UNBIASED - Unbiased University: The Biggest Government Scandals Throughout U.S. History (Part II)

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

In this episode of UNBIASED University, we continue our look at the biggest government scandals in U.S. history and the impact they had on politics, public trust, and government accountability. In Part II, we examine three major controversies from different eras: the Whiskey Ring scandal of the 1870s, the Iran–Contra affair of the 1980s, and the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal of the late 1990s. Along the way, we break down what happened in each case, how the scandals were uncovered, and what they reveal about the limits of power and the mechanisms for accountability within the American political system. Get the facts, without the spin. UNBIASED offers a clear, impartial recap of US news, including politics, elections, legal news, and more. Hosted by lawyer Jordan Berman, each episode provides a recap of current political events plus breakdowns of complex concepts—like constitutional rights, recent Supreme Court rulings, and new legislation—in an easy-to-understand way. No personal opinions, just the facts you need to stay informed on the daily news that matters. If you miss how journalism used to be, you're in the right place. Intro (0:00) Whiskey Ring Scandal (2:22) Iran-Contra Affair (14:03) Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal (27:23) SUBSCRIBE TO JORDAN'S ⁠SUBSTACK⁠. ⁠Watch⁠ this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased Politics and to the Unbiased University series. We're almost done with the series, which is crazy. In today's episode, we are talking about some more of the biggest government scandals in U.S. history. In part one of the series, we covered the Credit Mobile Yeh scandal, teapot dome, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate. In today's episode, we'll cover the whiskey ring, the Iran-Contra affair, and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Now, for those of you tuning in for the first time, I would just like to say that this whole unbiased university series, if you are tuning in for the first time, first of all, you know, where have you been for the last

15 episodes, but that's okay, I will forgive you. I highly recommend going back and listening to everything. This is meant to be a condensed law school education. And I want you to kind of imagine that every time you're tuning into one of these episodes, you are sitting down in a 30 to 45 minute law school class with me as your professor. And in each of these classes, we covered a different topic. We talked about various cases and laws that shaped those topics. And I've said from the beginning that by the time you listen to all of these episodes, you will have obtained your imaginary degree from unbiased university. And what that means is that when I do come back from maternity leave, you will be fully prepared for the normal reporting on current events. Because all of these

concepts that we've talked about in each of these episodes, they're all in the background of every single current event that we talk about on this show. So it's really important that we understand all of these concepts. They are critical. I wish more people understood them. And my goal with this is to make it easy to understand them. So I highly recommend going back and listening to all of the episodes. This series is invaluable in my opinion and it stands the test a time. It's not like my current event episodes where, you know, if you don't tune in, maybe it's old news by next week. It's there for whenever you're ready to listen. And as a final note, if you enjoy today's episode or if you have loved Unbiased University in general, I would

absolutely love if you could share these episodes with your friends, your family, your loved ones, whoever you think would appreciate them. So with those things out of the way, let's start this episode talking about the whiskey ring. The whiskey ring scandal broke in 1875 during the Grant administration, but it actually started taking shape during the Lincoln administration. So this one was essentially about tax fraud within the federal government. And this is how it unfolded. During the Civil War, the federal government relied heavily on excise tax to raise revenue and fund the war. Because before the war, the federal government relied mostly on tariffs and land sales to make its money, but that wasn't enough to fund

a full scale war. So it implemented a series of revenue laws, which included these excise taxes on various goods, including distilled spirits, whiskey. And an excise tax, by the way, is a tax on a specific good that's produced inside the United States. So it's different than a tariff. Tariff supply to goods imported from other countries, these excise taxes apply to goods produced in the United States. So after the Civil War ended in 1865, the federal government had accumulated a ton of debt. And during the two administrations that followed Lincoln, which were the Johnson administration and the Grant administration, these excise taxes stayed in place. And whiskey taxes specifically became one of the biggest sources of federal income. And the tax was high too. It was around

70 cents per gallon of whiskey produced, though it kind of fluctuated over the years. So by the 1870s, whiskey taxes were generating tens of millions of dollars annually for the government. But because the tax was so high, distilleries started getting creative about how they could avoid paying it. And this eventually led to fraud. But to understand how the fraud worked, we have to understand how the tax system itself worked. So basically, distilleries were required to report how much. And that's much whiskey they produced. A federal revenue agent would then measure the output, calculate what was owed based on production volume, and then collect tax on behalf of the government. And these revenue agents were assigned to local districts. So each district had its own revenue agent.

