The Monica Lewinsky Scandal: A “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” of Secrets, Lies, and Political Agendas

In this episode of The Compendium, we explore how the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal extended beyond a private affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. It became part of a broader effort, with some suggesting it was a "vast conspiracy" aimed at undermining the presidency, using Monica and other women as pawns in a political agenda. We examine how the scandal escalated into an impeachment trial and a media frenzy, with secret tapes at its center. Today, we uncover the truth and untold layers behind one of the most significant political scandals of the 20th century.

We give you the Compendium, but if you want more, then check out these great resources:

1. "Monica's Story" by Andrew Morton
2. "The Starr Report" by Kenneth Starr
3. "A Vast Conspiracy: The Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President" by Jeffrey Toobin
4. "The Clinton Affair" – Documentary series by A&E
5. “Impeachment” the American Crime Story

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Credits:

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro and Outro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin
• All the Latest Things Intro: Clowns by Giulio Fazio

Chapters

• 0:00 Sneak peak
• 1:11 Welcome to The Compendium
• 1:55 Introduction
• 6:27 All the latest things
• 16:07 Topic of the week
• 1:48:35 Outro

Transcript

[00:00:01] Kyle Risi: And to prove her story, she could give a very specific, detailed account of the very noticeable curve in Bill Clinton's penis.

[00:00:09] Adam Cox:  Yes. I have heard about this because, yeah, the fact that this woman could identify him by his penis. 

[00:00:15] Kyle Risi: And the thing is, most penises, typically bend to the left or the right. So she can't be referring to that natural bend. Do you know what I mean? I'm not saying that my willy's nice and straight. What I'm saying is like, when it's just hanging loose, it's just kind of like, Oh, it drifts more to the left, or more to the right.

[00:00:33] So she must be talking like, Banana dick.

[00:00:36] Adam Cox: Right. You know what I mean? So something that's clearly a characteristic about his penis, which you could spot in a lineup.

[00:00:43] Kyle Risi:  Oh yes. Oh, that's different. 

[00:00:46] Adam Cox: That was Bill. [00:01:00]

[00:01:13] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground. At any social gathering, we explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people.

[00:01:31] I'm your ringmaster this week, Kyle Risi, 

[00:01:33] Adam Cox: and I'm your fire dancer this week. 

[00:01:35] Kyle Risi: Oh, hang on. What, what's your costume? You don't wanna be like those minimally clad kind of fire dancers might burn something useful.

[00:01:44] Adam Cox: Well, I'll be the one, you know where they have like marshmallows on sticks, and they rub them all over their body so I'm gonna be scantily clad. You don't want to burn your nipples. Oof. That's fine, I've got some repellent on that. 

[00:01:54] Kyle Risi: Adam, in today's episode of The Compendium, we are diving into an assembly of [00:02:00] secrets, scandals, and a political chess game. 

[00:02:03] Adam Cox: Okay, political. Well, it's got to be to do with politics. You would guess right, wouldn't you? And scandals. Who, what, what Prime Minister, or I don't know, has done something? 

[00:02:13] Kyle Risi: Today I'm telling you the story of the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. 

[00:02:18] Adam Cox: Oh, the famous affair, or whatever it was. 

[00:02:20] Kyle Risi: Was it an affair though? 

[00:02:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, because he came out under oath and said, I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

[00:02:28] Kyle Risi: So actually, that's a really good start for today's story. What is your understanding of the story? 

[00:02:33] Adam Cox: That he had sexual relations with that woman. Okay. And what else? well, I don't know if it's a spoiler alert, but I know there was evidence that came up about it. Like, wasn't there like a stain? 

[00:02:44] Kyle Risi: On her, the infamous blue dress, correct? That's it, yeah. 

[00:02:46] Adam Cox: Yes. And, because she was like his secretary or something like that. Interesting. And, yeah, and then I think, I don't actually know what happened in the end, to be honest. I don't know if it blew over or if he like had to go to, Court or [00:03:00] something? Because he had to swear under oath. So he must have been, was he being impeached? 

