence before it was produced.⁹ FBI DNA testing matched a semen stain on the dress to Clinton, with genetic markers characteristic of one in 7.87 trillion Caucasians.¹⁰

Lewinsky began testifying before the grand jury on August 6, 1998.¹ She told prosecutors that she and Clinton had developed “cover stories” to hide the affair and that he had suggested ways for her to avoid cooperating with the Jones lawyers, though she would not testify that he explicitly instructed her to lie under oath.⁸

Clinton’s Admission and the Starr Report

On August 17, 1998, Clinton testified before the grand jury from the White House. He admitted to “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky on certain occasions in early 1996 and once in early 1997, called the encounters “wrong,” and took “full responsibility.” He also maintained the contact “did not consist of sexual intercourse” and argued his earlier denials were technically accurate under the narrow Jones definition.¹¹

That evening, he addressed the nation from the Map Room. He called the relationship “not appropriate” and “wrong,” a “critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure,” and conceded he had “misled people, including even my wife.” He insisted he had never asked anyone to lie, destroy evidence, or take any unlawful action.¹² He did not say he had lied; he said his earlier answers were “legally accurate” and that he “did not volunteer information.”

On September 9, 1998, Starr submitted his referral to the House of Representatives under the Independent Counsel Statute’s requirement to advise Congress of “substantial and credible information” that could constitute grounds for impeachment. The report alleged that Clinton had lied under oath in both his civil deposition and his grand jury testimony, tried to obstruct justice by concealing evidence and influencing the testimony of his secretary Betty Currie, coordinated with Lewinsky to ensure they would both lie, encouraged her to file a false affidavit, and helped arrange a New York job for her to keep her from testifying adversely.¹³ The House released the material on September 11, along with Clinton’s videotaped grand jury testimony and thousands of pages of supporting evidence.

Impeachment by the House

On October 8, 1998, the House voted to begin a formal impeachment inquiry. The Judiciary Committee considered four articles: two for perjury, one for obstruction of justice, and one for abuse of office.¹⁴

On December 19, 1998, the full House voted. Two articles passed and two failed:

Article I, perjury before the grand jury: approved 228–206, with 223 Republicans and 5 Democrats in favor.¹⁵
Article II, perjury in the Jones deposition: rejected 229–205, with 28 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposition.
Article III, obstruction of justice: approved 221–212, with 216 Republicans and 5 Democrats in favor.¹⁶
Article IV, abuse of office: rejected 285–148, with 81 Republicans voting against.

Clinton became only the second president impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868.

The Senate Trial and Acquittal

The Senate trial opened in mid-January 1999, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding as the Constitution requires. On February 12, 1999, the Senate voted on both articles. Conviction required a two-thirds majority of 67 votes, and neither article came close:

Perjury: 45 guilty, 55 not guilty. Ten Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting to acquit.¹⁷¹⁸
Obstruction of justice: 50 guilty, 50 not guilty. Five Republicans crossed over.

Legal Consequences That Outlasted Acquittal

Acquittal did not close Clinton’s legal file. On April 12, 1999, Judge Susan Webber Wright found him in civil contempt of court for giving “false, misleading and evasive answers” during his January 1998 deposition. It was the first time a sitting president had been held in contempt.¹⁹ Wright ordered him to pay Jones’s reasonable attorneys’ fees resulting from his false testimony, plus $1,202 to reimburse the court for travel expenses.²⁰

Clinton’s lawyers had already settled the Jones sexual harassment lawsuit in 1998 for $850,000, with no admission of wrongdoing.²¹

On January 19, 2001, his last full day in office, Clinton reached a deal with Robert Ray, who had succeeded Starr as independent counsel. Clinton admitted providing “evasive and misleading answers” during the Jones deposition, acknowledged the conduct was “prejudicial to the administration of justice,” and agreed to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license. In exchange, Ray declined to prosecute.²² The Arkansas Supreme Court’s professional conduct committee also fined him $25,000.²¹ In October 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court moved to disbar him from practicing before the high court; Clinton resigned from the court’s bar rather than contest the proceedings.²³

What Happened to Linda Tripp

Tripp’s secret taping carried legal exposure of its own. In July 1999, a Maryland grand jury indicted her on two counts of violating the state’s wiretapping law, each carrying a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.²⁴ Her defense argued that state prosecutors had relied on evidence tainted by her immunized federal testimony. A judge dismissed the case in 2000 after a protracted dispute over what evidence could be used at trial.²⁵

Political Fallout

The politics of the scandal were paradoxical. Clinton’s job approval stayed near 70 percent throughout the impeachment process, even as voters gave him low marks for personal character.¹⁸ Many voters viewed the Republican push as partisan overreach.