But here's a key detail, too. Under federal law, whiskey didn't have to be taxed immediately. It could instead be stored in what we're called bonded warehouses, which were basically these government supervised facilities where, you know, whiskey could age for months or sometimes years before the tax actually became due. And that delay created an opportunity because if the tax wasn't due right away, distillers and federal agents had time to kind of work together to manipulate the records during the storage period, right? Obviously, if the records were manipulated or production was underreported, distilleries could

get away with paying less in taxes if they did it right. So what was happening with these distillers is they were working with the federal revenue agents to under-report production. And then the revenue agents would make a portion of the taxes that were avoided. So for example, let's just say for sake of ease, the federal whiskey tax was a dollar per gallon, which at certain times it was. A distillery produces 10,000 gallons of whiskey. but the distillery and revenue agent agreed to lose 3,000 of those gallons on paper. Okay. And let's say the agent's cut was 20% of the taxes avoided.

In reality, the distillery should be paying $10,000 in taxes, $1 for each of the 10,000 gallons produced. But because of the underreporting, it's only paying $7,000 in taxes because only 7,000 gallons of whiskey exist on paper. Well, then the revenue agent would make 20% of the $3,000 that the distillery saved. So instead of the distillery paying $10,000 in taxes and the revenue agent getting nothing by working together, now that the distillery was saving money and the revenue agent was making money. So in this hypothetical, the government loses $3,000, right?

The distiller gains $2,400 and the revenue agent gains $600. On top of that, the distiller could still sell the full 10,000 gallons. It just wouldn't pay taxes on all of it because only 7,000 gallons existed on paper. So it really was this win-win for both the distiller and the federal revenue agents. And this is what happened in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. Though St. Louis was really sort of the hub of the scheme. But also, I just want to be clear about the fact that the example I just gave you was a,

you know, that did happen. Not all whiskey ring fraud relied on that underreporting production scheme, though. Sometimes the warehouse withdrawals would be falsified or sometimes whiskey would be removed from the warehouses before the taxes were paid. Sometimes the proof of tax stamps that the revenue agents were responsible for putting on the whiskey would be falsified, meaning barrels were marked as tax paid even when no tax had ever been collected. So there are many ways in which these distillers and revenue agents could work together,

but regardless of which way the scheme was carried out, the end game was always the same. Distillers would save money on taxes. Revenue agents would make a portion of that unpaid tax. Now, there's another piece of this story that's important, and this is where the higher-level government officials come in. In 1871, a faction known as the Liberal Republicans took control of the Missouri Republican Party, and the Liberal Republicans didn't support President Grant. They felt that his administration was too corrupt, and they disagreed with some of his reconstruction era policies. And the state of Missouri mattered politically because it was this key border

state after the civil war. It wasn't solidly Republican or Democrat. It was very much divided. And so there was a lot of pressure on Grant, a Republican, to not lose control of Missouri heading into the 1872 presidential election. So to try to manage the situation and try to maintain Republican support, Grant sent General John McDonald, who was supervisor of internal revenue in St. Louis to kind of manage the situation. But while he was doing this, while General John McDonald was, was, you know, doing what he was, he was put there to do, he himself became wrapped up in this whiskey ring. In fact, there was testimony and evidence presented at the trial that was to come later that some of the illegally collected money was funneled toward Republican political

purposes, including support for Grant's re-election campaign. I should note, though, there's never been any conclusive evidence that Grant personally knew the funds were illegally obtained, but we'll get to that part in a little bit. So now with McDonald involved in the ring, it was starting to reach higher-level officials, and not only that, but you have to remember McDonald's position. He was the supervisor of internal revenue in St. Louis, meaning he was the top guy overseeing federal tax collection in one of the most important whiskey-producing districts in the country. So once he got involved, the ring became something even bigger than what it was before. And this went on for years until President Grant appointed Benjamin Bristow as Secretary of the Treasury in 1874.