[00:03:04] Kyle Risi: Well, that was the proceedings that all of this led to was the impeachment. But the impeachment doesn't mean that he was impeached. He went through an impeachment, but that's a process. And then they decide at the end whether or not they should remove him from office or not.

[00:03:18] And the reality is that he wasn't like, he wasn't removed. He wasn't impeached. 

[00:03:23] Adam Cox: Yes. That's why I was like, did anything actually happen? Because he served his time term and then George Bush took over 

[00:03:29] Kyle Risi: Do you remember this story breaking as a young kid? 

[00:03:32] Adam Cox: Not really, because I've seen it, been talked about probably after that, maybe documentaries, people making fun of the jokes, whatever it is.

[00:03:39] Kyle Risi: That's it, people made so much fun of this whole situation, but I chose the story after re watching Impeachment, an American crime story. And even after already watching it, the memory of how the story was reported back in the 90s is still etched in my brain. Nothing's gotta remove. what my understanding [00:04:00] of what happened from the 1990s in spite of obviously now knowing everything around the story.

[00:04:06] But it was actually way more complex than we were always led to believe during the 1990s. And at the time, especially those of us who were young in the 1990s, the scandal was presented as Monica Lewinsky having given the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, a series of blowjobs in the White House when she was working there as an intern. 

[00:04:26] Adam Cox: A series of blowjobs. A series of blowjobs, yeah. It's uh I've never heard it put like that. 

[00:04:31] Kyle Risi: A bunch of blowjobs, right? She's sucking a lot of dick. And while that is what happened, their relationship wasn't this all consuming love affair that we were led to believe that it was. 

[00:04:42] And that surrounding these thrists, if you want to call them that, there was a way more complicated set of events that was actually taking place with different kind of factions all working together to bring the president down even after years of trying. So monica and clinton's [00:05:00] affair and i use that in quote marks was actually a very small part of a much larger multi layered series of events all happening at the same time, but despite all of that people just wanted to focus on the blowjobs.

[00:05:15] And so, therefore, that's what we got given in the media because people are so fixated on it. 

[00:05:21] So today, I wanted to tell you the story in the context in which it deserves, trimming down all the complexities as much as I can, because like I said, there is a lot going on in the story. So there is a fair amount of meanwhiles and while this is happening, etc.

[00:05:38] But still, I'll focus on the most interesting aspects and hopefully it will help us see the story for what it actually was. And as Hillary Clinton put it, she said it was a vast right wing conspiracy to bring down the president of the United States.

[00:05:53] Adam Cox: See, I always thought he was quite well liked. And only afterwards, when I've heard a bit about the impeachment, [00:06:00] I'm like, oh, well, maybe he wasn't that well liked or maybe not by the party. 

[00:06:03] Kyle Risi: Hugely popular, Adam. He was very liked. 

[00:06:05] Adam Cox: Yeah, but not by people within the White House, maybe?

[00:06:08] Kyle Risi: Put it this way, not by people in the opposition. 

[00:06:11] Adam Cox: Sure, but then when do you like your opposition? 

[00:06:13] Kyle Risi: Exactly, that's the thing, right? 

[00:06:16] Adam Cox: Anything to tear them down. The Democrats, the Republicans, Labour, Conservative, whatever. 

[00:06:20] Kyle Risi: They're all playing their dirty game of one upmanship. And that's exactly what's happening here. Exactly. Slinging feces. But. Before we get into today's episode, I think it's time for All The Latest Things. 

[00:06:33] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[00:06:34] Kyle Risi: This is a segment of our show where we catch up on all the things we've discovered over the last seven days, from weird news to mind boggling facts. This is All The Latest Things. Adam? What have you got for us today? 

[00:06:49] Adam Cox: So, I'm back with my animal news. 

[00:06:52] Kyle Risi: Oh yes, I think the listeners have missed it really.

[00:06:54] Adam Cox: Yeah, well I always enjoy some fun animal news from around the world, and this week we're starting [00:07:00] off in the UK. So if you live in the UK, or you've ever travelled to the UK, you may know that travelling on trains is a bit of a nightmare. Especially if it snows, because we can't handle snow. No, we can't. Whereas every other country manages to do it. 

