Whitewater Trials and Impeachment of a President: 1994-99

Clinton took office as president of the United States. Over the next two and one-half years:

Clinton's deputy counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide after filing three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns;

the White House agreed to release Whitewater documents to the Justice Department;

Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert B. Fiske, Jr., as special counsel to examine the Clintons' involvement in Whitewater;

Webster L. Hubbell, facing allegations over his activities during his earlier partnership at the Rose Law Firm, resigned abruptly (in March 1994) as Clinton's associate attorney general;

the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to reappoint Fiske, citing a conflict of interest in his appointment by Reno, and Kenneth W. Starr, who had been both a federal appeals court judge and a U.S. solicitor general (in the Reagan and Bush administrations) succeeded him;

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Whitewater hearings by House and Senate Banking Committees cleared 29 administration officials of any wrongdoing;

a special Senate Whitewater committee, headed by Republican Alfonse D'Amato, conducted hearings that lasted 11 months without significant results;

Hubbell pleaded guilty (in December 1994) to two felony charges of tax evasion and mail fraud for bilking his law firm and clients out of more than $480,000 (six months later, on June 28, 1995, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment); and

a grand jury investigating questionable loans charged James and Susan McDougal (who by then had divorced) and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker with bank fraud on August 17, 1995.

The following January, Hillary Clinton's billing records from the Rose Law Firm, which RTC investigators had sought for two years, turned up on a table in the White House living quarters. Starr subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton, and she testified before a grand jury on the discovery and content of the records.