When Bristow took this role, there had already been rumors for years about potential corruption in the internal revenue system, especially in cities like St. Louis. there were already complaints about revenue agents, there were questionably low tax collections, and there were allegations of bribery. And Bristow was a guy who took his job seriously. He felt that revenue fraud was costing the government millions of dollars every year, and he felt it was hurting the Treasury's credibility. So when he came in, he decides he is going to start reviewing the federal excise tax receipts from whiskey-producing districts and ordered investigators to track the grain shipments,

that we're going into distilleries because when you have grain input data, you can estimate whiskey output. So if a distillery gets enough grain to produce 10,000 gallons of whiskey, but tax reports only show 7,000 gallons, that's suspicious. And after noticing inconsistencies like this, Bristow ends up opening this secret investigation, which ended up exposing the ring in May of 1875. At that point, once the, once the ring was exposed, federal agents, seized the various distilleries that were participating in this scheme. The federal government indicted 238 people. It resulted in 110 convictions.

And eventually, the investigation reached the White House when General Orville Babcock, who was not only President Grant's private secretary, but also close friend, was indicted as a co-conspirator. Investigators found a series of cryptic telegrams sent by Babcock that seemed to warned other members of the ring about government investigations. So federal prosecutors argued that those messages suggested Babcock might have been helping to either obstruct the investigation and or tip people off before the government would carry out these raids. Now, as I mentioned before, there's never been any evidence to suggest that President Grant

knew about this ring. In fact, when the investigation first began, he was very clear that he supported the investigation. He famously said, let no guilty man escape. But when it came to Babcock, Grant thought Babcock was innocent. So Grant decided he was going to voluntarily testify as a defense witness at Babcock's criminal trial. During that testimony, Grant vouched for Babcock's character, said that he didn't recall the telegrams being used in any corrupt way by Babcock. And Grant's testimony was significant because that was the first and only time that a sitting president

has voluntarily testified in a criminal trial as a defense witness. Babcock was ultimately acquitted. He was actually the only major defendant in the whiskey ring scandal to be acquitted, most likely because of the president's testimony. But many other defendants in the whiskey ring were convicted and sentenced to prison. So that was the whiskey ring. As far as what the whiskey ring changed, for one, it strengthened the push for civil service reform.

So at the time, a lot of federal jobs were. were given through what was called the spoils system, which meant that political loyalty determined who got certain government positions. So revenue collectors, tax supervisors, local enforcement officials were typically political appointees. But the whiskey ring kind of exposed the weakness in that system, which was that corruption becomes easier when jobs are given based on loyalty rather than merit. So frustration with these politically based appointments grew, and it eventually led to the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which created this merit-based federal hiring system. Enforcement practices within the Treasury Department also became more aggressive.

Treasury Secretary Bristow implemented, you know, stricter auditing procedures, more centralized tax enforcement, and more oversight of local tax collectors. So that was the whiskey ring, definitely a big scandal and one of the earliest scandals at that. Let's take a quick break here. back, we'll talk about the Iran-Contra affair. If you have never tracked how much money you spend on food delivery services on a monthly basis, might I recommend this little game my husband and I played not too long ago? Basically, you estimate how much you think you spend on food delivery apps each month, then you track how much you actually spend or you look at how much you actually spent in any given month. And if your game goes anything like ours did, you will be absolutely floored at how

much you are spending every month. And you know, you might be wondering, well, how do you determine exactly how much you've spent in any given month? And there's a few ways to do this. I recommend the Rocket Money app. That's how I did it. That's how I would suggest you do it too. Rocket Money just makes it so easy. And the beautiful thing about Rocket Money is that not only does it automatically categorize each transaction across your account so you can do things like this and, you know, easily see your spending patterns, but it also offers a ton of other features. like the ability to set financial goals and budgets. You can get personalized insights and regular spending reports.