The November 1998 midterms delivered a rebuke. Against the usual pattern of the opposition party gaining seats during a president’s second term, Republicans lost five House seats and gained none in the Senate. It was the GOP’s worst midterm performance since 1822.²⁶²⁷

Hillary Clinton’s popularity surged, reaching some of the highest favorability ratings ever recorded for a First Lady, and she went on to win a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000.¹⁸

Vice President Al Gore fared worse. Clinton did not tell Gore the truth about Lewinsky until August 10, 1998, roughly a week before the grand jury testimony, despite months of weekly private lunches during Clinton’s public denials.²⁸ Gallup polling analysis estimated the “Clinton factor” cost Gore roughly eight percentage points in his race against George W. Bush, driven largely by voters who approved of Clinton’s job performance but disapproved of him personally.²⁹ After the election, Gore told Clinton in a blunt meeting that the “sex scandal and low personal approval ratings were a major impediment” to the campaign; Clinton replied that it was Gore’s failure to run on the administration’s record that cost him.³⁰

Reassessment in the #MeToo Era

The 2017 rise of the #MeToo movement reopened the question of power in the affair. In a February 2018 essay for Vanity Fair, Lewinsky wrote that she was “beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.” While she had previously described the relationship as consensual, she now characterized it as “a gross abuse of power,” citing the disparity between a sitting president and a 22-year-old intern. She also disclosed that she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the public exposure she endured.³¹

Clinton was less inclined to revisit his conduct. In a June 2018 interview, he said he would not handle the situation differently and maintained he had done “the right thing.” He acknowledged that his apologies had been public and that he had never personally apologized to Lewinsky. “I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry. That’s very different,” he said.³²

In February 2025, Lewinsky said publicly for the first time that she believed Clinton should have resigned. On the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said “the right way to handle a situation like that would’ve been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign” rather than “throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus.”³³ Clinton has long said the opposite, telling CBS News in 2018 that he never considered resigning because the impeachment was a “fight” he was “glad to undertake.”

1
TIME. Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsky Timeline
2
CNN. Clinton Lewinsky Timeline
3
ABC News. Linda Tripp’s Betrayal of Monica Lewinsky
4
Politico. Linda Tripp Obituary
5
The New York Times. Clinton Testimony in Jones Deposition
6
GovInfo. Senate Impeachment Trial Documents
7
PBS. Interview With Kenneth Starr
8
The Washington Post. Lewinsky Gets Immunity for Her Testimony
9
Los Angeles Times. Lewinsky Dress Investigation
10
The Washington Post. The DNA Test
11
GovInfo. Clinton Grand Jury Testimony
12
University of California, Santa Barbara. Address to the Nation on Testimony Before the Grand Jury
13
GovInfo. Starr Report Referral
14
Library of Congress. Federal Impeachment – Bill Clinton
15
CNN. House Impeachment Votes
16
U.S. House of Representatives. Roll Call Vote 545
17
U.S. Senate. Senate Roll Call Vote 17
18
Miller Center. Clinton Impeachment and Its Fallout
19
The New York Times. Clinton Is Found to Be in Contempt on Jones Lawsuit
20
CNN. Contempt Reaction
21
CBS News. Fact Check: Did Bill Clinton Lose His Law License
22
University of California, Santa Barbara. Remarks of Independent Counsel Robert Ray Closing the Whitewater Investigation
23
The Guardian. Clinton Disbarred by Supreme Court
24
The New York Times. Jurors in Maryland Indict Linda Tripp in Lewinsky Tapes
25
Maryland State Archives. Tripp Wiretap Case
26
CNN. Gingrich Resignation
27
Britannica. Newt Gingrich
28
The New York Times. First the Scandal, Then the Strain
29
Gallup. Clinton Factor May Be Hurting Gore Presidential Race
30
The Washington Post. Clinton and Gore Clashed Over Blame for Election
31
Vanity Fair. Monica Lewinsky in the Age of MeToo
32
BBC. Clinton on Lewinsky and MeToo
33
New York Post. Monica Lewinsky Says Clinton Should Have Resigned