[00:07:14] Kyle Risi: Which is so weird because you think that the UK is so synonymous with snow and rain and drizzle and bad weather. Yeah, we get snow. But yet we can't cope with a bit of snow. It's weird. 

[00:07:22] Adam Cox: Those three days or four days of the year. Just a standstill. Yeah, so the snow if there's leafs on the track. Leafs. A single leaf or multiple leafs? Then, then we shut down and the latest, obstacle with train travel in the UK is squirrels. 

[00:07:38] Oh, really? What are these squirrels doing? These damn pesky squirrels. 

[00:07:42] Well, these squirrels boarded a train without tickets, number one, which is definitely against the laws. Instant fun! Yeah, um, so they joined this train, from Gatwick, I think it was, and they're on their way, and it was forcing passengers to flee to other carriages because there's about several squirrels, jumping around, and, people [00:08:00] going, Ah!

[00:08:00] Losing their mind. Even still, several squirrels doesn't evoke the terror that you would expect it to. It's like, oh, I had to move to another carriage. But the way that this has been pitched is like, Oh, there was a tsunami of squirrels and there was terror and carnage and they were eating everyone's nuts.

[00:08:17] Exactly. If you've got a bag of kp nuts open, then good luck. You are targeted. They're like pulling your hair and everything. 

[00:08:25] Kyle Risi: Haha, reminds me of those little fairies from, Harry Potter. When they let them out, the pixies, I think they were. Yeah. I imagine they'd be enormous, chevious like that. 

[00:08:32] Adam Cox: I think so. Anyway, so people, the conductor and other people on the train were trying to get the squirrels off and they were like basically shuffling them with brooms trying to sweep them off the train but then they just couldn't get them out of the train and so therefore so now 

[00:08:48] Kyle Risi: the train belongs to the squirrels yeah 

[00:08:50] Adam Cox: and they had to terminate that particular destination like sorry folks we can't go any further because there's squirrels on the train but just close that carriage that's what i would 

[00:08:58] Kyle Risi: oh my god 

[00:08:59] Adam Cox: [00:09:00] But hey, look out for squirrels on your next training journey. I think I will That's my first piece. My second piece of animal news, which I think is my favorite animal news, it even tops the squirrels, is a Chinese zoo has gotten into trouble for their panda exhibition.

[00:09:16] Kyle Risi: Oh God, okay. 

[00:09:18] Adam Cox: So they've been advertising, because obviously pandas are rare in the wild and they're brought into captivity to try and I guess get them to breed and everything like that, and they've been advertising that they had these pandas in their zoo. People turned up at the zoo, uh, it's the Shanwei Zoo, uh, and they found out that actually it was just a couple of chow chows that had been painted.

[00:09:41] Kyle Risi: That's the thing though, China is so infamous for kind of the counterfeiting shit, like they will get onions and they will paint them black. Because they're trying to mimic a really special rare type of onion or garlic, black garlic, for example. They'll dye it or they'll soak them in like a black dye. But this has just taken it [00:10:00] to the next level. They're counterfeiting pandas now. 

[00:10:02] Adam Cox: Yeah, and tourists or people visiting the zoo were like They could see these pandas, quotes, uh, were visibly panting while resting on a rock fence, and then they've got like a long tail like whipping around and so they're like, that's not a panda.

[00:10:18] I've got a picture here. 

[00:10:19] Kyle Risi: Oh no, brilliant. Oh my god, Adam. A, they've done a really good job, but that's blatantly a dog. 

[00:10:25] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's so cruel. It's, I think from a distance, maybe you could get away with it apart from, Pandas don't walk like that. 

[00:10:33] Kyle Risi: No, they don't walk on four legs, like a dog. They don't have a big curly tail, like a dog. That's a chow. 

[00:10:39] Adam Cox: But then a few people have said, Oh, that's really cruel to the animals. You've dyed their fur. That's not, that's not okay. I guess it's um, You know, it's a type of dye that's not going to be harmful or anything like that. 

