I distinctly remember calling my brother Dan with glee on December 19th, 1998. That was the day the House of Representatives impeached former President Bill Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.
Another relative who will not be named was nearby when I called using their house phone. As I was joyfully talking about the fact that Clinton “finally got his” our relative marched over, slammed their fingers on the old school phone receiver, and hung up the call.
To this day I firmly believe that former President Clinton at the very least committed perjury when he lied under oath while serving as the Commander in Chief. No, the impeachment inquiry was not about his consensual relationship with an intern in and around the Oval Office.
Even national pollster Dick Morris believed Clinton could survive politically if he simply told the American people the truth and apologized.
Clinton did neither initially, and a Constitutional crisis gripped the nation for many months.
From a purely political perspective, not talking from a legal lens here, from a political perspective, it can be argued that House Republicans back in 1998 “overplayed their hand” back then by impeaching Clinton.
It angered folks on both sides of the political spectrum, like my relative who slammed the phone down. The attempt to prosecute President Clinton galvanized the electorate and made some feel sorry for Clinton, that his deeply personal affair did not make him a bad President.
That sure was evident in my hometown of Buffalo, New York one month later when Clinton held a rock-star-type rally at then named Marine Midland Arena. I was there, covering the rally for WKBW-TV as a news reporter.
The place was rocking. It sounded more like a rally or rock concert than a political event. It was held the day after the State of the Union.
In this case, I believe House Republicans were correct in drafting and passing articles of impeachment. The political ramifications hurt the GOP. Former House Speaker Bob Livingston was forced to resign when information was leaked about his own affair.
The fallout began months before, actually, in the midst of the trial, when Democrats made major gains in the 1998 midterm elections. For the first time since 1934, the political party in control of the presidency gained seats, with the Democrats picking up five. It was shocking. House Speaker Newt Gingrich stepped down as speaker and left Congress altogether.
Numerous vulnerable Republicans who later voted in favor of impeachment decided not to run again in the 2000 election. While the choice to impeach President Clinton was correct, the American people saw it as prosecutorial abuse.
Fast forward more than a quarter century later to a Manhattan courtroom, where a jury just found President Trump guilty of “fraud” charges at the state level.
Unlike the impeachment of President Clinton where perjury charges were crystal clear and justified, the same cannot be said for President Trump’s recent case.
No question this abusive “lawfare” was orchestrated by the Biden Administration. Even if you give the Trump charges credibility, at most legal experts believe it’s a misdemeanor at the federal level, not felony state charges.
Even left leaning CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria agrees with this assessment:
“I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump,” said Zakaria.
Reaction from Trump’s guilty verdict was electrifying, the same way it was in Buffalo for the Clintons. This time around, people expressed their anger with their pocketbooks. Eric Trump stated his father’s presidential campaign raised an astounding $200 million in small and large donations following the guilty verdict.
The Democrats and President Biden didn’t learn their lesson. They most definitely woke a sleeping giant and exposed themselves for who they really are: rabid, hyper partisan political opportunists who will stop at nothing to win, going so far to jail and imprison their political opponents on bogus charges.
People may not like politicians, but they demand fairness and justice in our political and judicial systems.
The sleeping giant known as the American electorate will resoundingly reject the political persecution and prosecution of President Trump.
Republicans lost big back in 1998 and shortly after.
So too will Joe Biden in 2024.