You can get real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, low balances, and you can even cancel unwanted subscriptions within the Rocket Money app with just a few taps. In fact, Rocket Money has saved users over $880 million in canceled subscriptions. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. monitor your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com slash unbiased. That's rocketmoney.com slash unbiased. Welcome back. Let's talk about the Iran-Contra Affair, which took place in the 1980s, nearly 100 years after the whiskey ring. The Iran-Contra

affair involved two. secret yet related actions taken by government officials in the Reagan administration. And this is why the name of the scandal is hyphenated because it involved two separate yet related actions. So the Iran part of the scandal involved selling weapons to Iran despite Iran being under a U.S. arms embargo. And the contra part of the scandal involved using those funds from those arms sales to secretly fund the contras, which was this group of anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. So let's start with the fact that from the 30s to the late 70s, the United States had supported what was called the Samosa family in Nicaragua because the Samosa family was very anti-communist,

but it was also a dictatorship. In 1979, the Samosa family was overthrown by a left-wing revolutionary movement called the Sandoista National Liberation Front, usually just called the Sandonistas. The Sandoistas were more politically aligned with the Soviet Union. And in the Cold War logic of the time, U.S. officials saw this as, you know, Soviet influence kind of moving closer to home. Opponents to the San Anisas were these insurgent groups that became collectively known as the Contras, which stood for those who were against the revolution. When Reagan took office in 1981, he framed the Contras as these anti-communist freedom fighters. and he made supporting them part of his Reagan doctrine, which aimed to back anti-communist insurgents in places like Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.

Early in Reagan's administration, the CIA started secretly providing assistance to the Contras, not just money, but also training and logistical support as well. Keep in mind, the executive branch has the authority to carry out secret or covert actions like this, okay? But under federal law, these kinds of operations, have to be authorized by the president in writing. They have to be documented in what's called a presidential finding. And they have to be reported to Congress, specifically to the intelligence committees within Congress.

The public does not have to be notified of these operations, which is why they are called covert operations, but all those other requirements have to be met. So early on, CIA assistance to the Contras was initially authorized through presidential findings. But as the Contra war, and on, reports started to surface that contra units were attacking civilians and committing these human rights abuses. So some members of Congress began to get worried that U.S. involvement and U.S.

support could slowly turn into another Vietnam-style conflict. And in response to that, Congress passed a series of funding limits known collectively as the Boland amendments. And these amendments, which were attached to larger spending bills, restricted or prohibited the use of federal funds to support military or paramilitary operations aimed at overthrowing the Sandinista government. And in effect, what they did is they cut off military aid to the Contras. Now, this is where the constitutional issue starts to come into play. So under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress controls the power of the purse, meaning no federal money can be spent unless Congress authorizes it.

Under Article 2 of the Constitution, the president is tasked with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. So in practice, what that means is a president cannot spend money on a military operation that Congress has explicitly forbidden. The president has to abide by Congress's laws, you know, and make sure that the laws are properly carried out, even if those laws affect his own actions. But Reagan felt really strongly that abandoning the Contras would signal weakness and allow this hostile Soviet-aligned government to consolidate power too close to home. So what does Reagan do? He and his aides start looking for ways to maintain support for the contracts without using money that Congress had appropriated.

In the background of all of this, there was a whole other crisis happening in the Middle East. The Iranian Revolution had taken place a couple years prior in 1979, and the Shah of Iran, who had ruled with U.S. support, was overthrown by an Islamic Revolution. movement and the new regime was anti-America. Towards the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency in 1979, Iranian militants took control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. This is also known as the Iran hostage crisis.

That crisis lasted until January 20th, 1981. The day Reagan was inaugurated. But in response to the hostage crisis, the United States under Carter's administration, had imposed an arms embargo on Iran. And Reagan publicly kept that embargo in place after he took office, and publicly is the key word there. By the mid-80s, Iran was in the midst of a war with Iraq and was in desperate need of more advanced weapons. At the same time, several American citizens were being held hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah,

which is a Shiite militant organization with close, very close ties to Iran. So some Reagan administration officials began to wonder whether selling weapons to Iran covertly might persuade Iranian leaders to use their influence to help free those hostages. And the idea was highly controversial inside the administration. Keep in mind the public did not know about this. So we're talking about inside the administration. Secretary of State George Schultz and Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, they were on the side that, you know, they felt selling weapons to Iran would violate U.S. policy. it would undermine the arms embargo that was in place, and it would send a message that hostage taking was one way to get concessions from the United States.