[00:10:49] Kyle Risi: But you want it to be permanent though. If it's going to be a dime, because you don't want this to Do you think that someone has gone to the zoo and said to the zoo officials that they have these [00:11:00] pandas and sold them it? So it's a scam, rather than the zoo trying to pass them off. 

[00:11:04] Adam Cox: No, the zoo kind of had to admit and say, oh, sorry, we thought it was okay to say this, maybe a bit like a bit of a joke, but actually they hadn't been saying it was a joke.

[00:11:13] Oh, I see. And the zoo did say well, humans dye their hair, so why can't dogs? 

[00:11:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but you don't pass them off as a panda.

[00:11:20] Adam Cox: So yeah, you can go see the panda dogs in this Chinese zoo. 

[00:11:24] Kyle Risi: It'd be cool if that becomes a new breed though.

[00:11:26] Because I always find it so fascinating, we have so many different breeds of dogs, right, so many varieties, big dogs, small dogs, from a Great Dane to a Chihuahua, right? There's such a huge variation. Why don't we see the same variations in cats? Why don't we have giant cats that we breed them to almost be like lions?

[00:11:43] Yes, I know we try with Maine Coons and things like that, they look quite ferocious and lightly, Why can't we get the vast degree of variation in cats? I don't know. I would love a giant domestic house cat. Yeah, there's a good chance it might eat you though. I'm happy to take [00:12:00] that risk.

[00:12:00] I mean, doesn't anyone who owns a cat take that risk on a day to day basis? If you shut your eyes at night, you might not wake up. Yeah, you might not, you might wake up and they've eaten your face. Yeah, could happen. That's It could happen. 

[00:12:12] Adam Cox: Okay, so what have you got for us? 

[00:12:13] Kyle Risi: So, strippers. Turns out they're better than some of the leading economists on the planet at predicting when an economic slowdown is coming.

[00:12:23] Adam Cox: By this, someone like taking off their clothes. 

[00:12:26] Kyle Risi: I'm intrigued to know, inside your brain. What other stripper kinds are there? 

[00:12:30] Adam Cox: I just want to be sure, not someone like stripping paint. 

[00:12:34] Kyle Risi: Oh, paint strippers. Paint strippers are really great at predicting economic slowdowns.

[00:12:39] Just want to double check. No, I'm talking about the, uh, the very graceful, very demure, strippers that prop up this economy. Okay. 

[00:12:47] So on May the 19th, 2022, there was a lot of infighting amongst economists about whether or not we were heading into a recession. And so a dancer on Twitter known as [00:13:00] Bocelli Okay, she sent out a tweet calling out economists saying that they were completely out of touch with how white men spend their money And that as a stripper She had the secret sauce. 

[00:13:10] And when the tweet blew up a flood of other strippers started chiming in saying that they agreed with bocelli bimbo saying that Of course when a recession hits one of the first things that people cut back on is of course entertainment and strip clubs is of course No exception, but here's the thing.

[00:13:25] We're not just talking about the average Joe because Strip clubs aren't just about simple entertainment. They're actually these really key Important business hubs where kind of People will take clients and wine and dine them as part of kind of negotiations. 

[00:13:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, you take them out, you get them drunk, you get them to sign a contract.

[00:13:42] Kyle Risi: Exactly, and then when that starts happening less and less, it's a pretty clear indication that businesses are hiring less, they're investing less, and so the economy starts to kind of slow down. And the strippers are pointing out that like December, in particular, is like a crucial month for strippers. That's when [00:14:00] financial employees typically receive their end of year bonuses, when December turns out to be a dud, it's a very clear indication to them that we're about to go into a recession. 

[00:14:09] Oh, interesting. I just found that so fascinating.

[00:14:13] So a bunch of these economists started looking into this, comparing strip club revenue over the years and it turns out they're 100 percent right.

[00:14:21] It's not so much as a long term forecasting tool. It's more of a kind of a an indication that the slowdown is happening now, like we're at the beginning of it. But economists and stock market managers now use what they call the stripper index to help them better understand when to start selling off their stocks and start reeling in spending.

[00:14:40] Adam Cox: I feel like there's a cause to have this stripper news or whatever presented by Destiny and she's talking about her stock options and she's you know what? I'm going to put them into safe investments over the next 12 months because I know we're in for a shit show. 

