1995-98: When Republicans hunted witches instead of terrorists

Timeline:

February 12, 1999 The Senate acquits the President on both impeachment charges. With 67 votes required to convict on either count, the perjury charge fails, with 55 voting against and 45 in favor, while the obstruction of justice charge tally is 50-50.


February 10, 1999 As support for censuring the President fades, three moderate Republican senators -- Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, James Jeffords of Vermont and John Chafee of Rhode Island -- announce they will oppose both articles of impeachment.


February 9, 1999 A motion to allow the public to watch the Senate's deliberations on the evidence fails.


February 8, 1999 Senators hear concluding arguments from House managers and from lawyers for the President's defense.


February 1, 1999 Monica Lewinsky is questioned under oath by Republican House managers for six hours.


January 27, 1999 The Senate rejects a motion to dismiss the two impeachment counts against the President. In a second vote, the senators approve a motion to allow House managers to depose witnesses.


January 25, 1999 After a failed Democratic motion to stage open deliberations over whether or not to dismiss all charges against President Clinton and end the impeachment trial, the Senate debates the issue behind closed doors.


January 24, 1999 House impeachment managers meet with Monica Lewinsky in Washington, declaring her a potentially helpful witness in the Senate trial. Her lawyer says she provided no new information and requests that she not be called to testify.


January 21, 1999 President Clinton's defense team, on its final day of presentations, pleads for "political sanity," stating that the prosecution's case rests on circumstantial evidence and unrelated facts.


January 19, 1999 President Clinton delivers his State of the Union address, making no mention of the impeachment trial.


January 13, 1999 President Clinton's legal team presents its defense before the Senate, warning against calling witnesses. Monica Lewinsky's attorney refuses a request from the House Judiciary Committee to interview her.


January 9, 1999 President Clinton is served a formal summons notifying him of the trial under way in the Senate. Senators begin haggling over whether to call witnesses to testify.


January 7, 1999 While polls show most Americans do not approve of a Senate trial of President Clinton, the trial opens.


January 6, 1999 House Republicans nominate Illinois representative Dennis Hastert as Speaker of the House.


December 28, 1998 House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston announces his resignation from Congress amidst revelations of marital infidelity.


December 19, 1998 The House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against the President.


December 18, 1998 As U.S. warplanes drop bombs over Baghdad, the House begins debating articles of impeachment against President Clinton.

December 12, 1998 Facing reporters in Jerusalem while on a Middle East peace mission, President Clinton says he will not resign from office and again denies that he lied under oath. The House Judiciary Committee approves the fourth and final article of impeachment and dismisses censure as an option for punishment.


December 11, 1998 The House Judiciary Committee approves the first three articles of impeachment.


December 9, 1998 The House Judiciary Committee unveils four articles of impeachment against President Clinton. Two articles allege that he lied in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and in his testimony before Ken Starr's grand jury. The other articles allege that he abused the powers of his office and obstructed justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair.


December 8, 1998 The White House presents a 184-page defense report to the House Judiciary Committee, rebutting Ken Starr's charges against President Clinton of lying under oath, obstructing justice and abuse of power.


December 6, 1998 President Clinton's legal team appears before the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that the President should not be impeached.


November 26, 1998 Members of the House Judiciary Committee draw up four articles of impeachment against the President.


November 19, 1998 Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr testifies before the House Judiciary Committee during its first day of impeachment hearings.


November 16, 1998 The Justice Department dismisses most of the allegations of wrongdoing launched against the office of the independent counsel, but indicates it will continue gathering information about unresolved charges.


November 13, 1998 President Clinton settles the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, agreeing to pay Jones $850,000 while admitting nothing. The independent counsel also sends Congress two boxes of information related to former White House aide Kathleen Willey's allegations that the President made unwanted sexual advances.


November 9, 1998 In a setback for the White House, the Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals that presidential adviser Bruce Lindsey should be covered by the attorney-client privilege, and that the Secret Service enjoys a "protective function privilege" against testifying about the President's activities before a grand jury.


November 5, 1998 The House Judiciary Committee asks President Clinton to answer 81 written questions concerning the allegations contained in the independent counsel's report.