Others in the administration, including National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and CIA director William Casey, felt that limited arms sales could open diplomatic channels and might secure the hostages release. So controversial within the administration. Despite those initial disagreements, President Reagan ultimately approved of a series of arms transfers starting in 1985. And at first, Israel was sending U.S. made weapons to Iran and the U.S. would then replenish Israel's supply. But later, the United States just started shipping weapons more directly to Iran. These operations were authorized as covert actions through presidential findings and they were justified internally as a way to open. communication with, you know, certain leaders in Iran and potentially secure the release of

the American hostages. Publicly, though, the administration continued to say that it didn't and wouldn't negotiate with terrorists and the United States wouldn't supply weapons to Iran. So now we have to start to piece together the Iran part of the story with the contrast part of the story. The United States was charging Iran more for the weapons than what the United States had originally paid. And that price markup created a surplus of funds. So, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who was a Marine officer on the staff of the National Security Council, helped put together this scheme where a portion of that surplus would be diverted into accounts used to support the Contras in Nicaragua. In other words, the money from the

Iran arms sales would be secretly used to fund the military effort that Congress had specifically defunded. This was the executive branch's solution to not using congressionally appropriated money. The National Security Council or NSC is supposed to function as an advisory and coordinating body for the president on national security issues. It's not meant to be an independent arm running its own, you know, covert war in a sense. But in this case, members of the NSC staff were working with private individuals, foreign governments, and intermediaries to create this network, sometimes called

the enterprise. And through this network, they solicited money from other countries. They moved funds through Swiss bank accounts. They arranged weapon shipments. And they try to keep the entire operation outside normal oversight channels. There was very minimal documentation. Congress was not told about the diversion of funds,

even though federal law requires significant covert actions to be reported to at least the intelligence, Committees in Congress. But then things changed. Okay. So in October 1986, a cargo plane delivering supplies to the Contras was shot down over Nicaragua. One American aboard the plane managed to survive, but he was caught by Nicaraguan forces. And after the crash, Nicaraguan authorities recovered documents from the wreckage. There was paperwork, identifying people involved in the resupply mission, references to prior supply flights, links to private contractors and intermediaries, and other evidence that suggested this was not just an isolated mission. Okay. This evidence combined with the

fact that the surviving American actually told reporters that he believed he was working on a CIA connected operation raised questions about ongoing U.S. involvement with the Contras despite the congressional restriction. Then a month later, a Lebanese magazine reported the United States had been secretly selling arms to Iran. Now, President Reagan initially denied that the United States had traded arms for hostages in a national address, but he kind of started to change his tune within days. He ultimately acknowledged that weapons had been sent to Iran, but he insisted the goal was simply strategic outreach rather than ransom. In other words, he was trying to say the government wasn't paying to get the hostages back,

but instead trying to open a diplomatic relationship with Iran. However, as journalists and lawmakers dug deeper into both of these stories, they realized the financial link. They realized that the proceeds from the Iran arms sales had been diverted to support the contras. And to respond to this, President Reagan appointed a presidential review board known as the Tower Commission, named after its chair, former Senator John Tower. The Tower Commission released this report in 1987. That concluded that there was no evidence Reagan had personally approved the diversion of funds to the Contras. At the same time, Congress launched its own investigation, and Congress held these televised hearings in 1987.

One of the people that testified at one of these hearings was Oliver North, the Marine officer on the staff of the NSC who devised the plan. And he admitted to misleading Congress and shredding documents. He argued that his actions were necessary to fight communism and save American lives. But regardless of his justification, everything had now been brought to light. And 14 people were eventually charged with crimes, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and lying to Congress. Several people were convicted. Some convictions were overturned on appeal, actually. And that was because certain defendants had testified under immunity during congressional hearings.

