Impeachment of Bill Clinton - Impeachment By House of Representatives

Impeachment By House of Representatives

Since Ken Starr had already completed an extensive investigation, the House Judiciary Committee conducted no investigations of its own into Clinton's alleged wrongdoing, and it held no serious impeachment-related hearings before the 1998 mid-term elections. Nevertheless, impeachment was one of the major issues in the election. In November 1998, the Democrats picked up seats in the Congress. (The previous mid-term election, in 1994, had been a major debacle for Clinton's Democratic Party, though the Democrats gained eight House seats in November 1996.)

While the Republicans still maintained majority control of the United States House of Representatives after the 1998 midterm elections, this election also caused them to lose a large number of seats to the Democrats. Shortly after the mid-term elections, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, who was one of the people leading the impeachment proceedings against Clinton, announced he would resign from Congress as soon as he was able to find somebody to fill his vacant seat; Gingrich fulfilled this pledge and officially resigned from Congress on January 25, 1999. During the impeachment process, Gingrich's private polls suggested that Clinton's scandal would result in the GOP gaining six to thirty seats in the US House of Representatives in the 1998 midterm election.

Impeachment proceeding were initiated during the post-election, "lame duck" session of the outgoing 105th United States Congress. The committee hearings were perfunctory, but the floor debate in the whole House was spirited on both sides. The Speaker-designate, Representative Bob Livingston, chosen by the Republican Party Conference to replace outgoing Speaker Newt Gingrich, announced the end of his candidacy for Speaker and his resignation from Congress from the floor of the House after his own marital infidelity came to light. In the same speech, Livingston also encouraged Clinton to resign. Clinton chose to remain in office and urged Livingston to reconsider his resignation. Many other prominent Republican members of Congress (including Dan Burton of Indiana; Helen Chenoweth of Idaho; and Henry Hyde of Illinois, the chief House manager of Clinton's trial in the Senate) had infidelities exposed around this time, as publisher Larry Flynt offered a reward for such information and many supporters of Clinton accused Republicans of hypocrisy.

Upon the passage of H. Res. 611, Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, by the House of Representatives on grounds of perjury to a grand jury (by a 228–206 vote) and obstruction of justice (by a 221–212 vote). Two other articles of impeachment failed – a second count of perjury in the Jones case (by a 205–229 vote) and one accusing Clinton of abuse of power (by a 148–285 vote). Four Republicans opposed all four articles, while five Democrats voted for three of them and one Democrat for all four. Clinton thus became the first elected U.S. president and the second U.S. president to be impeached, following Andrew Johnson in 1868. President Johnson was elected vice president and inherited the presidency following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and was therefore not officially elected president. (Articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon were also passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, but Nixon resigned the Presidency before a vote by the full House.)

Five Democrats (Virgil Goode of Virginia, Ralph Hall of Texas, Paul McHale of Pennsylvania, Charles Stenholm of Texas, and Gene Taylor of Mississippi) voted in favor of three of the four articles of impeachment, but only Taylor voted for the abuse of power charge. Five Republicans (Amo Houghton of New York, Peter King of New York, Connie Morella of Maryland, Chris Shays of Connecticut, and Mark Souder of Indiana) voted against the first perjury charge. Eight more Republicans (Sherwood Boehlert of New York, Michael Castle of Delaware, Phil English of Pennsylvania, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Jay Kim of California, Jim Leach of Iowa, John McHugh of New York, and Ralph Regula of Ohio), but not Souder, voted against the obstruction charge. Twenty-eight Republicans voted against the second perjury charge, sending it to defeat, and eighty-one voted against the abuse of power charge.