Clinton Trial Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Clinton Trial - Essay Example However, in 1998, he was accused for perjury and obstruction of justice during a case against him. These two accusations were related to a scandal concerning a white house intern. Although he was acquitted by the U.S Senate and completed his term in office the trial marked a great part of American history. Clinton’s Trial President Bill Clinton’s trial for the charges brought up against him of perjury and obstruction of justice, started in January 7 1999, in the Senate. As indicated in Article 1 of the United State Constitution, Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court was sworn in to preside over the trial and the juniors sworn in were the 100 senators. This was the second time in the United State history that the senate conducted a trial of a head of state (Sigelman et al, 2001). The origin of Clinton’s trial was in a sexual harassment lawsuit claimed by one Paula Jones in Arkansas in May, 1994. Paula Jones was a former Arkansas state employee. Paul a claimed that in May 8, 1991 while she was helping to staff a state-sponsored conference at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, a member of at that time Governor Bill Clinton’s security, Danny Ferguson, came to her and told her that the Governor was asking to meet her in his hotel suite. Jones saw this as an opportunity to advance her career therefore she took the elevator to the Governor’s suite. According to her statement, Jones claims that when she got to the suite, the Governor, Clinton at that time, continuously made increasingly aggressive moves on her. In her account, she claimed that the Governor forced her to do sexual things but, according to the security guard outside the suite, Jones looked happy when she got out of the Governor’s suite. The lawyers of Clinton asked the court to dismiss Jones claims in 1997 saying it would only disrupt his work at the white house but the supreme court ruled against the president and allowed the discovery of the case to continue that was in May 1997. An independent Counsel Ken Starr was the one in charge of the investigation (umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/clinton/). Counsel Ken had history with investigating the officials in the white house although many of his cases had failed to hold in court for example his case on the land deal years earlier known as White-water. It was during this investigation that he got prove of Clinton’s misuse of power by being intimate with an employee, Monica Lewinsky. Consequently, Clinton’s trial had a lot of impact to the political sector mainly in Clintons rating and publicity. During this Lewinsky/impeachment controversy, Bill Clinton received the highest job approval ratings of his administration. Furthermore, as the Lewinsky situation unfolded, Clinton's approval in terms of his job went up, not down as was expected. Moreover, his ratings remained high for the duration of the impeachment proceedings. However while Clinton's job approval rati ng went up during the scandal with Lewinsky and the trial, his poll numbers though went down concerning the question of honesty, integrity and moral character as a political leader. As a result of this low ratings about his moral character and honesty led to change the political leadership of the United States. George.W.Bush was the president elected defeating Gore in the 2000 presidential elections and according to