and whenever Congress grants immunity, prosecutors can't use that testimony or any evidence derived from that testimony in a criminal case. So the appeals court ruled that prosecutors hadn't sufficiently shown that their trial evidence was completely independent of the immunized testimony

and therefore those convictions were reversed. But not all convictions were reversed, just some of them. Later in December 1992, President George H.W. Bush issued pardons to six officials involved in the scandal, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger and former National Security Advisor McFarling. President Reagan himself was never charged with a crime because investigators

never found clear evidence that he had personally ordered the diversion of funds. Similar to Watergate, this scandal led to changes aimed at at tightening oversight. So after Iran-Contra, Congress made clear that a presidential finding has to be signed before a covert operation begins or a covert action begins, it has to clearly describe the operation. It can't be backdated to retroactively authorize activity and notification to Congress has to be, quote unquote, timely, though that timely language is still somewhat flexible. Unlike Watergate, Iran-Contra did not end an impeachment or presidential resignation. In fact, Reagan left office in 1989 with relatively high approval ratings. But as a scandal, it is still one of the

biggest examples of executive overreach in American history. Let's take our second and final break here. When we come back, we'll cover the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. Welcome back. All right, so we've covered the whiskey ring and the Iran-Contra Fair. Now let's talk about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I do want to warn you that I will give some graphic details in this story. So if you are listening with kids, you can always just tune into this part of the episode another time if you feel it's necessary, but I do want to give you that heads up. So I'm sure we're all familiar with this story and with President Clinton's famous line. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. That line, of course, comes from this scandal. But we're going to start from the beginning.

Monica Lewinsky was a 21-year-old White House intern in the office of Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta. And interns in this particular office did standard support work, things like answering phones, making copies, running errands, etc. But in 1995, November specifically, the government temporarily shut down. And while a lot of the paid employees were sent home during the shutdown, the unpaid interns kept working. In fact, a lot of them were moved to the West Wing to help answer the phones. And that relocation is what naturally brought Lewinsky and Clinton closer in proximity to one another. Not long after that relocation, Lewinsky and President Clinton would have their first intimate encounter. And I should stop here and say that most of what we know is

you know, based on Lewinsky's own sworn statements, as well as the Star report, which was the formal investigative report that was submitted to Congress in 1998 by Independent Counsel Kenneth Star. So everything I'm about to tell you is either testimony from Lewinsky or included in that Star report. So Lewinsky testified that once she was moved to the West Wing, she had multiple brief interactions with Clinton, bringing him paperwork, things like that, and that she started flirting with him not long after by, you know, just making eye contact, hanging out in doorways, complimenting him, things like that. According to her, their first encounter took place on November 15th, 1995, in the Oval Office after she delivered paperwork. According to the Star

report on that day, Clinton dismissed the other staff in the room and asked Lewinsky to stay. That encounter happened in the private area next to the Oval Office. And also importantly, is also something I should. There's never been any evidence of coercion. So Lewinsky herself has consistently said the relationship was consensual. Later in life, she's talked about the power imbalance between a 21-year-old intern and the president, but has always said it was consensual. Most recently in February of 2025, she said, quote, I'm very clear this was not sexual assault. And therefore, there's a level of consensuality that was there. And at the same time, because of the power dynamics and the power deferential, I never should have been in that position.

end quote. So that was her most recent comment on on this whole ordeal. So the first encounter was November 15, 1995. Over the next roughly two years, their relationship continued. And this was despite Lewinsky actually being moved to a paid job in the Pentagon due to, quote, immature and inappropriate behavior. According to Lewinsky, she and the president had 10 total sexual encounters, eight of which happened while she worked at the White House, two thereafter. she said that the encounters usually happened in or near that private study off of the Oval Office and that their physical relationship included oral sex but not physical intercourse. According to her, she performed oral sex on the president on nine separate occasions,

but he never performed oral sex on her. He did touch her genitals on multiple occasions, both through her underwear and directly. she said that on one occasion Clinton inserted a cigar into her vagina and on another occasion they had brief genital to genital contact. Outside of sexual intimacy, Lewinsky said they were affectionate with one another in the sense that there was a lot of hugging and holding hands that he told her she made him feel young and that he wished she could spend more time with her. They talked on the phone on several occasions with Lewinsky saying they had phone sex on 10 to 15 separate occasions, but that most of their conversations were casual, and they did frequently just