[00:14:53] Kyle Risi: Adam, that's exactly what happened.

[00:14:55] So in 2007, this stripper advised one of her clients to start selling off [00:15:00] all of his stocks because she knew that the strip club was quieter than normal. So he listened and then he sold off. All of his stocks for cash and then he bought them all back in 2018 after the stock market had crashed and so far he's almost doubled his money. She's done the same thing. 

[00:15:18] Adam Cox: I should have been a stripper. 

[00:15:19] Kyle Risi: I don't think you can cut it as a stripper.

[00:15:20] What? There's a lot of bending over Adam. 

[00:15:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, my back these days. 

[00:15:25] Kyle Risi: So the next time you hear about an economic forecast, maybe it's worth checking with your favorite stripper to verify the facts like destiny.

[00:15:32] Adam Cox: I haven't got a favorite stripper, 

[00:15:33] Kyle Risi: everyone needs a stripper on speed art for me It's my mom She tells me all the time she's really good at stripping.

[00:15:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, I don't think she's that great investing in financial advice 

[00:15:44] Kyle Risi: I mean, I think my mom's pretty savvy when it comes to money. She's rolling in the dough, man She's always giving me money. Stuffed in a mattress. I know! Where's the money coming from? 

[00:15:53] Adam Cox: I'm not sure if she's great at finance or whether she's a criminal. 

[00:15:56] Kyle Risi: She could be, like, she could be a stripper, that's what I'm saying! [00:16:00] Right. Fair enough. Is she washing the money with you? She's the money launderer. But yeah, that's all my latest things. Shall we get on with the Clinton Lewinsky scandal? 

[00:16:11] Adam Cox: Let's do it. 

[00:16:12] Kyle Risi: So Adam, to sum up, it is fair to say that Bill Clinton Was a scumbag. Really? Yeah, Adam, he was a dirty scumbag. Aside from a series of blowjobs, I thought he was fine. I mean, he was beloved.

[00:16:27] He was good at running the country, but he was a scumbag. If, like, the MeToo movement had existed in the 1990s, he absolutely would not have survived that, 100%. But what I find so fascinating about these stories of, kind of, sexual misconduct in, the modern era, is that is the idea of balancing morality.

[00:16:45] Like take someone like Jimmy Savile for example. On the one hand he did all this great charity work and he helped countless number of people but on the other hand he did these really terrible things. It doesn't excuse what he did but it is interesting to see how the world balances these revelations in light of [00:17:00] the good things that someone does.

[00:17:02] And of course like Jimmy Savile is probably a really bad example because of course he was awful but similarly Bill Clinton, yes he was a scumbag but he was actually really effective president who did a lot of good things for the economy. People had jobs, the country was prosperous, and he was ushering in this new era of technological advancement.

[00:17:23] And because he was such a good president, the opposition, the Republican Party, found it very difficult to bring him down. politically. And at the time, they couldn't really attack him for how he was running the country. So they thought that maybe they could try and get him on something else. Personal attack. Personal attacks. That is it. 

[00:17:40] And this is how all of this started. It wasn't this pursuit of morality from the Republican Party in like protecting women in light of sexual misconduct, there was a very clear political agenda behind everything that is about to unfold.

[00:17:56] And when I talk about morality and the Republican Party, I say that very [00:18:00] deliberately because that's how the Republicans try to portray themselves. But make no mistake, they were also filled with scumbags. They weren't motivated by women's rights or feminists. This was all just one big giant front to score political points against the opposing party that was seen as less important. Morale. Sure. Essentially. 

[00:18:18] So to kick things off, we need to step into the compendium time machine and we need to travel all the way back to 1992. Because this will provide us with the much needed context for what's about to happen. And that's really important to the story. I want to give you the context in which the Monica and Clinton scandal took place because that will help us understand the bigger things at play here.

[00:18:42] So, what do you remember from 1992? 

[00:18:44] Adam Cox: How old I would have been? Four or five somewhere, I must have been starting school. So what else was going on? I feel like Captain Planet was a thing. I was pretty sure I was into that.

