40 Key Moments in the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal

January

• January 7 – Lewinsky had to sign an affidavit that stated that she never had any se*ual relationship with Clinton, as she was asked by the attorneys who represented Paula Jones, who accused Clinton of se*ual harassment in 1994. Jones claimed that she has gone through emotional damage after Clinton exposed himself to Jones, in an Arkansas hotel room in May of 1991. A conservative legal group obviously volunteered to fund the lawsuit, but what really changed everything was that they were anonymously tipped about Lewinsky, so Jones’ lawyers decided to subpoena Lewinsky, hoping that they would discover a pattern of workplace harassment.
• January 12 – Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr received over 20 hours of tapes of phone conversations that completely contradicted the affidavit. The tapes were sent by Linda Tripp, who was a close friend of Lewinsky in 1996, while they were working together in the Pentagon’s public affairs office, and to whom Monica had confided about Clinton.
• January 13 – At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., Monica Lewinsky started dishing more about her relationship with Tripp, who was secretly wired by FBI agents, by Starr’s orders.
• January 16 – Starr receives the green light to add the secret relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky to his portfolio to check if she lied under oath. Tripp tells everything about the affair to Jones’ lawyers.
• January 17 – Newsweek had been tipped off about Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, but the story is yet to be investigated. On the same day, Clinton denies the alleged affair in a deposition in the Jones suit.
• January 21 – More allegations appear that Lewinsky allegedly had kept a “garment with Clinton’s dried s*men.”, and they are picked up by mainstream news outlets. FBI tests the samples, but there’s no DNA evidence.
• January 26 – President Clinton denies the allegations on television, saying what was about to become one of the most famous lines of the scandal: “I did not have se*ual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
• January 27 – Hillary Clinton dismissed on television the allegations, saying that they were just a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been running against my husband since the day he publicly announced running for president.”
• January 29 – U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright rules the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal as irrelevant to the case.

February

• February 2 – “When it comes to women, Clinton lived all his live alongside various enablers, and not just the friends who egged him on, but also those who helped him sidestep accusations.” said TIMES in a special report about the scandal.
• February 6 – Clinton declares in a press conference that he won’t resign.
• February 10 – Lewinsky’s mom, Marcia Lewis, makes an appearance before a grand jury. She was suspected to have encouraged Lewinsky to lie to the lawyers and accused she hid the stained dress. She was grilled by Starr’s team for three days straight until it overwhelmed her, and she received full immunity in exchange for delivering the stained dress. according to TIMES
• February 11 – Retired Secret Service agent Lewis C. Fox was “the first person that publicly declared he saw the president and Lewinsky alone together” according to the Washington Post.

March

• March 15 – Three more women come out saying that they were harassed by then-President Bill Clinton.
• March 21 – President Clinton hurries to invoke executive privilege that would prevent top aides from testifying about the private conversations they had with him.

April

• April 1 – A judge dismisses Paula Jones’s se*ual harassment suit from lack of evidence. Paula Jones files an appeal at the end of July.
• April 29 – D.C. Circuit Court judge Norma Holloway Johnson, who presided over the grand jury investigation into the affair, didn’t take into consideration Lewinsky’s lawyer’s argument that she has a particular immunity agreement with Starr. While immunity has been offered, the deal was never completed.
• April 30 – Clinton declares at a press conference that “I really believe it’s very important for me not to say any more about this.”, as a response to a question about whether he believed the American public should care about what the President does in his private life. “I am the last person who should have a national conversation about this.”