November 3, 1998 In a defeat for Republicans and the conventional wisdom, Democrats score upset victories in the 1998 midterm elections.


October 30, 1998 Unsealed court papers show that U.S. District Judge Norma Halloway Johnson has authorized an investigation into whether the independent counsel's office illegally leaked grand jury information.


October 20, 1998 Lawyers for Paula Jones ask a federal appeals court to reinstate her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton.


October 8, 1998 With 31 Democrats voting yes, the House approves an open-ended impeachment inquiry of the President by a vote of 258-176.


October 4, 1998 Voting along party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approves a resolution to recommend an im peachment inquiry into the allegations contained in independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report.


October 1, 1998 The Judiciary Committee releases three volumes of supporting material to Starr's report, including transcripts of Monica Lewinsky's telephone conversations with Linda Tripp.


September 21, 1998 The videotape of President Clinton's grand jury testimony, along with 2,800 pages of supporting evidence to Starr's report, is made public by the Judiciary Committee.


September 12, 1998 The White House releases a rebuttal to Starr's report.


September 11, 1998 The House of Representatives votes to release the Starr report on the Internet. The White House releases a prelinary rebuttal. At a prayer breakfast, President Clinton says, "I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned," and for the first time expresses regret publicly for hurting Monica Lewinsky and her family.


September 9, 1998 Starr sends his report to Congress of possible impeachable offenses by President Clinton. Separately, the President tells a Florida audience, "I let you down. I let my fami ly down. I let this country down. But I'm trying to make it right. I'm determined to never let anything like that happen again."


August 20, 1998 The President surrenders a DNA sample to Starr for comparison with a reported semen stain on a dress owned by Monica Lewinsky.


August 17, 1998 President Clinton testifies to the Lewinsky grand jury via closed circuit television from the White House's Map Room. That evening, he makes a televised address to the nation about his testimony a nd admits that he had a "not appropriate" relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, but insists that he never told anyone to lie about it.


August 8, 1998 Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Halloway Johnson orders a probe into allegations that Kenneth Starr's office has leaked information to the press about testimony to the Lewinsky grand jury.


August 6, 1998 Monica Lewinsky begins testifying before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in Washington, D.C.


August 4, 1998 Chief Justice William Rehnquist rejects the White House's appeal that Bruce Lindsey and other White House lawyers should be covered by attorney-client privilege.


July 28, 1998 Monica Lewinsky reaches a tentative immunity deal with Starr.


July 17, 1998 After Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist refuses to block the Secret Service from testifying, Larry Cockell, the head of Clinton's security detail, and other agents report to the grand jury to face questioning.


June 2, 1998 Lewinsky replaces her attorney, William Ginsburg, with two seasoned Washington attorneys, Jacob Stein and Plato Cacheris.


April 24, 1998 In five hours of videotaped testimony, Starr questions Hillary Clinton at the White House about her legal work for the failed Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan during the 1980s.


April 16, 1998 Paula Jones announces she will appeal the dismissal of her case.


April 1, 1998 Arkansas federal judge Susan Webber Wright dismisses Jones' sexual harassment suit against the President, saying Jones' complaint, even if true, would not constitute a violation of law.


March 15, 1998 Former Clinton aide Kathleen Willey appears on CBS' "Sixty Minutes," and says the president made unwelcome sexual advances towards her in a room adjacent to the Oval Office at the end of 1993.


March 5, 1998 Vernon Jordan testifies for a second day before Starr's grand jury.


February 12, 1998 Hillary Clinton lashes out at Internet journalism, where "the lie can be twice around the world before the truth gets out of bed to find its boots."


January 30, 1998 Linda Tripp breaks her silence, faxing news organizations the scoop that she overheard a 2 a.m. Lewinsky-Clinton phone call. U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright rules the Secret Service can disregard subpoenas related to presidential affairs. .



January 27, 1998 Starr opens a grand jury probe into Monica Lewinsky's allegations. Hillary Clinton, appearing on NBC's "Today" show, says the controversy has been fabricated by a "vast right-wing conspiracy." The New York Times reports Lewinsky met with Clinton at the White House in late December, two weeks after she was subpoenaed to provide information for the Paula Jones case. In a 72-minute State of the Union address, President Clinton makes no mention of the Lewinsky controversy.



