Clinton Scandals

Hillary Clinton seems hopelessly stuck with her undoubtedly quite annoying email scandal for the duration of her presidential campaign, but it’s by no means the first one that the former First Lady is having to deal with. Everyone remembers Bill Clinton’s famous sex scandals with Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, but the history of Clinton scandals goes still somewhat further back.

The first presidential one came early on during the 1992 campaign when the New York Times published an article suspecting foul play in Hillary’s and Bill’s financial deals with a real estate company known as Whitewater Development Corporation. Eventually their business partners were sent to jail, but the Clintons did not have to face prosecution themselves.

Although the Whitewater case was not commonly dubbed the Whitewatergate, the Clintons did not have to wait for their first gate scandal for too long after entering the White House. After seven White House travel office employees were fired at once it was suspected that the move was done to make space for people the Clintons owed favors. The Travelgate was born and the FBI, the Department of Justice, the General Accounting Office, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, the Whitewater Independent Counsel (born out of the previous scandal) and even the White House itself all opened investigations, but yet again no intentional foul play could ever be proven.

Things did not get easier when Hillary’s lawyer colleague and friend Vince Foster who had been appointed as a Deputy White House Counsel was found dead during the Travelgate investigation, the Republicans again called foul play, but all investigations concluded that Foster had indeed committed suicide. He had also left behind a note criticizing the brutal treatment of people working in Washington. Although Hillary had been a relatively central part of the early Clinton scandals, her public image was most definitely changed by the subsequent sex scandals and actually helped greatly in making her a more approved public figure.

Despite occasional claims of wrongdoing usually related to the operation of the family’s foundation, the first big Hillary Clinton scandal would come only during her time leading the State Department as Libyan extremists attacked the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in 2012 (on September 11, no less). Clinton was initially reluctant to call the act a “terrorist attack”, this hesitation was enough to be seen as a suspicious cover-up by the Republicans and a House committee was established to investigate. Although Clinton has essentially won the battle over whether she deliberately sacrificed American lives or not, the investigation still continues and also revealed her use of the private email server that was to become a still bigger and more threatening scandal. Ultimately the question that remains is whether Hillary Clinton has the moral integrity to be able to stay truthful and worthy of the presidency, or whether her web of small lies will eventually cost her career.