Investigation and impeachment
In 1998, as a result of allegations that he had lied during grand jury testimony regarding his relationship with a young female White House intern (Monica Lewinsky), Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The House held no serious impeachment hearings before the 1998 mid-term elections: Republican candidates rarely mentioned the issue of impeachment, but Democrats generally came out strongly against impeachment. In spite of the serious allegations against the President, his party picked up seats in the Congress. The Republican leadership called a lame duck session in December 1998 to hastily hold impeachment proceedings: if they had waited until the newly-elected Congress convened in January 1999, the Republicans would not have had enough votes.
Although the House Judiciary Committee hearings were perfunctory and ended in a straight party line vote, the debate on the Floor of the House was lively. The two charges which were narrowly passed by the House were for perjury and obstruction of justice. The perjury charge arose from Clinton's testimony about his relationship to Monica Lewinsky during a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former Arkansas-state employee Paula Jones. The obstruction charge was based on his actions during the subsequent investigation of that testimony. Two other charges were voted down.
The presumptive incoming Speaker of the House, Bob Livingston lost his job as an indirect result of the impeachment process, after he was forced to admit to marital infidelity of his own.
Impeachment trial in the Senate
The Senate refused to convene to hold an impeachment trial before the end of the old term, so the trial was held over until the next Congress. The Constitutionality of this was widely questioned, although the most recent set of impeachment proceedings, against Judge Walter Nixon in 1988 and 1989, also spanned two Congresses.
On February 12, the Senate concluded a 21-day trial with the vote on both counts falling short of the Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority to convict and remove an office holder. The final vote was generally along party lines, with all of the votes to convict being cast by Republicans. On the perjury charge 55 senators voted to acquit, including 10 Republicans, and 45 voted to convict; on the obstruction charge the Senate voted 50-50.[24] Clinton, like the only other president to be impeached, Andrew Johnson, served the remainder of his term.
Contempt of court citation
In April, 1999, about two months after being acquitted by the Senate, Clinton was cited by Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright for civil contempt of court for his "willful failure" to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. For this citation, Clinton was assessed a $90,000 fine, and the matter was referred to the Arkansas Supreme Court to see if disciplinary action would be appropriate.[4]
Regarding Clinton's January 17, 1998 deposition where he was placed under oath, the judge wrote:
"Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. (Monica) Lewinsky was intentionally false and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false . . ." [5]
Later--in January, 2001, on the day before leaving office--Clinton agreed to a five year suspension of his Arkansas law license as part of an agreement with the independent counsel to end the investigation. Based on this suspension, Clinton was also automatically suspended from the United States Supreme Court bar, from which he chose to resign. [6][17][18]
Clinton's resignation was mostly symbolic, as he had never practiced before the Supreme Court and was not expected to in the future. The Paula Jones lawsuit was eventually settled out of court for $850,000.