Why was Clinton investigated?
It began over the Whitewater scandal, a long-running controversy concerning a failed 1978 land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons’ business partner in that project defrauded a small savings association and an investment firm, and some of the parties involved charged that the president and his wife had benefited from the fraud. In January 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske as a special prosecutor to investigate the Clintons’ involvement. Seven months later, however, a Republican-leaning panel of judges dismissed Fiske—on the basis that his appointment by Clinton’s attorney general represented a conflict of interest—and appointed Ken Starr as an independent counsel, reporting to Congress, not to the Justice Department. Starr, who had served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, was a staunch Republican. Clinton loyalists immediately cried foul, denouncing the probe as “tainted” and a partisan “witch hunt.” “This will last as long as [Clinton is] president and beyond,” warned White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum. “They’ll be investigating things years from now that we haven’t even dreamed about today.” But he insisted he hadn’t perjured himself during the Jones case—arguing that he understood “sexual relations” to mean sexual intercourse, not oral sex—and denied instructing Lewinsky and others to lie to investigators. Starr submitted his report to Congress three weeks later, and lawmakers voted to make it public. The 445-page document specified 11 possible grounds for impeachment, mostly related to the cover-up. In December, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted almost entirely along party lines to impeach Clinton for perjury, 228-206, and obstruction of justice, 221-212. (Two other charges were voted down.) But after a five-week trial in the Senate, Clinton was acquitted on both charges. All 45 Democratic senators voted “not guilty” on the obstruction charge, along with five Republicans, and the 50 “guilty” votes fell far short of the 67 required to oust Clinton from office. On the perjury charge, 55 senators voted “not guilty.”