have casual, you know, phone conversations. They gave various gifts to one another. She gave him neckties in antique paperweight, a cigar holder, a pair of sunglasses, a shirt, a mug, a frog figurine, a letter opener, and books. He gave her a hat, a pin, a blanket, a marble bear figurine and a special edition of Walt Whitman's leaves of grass. So definitely very much so in, you know, a relationship of some sort. Eventually, though, they did break up. According to Lewinsky, the president told her that they had to end their relationship because although he had hundreds of affairs earlier in his marriage when he turned 40,

he made a concerted effort to be faithful to his wife, Hillary. It's worth noting, too, that their affair was confirmed by DNA. evidence. So Lewinsky had this navy blue dress that she wore during one of her encounters with Clinton, and she did ultimately turn it over to the Office of Independent Council. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. But there were stains on the dress that tested positive for Clinton's semen. According to those DNA test results, the genetic markers on the semen were characteristic out of 1 out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians. And again, this is all according to the Star Report that I referenced her. earlier. Now, when Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon in 1996, about five months after

she had her first encounter with the president, she became close with a woman named Linda Tripp. And she decided she was going to tell Tripp about her relationship with the president, sometimes in explicit detail. It's also, Tripp was not the only person that Lewinsky told. Lewinsky told, I think it was 10 or 11 other people, but Tripp was someone that she talked to quite frequently about it and like I said, did give explicit detail. But Tripp decided she was going to start secretly recording her phone conversations with Lewinsky. And this was on the advice of a literary agent named Lucien Goldberg, who got connected to

Tripp through political and media circles. Goldberg later described herself as someone who encouraged whistleblowers and had an interest in exposing what she saw as wrongdoing in the Clinton administration. So she is the one that told Linda Tripp to start recording her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky. And an interesting fact about the recorded phone calls is that most of these recorded phone calls were recorded in Maryland. And Maryland is a two-party consent state. Each state has their own rules when it comes to recorded conversations. Maryland requires both participants in a conversation to agree to being recorded.

And Lewinsky obviously hadn't agreed. These were done in secret. So Tripp was criminally charged by Maryland prosecutors for recording those conversations, but those charges did eventually get dropped. So she never got, you know, convicted or nothing ever came of that. Anyway, how all of this became public was through a separate lawsuit. So in 1994, a woman named Paula Jones had filed a civil lawsuit against President Clinton, claiming that in 1991, when Clinton was the governor of Arkansas, he sexually harassed her. So Jones's legal team was trying to establish a pattern of behavior to prove Jones's case.

And by 1997, there were rumors swirling inside Washington that Clinton had been involved with a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. So once they suspected Lewinsky might have information that could help their case, they subpoenaed her in December 1997. And on January 7, 1998, Lewinsky submitted a sworn affidavit in the Jones case, denying that she ever had a sexual relationship with the president. Keep in mind, sworn affidavits are taken under oath. If you lie, you can be charged with perjury. So you definitely can't lie on those. But Linda Tripp reenters the picture. Tripp realizes she sees the sworn statement. She realizes

that Lewinsky's sworn statements are not lining up with what Lewinsky had been telling her for the last couple of years. So what does Tripp do? Trip goes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in January 1998 and turns over the phone recordings that she had taken. Star had already been appointed to investigate Clinton's role in an Arkansas real estate venture called Whitewater. So because he had already been appointed as this independent council, that's why Tripp went to him. And the same day that trip turned over those phone recordings, the FBI wired trip with a body mic for a meeting with Lewinsky at a hotel in Virginia. Following that meeting based on the conversation, that Lewinsky and Tripp had.

