The Clinton-Trump Parallels

I was chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee Democrats fighting President Clinton’s impeachment. The House impeached Mr. Clinton in 1998 for alleged “process crimes”—perjury and obstruction of justice—stemming from attempts to cover up an extramarital affair in the Paula Jones civil suit and subsequent grand jury proceedings. Later, independent counsel Robert Ray obtained a settlement with Mr. Clinton under threat of criminal prosecution.

Nearly every Democrat I worked with, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, argued that there was no precedent for such extreme legal measures. They agreed that pursuing impeachment and criminal charges on a case that was fundamentally about covering up a private affair—as wrong as that conduct might have been—was unprecedented. Democrats were virtually unanimous in that view.