Clinton Impeachment, December 19, 1998: How the House Vote Happened

The House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998, approving two articles that accused him of lying to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. He was the second president impeached by the House, after Andrew Johnson in 1868. The Senate tried the case early in 1999 and acquitted him on February 12, so Clinton finished his second term.

What the House Voted On, Article by Article

The House Judiciary Committee sent four articles of impeachment to the floor, all contained in House Resolution 611. The members split them apart, and the outcomes differed.

Article	Charge	House vote	Result
I	Perjury before a federal grand jury	228-206	Approved
II	Perjury in the Paula Jones civil case	205-229	Rejected
III	Obstruction of justice	221-212	Approved
IV	Abuse of power	148-285	Rejected

The narrow margins on the two approved articles reflected a chamber divided mostly along party lines. The lopsided defeat of the abuse-of-power article showed that some Republicans were unwilling to go as far as the committee had recommended.

How the Lewinsky Investigation Reached the House

The case grew out of a civil lawsuit, not a criminal investigation of the president’s official acts. Paula Jones had sued Clinton over alleged conduct in Arkansas, and on January 17, 1998, he gave a sworn deposition in that case in which he denied a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who had been investigating other matters, had already received information from Linda Tripp suggesting that Lewinsky was preparing to give false testimony in the Jones case. Starr’s inquiry expanded to examine whether the president had lied under oath or encouraged others to do so.

The story reached mainstream newspapers on January 21, 1998. Five days later, at a White House event, Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” That sentence became the most quoted line of the year.

Timeline of the Clinton Impeachment, 1998 to 1999

The full sequence is easier to follow as a list of dates. You can count the gaps between any two of them with the days between dates calculator.

• January 17, 1998: Clinton is deposed in the Paula Jones lawsuit.
• January 26, 1998: He publicly denies a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
• August 17, 1998: Clinton testifies to Starr’s grand jury, then tells the nation that evening that his relationship with Lewinsky was “not appropriate.”
• September 9 and 11, 1998: Starr’s report goes to Congress, then is released to the public.
• October 8, 1998: The House votes 258-176 to open a formal impeachment inquiry; 31 Democrats join the Republican majority.
• November 3, 1998: In the midterm elections, Democrats gain five House seats, although Republicans keep control.
• December 11 and 12, 1998: The Judiciary Committee approves all four articles.
• December 16 to 19, 1998: US and British forces bomb Iraq in Operation Desert Fox, overlapping the House debate.
• December 19, 1998: The House approves two articles and rejects two.
• January 7, 1999: The Senate trial opens with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding.
• February 12, 1999: The Senate acquits on both articles.

A House in Turmoil During the Final Week

The 1998 midterms changed the mood on Capitol Hill before the vote. The party holding the White House usually loses House seats in a midterm, so a five-seat gain for the president’s party stood out while the impeachment inquiry was underway. Speaker Newt Gingrich announced within days that he would step down; he formally left Congress on January 3, 1999.

His expected successor, Representative Bob Livingston of Louisiana, faced his own crisis. On December 19, during the final floor debate, Livingston announced that he would not seek the speakership and would leave the House after reports about his past infidelity. He also urged Clinton to resign, which the president declined to do. Republicans later chose Dennis Hastert of Illinois as speaker.

The Iraq airstrikes added another layer. Some Republicans questioned the timing of Operation Desert Fox, which began on December 16 and ended on the day of the vote. The House continued its debate on December 18 and voted the next day.

The Senate Trial and Acquittal

The House named 13 Republican members of the Judiciary Committee as managers to present the case, led by committee chairman Henry Hyde of Illinois. The White House defense team included Charles Ruff, David Kendall and Cheryl Mills.

The trial opened on January 7, 1999. Senators heard presentations from the House managers in mid-January, followed by the defense, and then submitted more than 150 written questions that the chief justice read aloud. Conviction required a two-thirds majority, or 67 of the 100 senators.

On February 12, 1999, the perjury article failed with 45 senators voting guilty and 55 not guilty. The obstruction article split 50-50. Both totals fell well short of removal, and the trial ended the same day. The 1999 calendar covers the months of the trial and its aftermath.

What Changed After the Clinton Impeachment

The acquittal did not close every legal question. In April 1999, federal judge Susan Webber Wright held Clinton in civil contempt of court for giving misleading testimony in the Jones case.

The episode also shaped the way later impeachments were debated. Members of both parties cited the 1998 votes when arguing over what counts as an impeachable offense, how much the House should rely on outside investigators, and whether the Senate should call witnesses. Andrew Johnson’s 1868 case had been the only precedent for more than a century; after 1998, there were two, and Donald Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021 added more.

TIME magazine captured how much the scandal dominated the year by naming both Clinton and Starr its Men of the Year for 1998. For readers checking dates, the key point is that “impeached” and “removed” are different steps: the House impeached Clinton on December 19, 1998, but he stayed in office through the end of his term in January 2001. The full 1998 calendar shows how the scandal stretched from a January deposition to a pre-Christmas vote, and the Election Day guide explains the November date when that year’s midterm voters weighed in.