January 26, 1998 At a White House event, Clinton states, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman. ... I never told anybody to lie." "These allegations are false."



January 21, 1998 The Washington Post first reports Lewinsky's allegations and the existence of taped recordings. President Clinton denies the charges in vague terms. "There is no improper relationship," he tells Jim Lehrer of PBS.



January 17, 1998 President Clinton, testifying under oath to lawyers in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, denies having had an affair with Lewinsky. He reportedly acknowledges having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers, a charge he previously denied.



January 16, 1998 Attorney General Janet Reno, in consultation with the federal appeals court that oversees independent counsels, approves an expansion of Starr's probe.



January 13, 1998 With FBI assistance, Tripp wears a body microphone during meeting with Lewinsky at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, and records their conversation.



January 12, 1998 Linda Tripp contacts Independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office, providing 20 hours of taped conversations with Lewinsky.



January 7, 1998 Lewinsky, in a sworn affidavit, denies having an affair with Clinton.



December 1997 Tripp reportedly informs Lewinsky that she will testify about their conversations regarding Lewinsky's alleged trysts with Clinton.



April 1996 Lewinsky leaves the White House for public affairs post at the Pentagon.



November 1995 According to sources, Lewinsky becomes involved with the President in a sexual relationship.



Spring 1995 Monica Lewinsky graduates from Lewis and Clark College, and heads to Washington, D.C. for an unpaid internship at the White House.

http://www.time.com/time/daily/scandal/timeline.html

nice timeline.

but it started way back when clinton was still a candidate.

republicans, scaife in particular, decided to derail the clinton administration and keep it off balance and attack, attack, attack, and find something, ANYTHING, to use as grounds to discredit and impeach him. not that they would have prefered vice-president gore to take over. they just wanted to attack in order to keep clinton's political influence to a minimum. and to keep gore from using his clinton-gore background to run on.

remember all the whitewater crap, where they insisted there was criminal wrongdoing in a deal where the clintons LOST money.

republican polticians have zero respect for the office of president. they only respect their own team.

...of what the Right thought were this nation's priorities.

- Whitewater was the original distraction that opened the door for abuse of office by GOP zealots. They never intended to 'get Clinton' on Whitewater.

- Isn't it strange that RWing Republicans are now arguing that Democrats don't have the right to look into Bush's* handling of national security...or anything else for that matter?

- The Bush* government is the most secretive in American history and they consider themselves above the law. The American media seems to agree.

In "The Hunting of the President", it states that Bush (the Greater's) team began looking for likely 1992 opponents in December of 1988... and began laying groundwork for smear campaigns against the then Governor of Arkansas...

this was about s-e-x. is there anything more important?

...which suggests that Bush* can do anything he wants with our nation and government as long as he doesn't have sex in the White House. This is yet more evidence that the Bush* government is controlled by the religious right.

...if the US government put this much money and time into investigating national security and terrorism?

- It should be clear by now that this was a witch hunt and not a pursuit of justice. Republicans wanted to bring Clinton down at any cost...even at the cost of ignoring our national security.

don't have sex, don't have a (D) in front of your name, and kill a lot of foreigners (dark-skinned non-christian preferred), the RW will let you do whatever you want.

following the events leading up to 9/11 (e.g., when the Phoenix letter was written, etc.).

undermined the fight against Al Queda..when Clinton attacked Al Queda in Afghanistan, he was accused of wagging the dog by the press, and Bin Laden was not killed.
So basically, every freeper out there in the press and freepers who were after Clinton in general are part and parcel of why Bin Laden was never killed, by their relentless pursuit of a blow job. In an offhand but connected way, they are also liable in the attacks on 9/11, by diverting attention in Clintons case by his not being able to kill Bin Laden due to their constant media barrage and constant freeper behaviour about getting rid of Clinton because of a blow job.
I say the blood is on their hands for that also, plus the blood is on their hands for every civilian and soldier killed or wounded in the fake Iraq war.