FBI agents confronted Lewinsky and asked her to cooperate in their investigation. She initially refused and she hired a lawyer, but at this point, I mean, federal prosecutors, they knew what had been going on. Within days, the story became public

when an outlet called the Drudge Report revealed that Newsweek had held back a story about Clinton and a former intern. And then within days of that, major nudes outlets were reporting that prosecutors were looking into whether the president had an effect

fair and whether there had been a cover-up. And that's when this story really exploded. About a week later, maybe 10 days later, President Clinton held a meeting at the White House with a Palestinian leader. And after that meeting, a reporter, you know how they, you know, ask questions after a meeting between the president and a leader, a reporter asked President Clinton about the allegations involving Monica Lewinsky and whether he had asked anyone to lie. And Clinton responded with the now famous words, quote, I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time,

never. These allegations are false. End quote. So once the story broke, Starr's office started subpoenaing senior White House aides and even some Secret Service agents. The White House tried to argue that executive privilege protected conversations with top advisors, but courts rejected those arguments. And that takes us back to the Watergate ruling from last episode where we talked about how when it comes to executive privilege, the courts will look at whether the need for evidence in a criminal investigation outweighs the interest, the executive's interest in maintaining confidential communication. And in this case, the court said, yeah, the need for evidence here outweighs the executive's interests and therefore it's not protected by executive privilege.

shortly after that is when the navy blue dress enters the picture. So Lewinsky offered to cooperate with Starr in exchange for full immunity. She wouldn't be charged with perjury, you know, after lying on that sworn affidavit, and she turned over the dress. So at this point, Starr had convened a federal grand jury in D.C. as part of his investigation into possible perjury and obstruction of justice against Clinton related to both the Paula Jones case and Monica Lewinsky. And on August 17, 1998, Clinton testified via live video before that grand jury.

And in his testimony, he acknowledged an inappropriate intimate relationship, but said that he didn't engage in sexual relations with Lewinsky. And in defining sexual relations, Jones's legal team said a person engages in sexual relations when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with, the genitaly, anus groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with intent to arouse or gratify sexual desire. And Clinton testified under oath that his actions with Lewinsky did not meet that definition and therefore he did not have sexual relations with her. That testimony ultimately led to Clinton's impeachment, but we'll get there in a few minutes. Something else to note here is

the Grand jury did not indict Clinton. And that is that is, because Starr did not request an indictment. The DOJ has a longstanding policy even today that a sitting president cannot be criminally indicted while in office. So that's why Starr didn't request an indictment at the time. And if prosecutors don't request an indictment, the grand jury doesn't vote on an indictment. Instead, what Starr did was he compiled his findings into the Starr report. He referred the matter to Congress and he let the House decide whether impeachment was necessary. The night of Clinton's testimony before the grand jury, he addressed the nation. And he admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky and misleading the people, including his wife.

But he denied asking anyone to lie to hide or destroy evidence or to, you know, take any other illegal action. Roughly three weeks later, Starr sent his Star report to the House of Representatives. And that report detailed Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky. and alleged multiple acts of perjury, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. Now remember, under the Constitution, the House has the sole power to impeach, and the Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. The standard for impeachment is treasoned bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. So in December 1998, due in part to Clinton's testimony before the federal grand jury,

the House approved two articles of impeachment, perjury before a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice. The obstruction of justice charge was mainly related to allegations that Clinton had encouraged Lewinsky to file that false affidavit in the Jones case. The vote to impeach Clinton on the perjury charge was 228 to 206, 221 to 212 on the obstruction of justice charge. And with that, he became only the second president ever impeached. Now, when the impeachment moved to the trial phase in the Senate, he was acquitted. Because remember, convict in the Senate, you need two-thirds votes on either charge. The Senate voted 45 to 55 on the perjury charge and 50-50 on the obstruction charge.

So because Clinton was acquitted, he remained in office and actually finished his term with relatively high approval ratings. According to a Gallup poll, his approval rating was around 60% when the scandal broke. And then it actually went up to the mid-to-high 60s after his grand jury. testimony. It hit 73% when the house impeached him and then it went back down slightly to around 66% when he left office. He eventually settled the Paula Jones lawsuit for $850,000. He did not have to admit any wrongdoing, but he did agree to suspend his Arkansas law license for five years. And that is the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. So I hope over the course of the last two episodes,

you've learned a lot about some of the biggest scandals in biggest government scandals in U.S. history. I hope you have a great next few days and we'll close out Unbiased University in the next episode with a fun little personal Q&A. I asked you guys to submit a bunch of questions on Instagram, whatever you wanted to know about me. And I took 25 of them and I'll be answering them in the next episode.