Imagine the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy running video of Bill Clinton lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky -- the impact on Hillary Clinton's campaign will be devastating!
I wish I could forget about Monica Lewinsky, the stained blue dress, the cigars, and BJs in the White House.
By and large, I was pretty happy with the Clinton Administration. After decades of mental abuse at the hands of Reagan and Bush Sr., it was a relief to have a president that I agreed with on most policy issues. Then there was the Hillary Factor -- for me, obviously, another plus.
Then I read today the story of Genarlow Wilson, a young man serving 10 years in prison for having oral sex with a girl when they were teenagers.
According to the AP story, what Wilson did was against Georgia law. They have since changed the law, but at the time he committed the nasty deed, Georgia said it was a felony for teens to have consensual sex.
Now they want to release Wilson, but D.A. David McDade has released a video of Wilson having oral sex with a 15 year-old and intercourse with another teen at a New Year's Eve party. Some are accusing McDade of distributing child pornography because the participants are underaged.
I am writing about Wilson not just because his case is troubling in its own right; I am bringing this up because it makes me think of Bill Clinton.
Consider this: Georgia sentenced a teen to 10 years in prison for a sexual act that Bill Clinton also committed in the White House. Sure, Monica was not a minor and was a very willing participant. But that's besides the point. What's relevant during this presidential season is that other voters will make a similar connection to Bill Clinton every time they read a story like the one about Wilson. And that's not good news for Hillary.
Like many with my political beliefs, I have tried to forget about all this. "Bad judgment" is how I have excused Bill Clinton's behavior. Pardoning him that way is easy when you look at his successor, who has shown such bad judgment on so many issues of far greater consequence.
Still, the images of Bill Clinton's disgraceful behavior in the White House just won't go away.
The most famous quotation from Bill Clinton's presidency won't be about health care, or Bosnia, or Iraq, or the economy. It will be the lie he told a national audience on January 28, 1998, when he said: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."
The Lewinsky scandal is a political-sex scandal emerging from a 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 President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial.
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. The two began a sexual relationship.
As Lewinsky's relationship with Clinton became more distant and after she had left the White House to work at the Pentagon, Lewinsky confided details of her feelings and Clinton's behavior to her friend and Defense Department co-worker Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their telephone conversations. When Tripp discovered in January 1998 that Lewinsky had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying a relationship with Clinton, she delivered the tapes to Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who was investigating Clinton on various other matters, including the Whitewater scandal, Filegate, and Travelgate.
Paula Corbin Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment and eschewal. Eventually, the court dismissed the lawsuit, before trial, on the grounds that Jones failed to demonstrate any damages. However, while the dismissal was on appeal, Clinton entered into an out-of-court settlement by agreeing to pay Jones $850,000.
The impeachment trial of President Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was based on statements he made during the depositions for the Paula Jones lawsuit. The specific statements were about the nature of his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, with whom he denied having a sexual relationship.
Gennifer Flowers is a woman who had a relationship with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. She attended the University of Arkansas.
She came forward during Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential election campaign press conference Hillary Clinton, for the first time, made the media rounds to rebut sexual allegations against her husband. When asked why Clinton and Flowers called each other "honey" in the tapes, Mrs. Clinton explained that this was how people talked in Arkansas. At least two Arkansas state police officers who had formerly guarded Bill Clinton when he was Governor backed up Flowers' story. Clinton also apologized to Mario Cuomo for remarks he made about him on the tapes. alleging that she had had a twelve-year relationship with him. When Bill Clinton denied having relationship with Flowers, she held a in which she played tape recordings she claimed were of secretly recorded intimate phone calls with Bill Clinton.
In his autobiography My Life, Clinton acknowledged testifying under oath that he had not had sexual relations with Flowers while he was with Hillary. It was only on one occasion before Hillary and Bill were together. When Flowers learned of it, she went public again to tell her side.
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