The White House made a public push to defend then-US president Bill Clinton during a series of investigations related to his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and other matters, according to thousands of pages of documents released by the US National Archives.
The papers did not appear to reveal any new information that might affect a potential presidential campaign by former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.
The documents, part of 10,000 pages of records from the Clinton administration released on Friday, focused on a number of painful chapters in the former first lady’s time in the White House and described how the president’s aides sought to defend her husband against impeachment.
The possibility of a presidential campaign has heightened interest in the documents by media organizations, political opposition researchers and historians.
Many records involving Lewinsky are redacted. Behind the scenes, Clinton officials were adamant that they were not trying to discredit her.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House was directing or involved in any campaign against her,” Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a January 1999 memo.
However, the case caused political tensions.
An aide writes in one document that one Democratic governor explained “why he felt he needed to distance himself” from Clinton.
The papers also touch on the Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s land dealings in Arkansas and the pardons Bill Clinton granted in his final hours as president.
The Clintons were never implicated in the Whitewater case, but their real-estate partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, were convicted in a trial that also resulted in the conviction of then-Arkansas governor.
The documents touch on financier Marc Rich, who was indicted on fraud and other charges in 1983. He fled to Switzerland and was later pardoned on Bill Clinton’s last day in office.
Jack Quinn, who had left his role as White House counsel by then, suggests in a handwritten note that then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak discussed a pardon directly with Bill Clinton.
With these documents, the National Archives will have released about 30,000 pages of papers since February. Both US President Barack Obama’s White House and the Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas signed off on their release.
Past installments of the documents have offered an unvarnished look at Bill Clinton’s two terms, including the shaping of his wife’s public image.
Hillary Clinton’s influence in the White House is explored in this latest installment, from her role in Bill Clinton’s unsuccessful healthcare overhaul plan to her 2000 US Senate campaign in New York. Bill Clinton left office in January 2001.
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