On August 17, 1998, President Clinton appeared before a federal grand jury via closed-circuit television. This time, he admitted to an "inappropriate intimate relationship" with Lewinsky. That evening, he gave a televised address to the nation in which he conceded he had "misled people, including even my wife."
By April 1996, Lewinsky’s superiors, concerned about the amount of time she was spending near the president, transferred her to the Pentagon. While there, she confided in a colleague and new friend, Linda Tripp, about her secret relationship with the president. Unbeknownst to Lewinsky, Tripp began secretly recording their phone conversations, hoping to gather evidence of what she considered an abuse of power and potential perjury. The fuse for the explosion was a separate sexual harassment lawsuit filed against President Clinton by a former Arkansas state employee named Paula Jones. Jones’s lawyers were eager to establish a pattern of behavior by Clinton. They began subpoenaing women who had allegedly had affairs with him, including Monica Lewinsky. monicagate
In a sworn deposition for the Jones case on January 17, 1998, President Clinton was asked under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky. He famously denied having "sexual relations" with her. This denial would become the legal linchpin of the scandal. It wasn't just about infidelity; it was about lying under oath. The mainstream media initially ignored the story. But on January 17, 1998, the little-known online gossip columnist Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report published a bombshell headline: "Newsweek Killed Story on White House Intern." Drudge revealed that Newsweek magazine had reporters on the story but had held it back for fact-checking and legal concerns. On August 17, 1998, President Clinton appeared before