[00:18:54] I always wanted to be the little Asian girl. And the thing is though, you were the Asian girl. Yeah, 

[00:18:59] Kyle Risi: you [00:19:00] did look like you are the human embodiment of Russell from From up. 

[00:19:06] Adam Cox: Yes. Yes, everyone knows that now. 

[00:19:08] Kyle Risi: Didn't you tell me that you were just adopted into a little group of I had Chinese best friends. 

[00:19:14] Adam Cox: Until 

[00:19:16] Kyle Risi: they 

[00:19:16] Adam Cox: discovered you were an imposter. You're like, you're not Chinese! Get out! Get out of here! 

[00:19:21] Kyle Risi: You can't do math! 

[00:19:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, that was the giveaway. 

[00:19:23] Kyle Risi: So in 1992, Bill Clinton was the governor of, I never know how to say this, it's technically Arkansas, but every time I see it I always say, Arkansas. Arkansas. Yeah. Arkansas. Yeah. 

[00:19:36] Adam Cox: It's just really weird. 

[00:19:37] Kyle Risi: How did that even happen? How did it get started being pronounced as Arkansas? 

[00:19:41] Adam Cox: Well, if it was anyone from Norfolk that went over and commandeered that part of America, then it could have been one of them because we have some weird names. 

[00:19:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah, we do. We do. We do. And so, it was around about this time that he announces his candidacy for the 1992 election against the incumbent George Bush Sr. So that would be kind of George Bush's dad. [00:20:00] He's only ever served one term, which is interesting. So it's normal for a lot of presidents to go off and serve two terms and to not get your second term, a bit like what Trump done. That's a bit of a kick in the face, right?

[00:20:11] And so almost immediately following this announcement, Republicans quickly saw that Bill Clinton's charismatic personality posed a potential threat to George Sr's re election. So the Republican Party set out, on a campaign, to discredit Bill in any way they could. The first thing they tried to do was latch onto Hillary Clinton's decision to keep her maiden name after marrying Bill.

[00:20:31] And the reason was simple. She was already a successful lawyer who had made her name, for herself, based on her reputation, and she wanted to keep the name associated with that reputation. But the Republican Party Spun this into how this was an example of how this and I love this how the new boomer generation Was about to take over running the country and they had no regard for kind of traditional family values. And if a woman was unwilling to take her husband's name Then was this the type of people that we wanted [00:21:00] running the country? America. 

[00:21:01] Adam Cox: That's so ridiculous. It is! Like, how dare she not take the name. How scandalous! She is some harlot coming in. 

[00:21:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's exactly it. Because they were seen as like these progressive kind of people. Today they seem completely different, right? They're seen as old stone age kind of people with old kind of values and kind of like not very progressive, but at the time they were. And so this was the start of that pattern of attacking the Clintons. 

[00:21:26] But other than the Christian right, Americans just didn't really care. And so when that didn't work, it came out that Bill Clinton had previously had a 12 year affair with a woman named Jennifer Flowers.

[00:21:35] 12 year affair? Yeah. Isn't that crazy? And so Hillary stuck by him through all this. She sticks by him through all of this. They're still married today. Yeah. And this was made even more salacious because she was a singer and an actress by trade who at some point, Bill Clinton got her a job in the Arkansas administration.

[00:21:53] So the narrative summary was that Bill Clinton was a cheater who brought in his bimbo girlfriend into the government. And this was kind of immoral and [00:22:00] a disgusting abuse of kind of political power, but again, Americans were like, listen, we don't care where he puts his privates.

[00:22:06] All we care about is will he be a good president? So Republicans were just left in the dust. The smear campaign just failed miserably. And Bill Clinton went on to become the 42nd president of the united states. 

[00:22:20] Adam Cox: Know, that hasn't really changed because I feel like We bring up dirt, or the journalists get dirt on presidents or prime ministers, which isn't good. You know, you only have to think about Trump and some of the stuff that came out about him grabbing people 

[00:22:36] Kyle Risi: by the pussy. 

[00:22:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, and Yeah, he's still got into power. 

[00:22:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah, 

[00:22:40] Adam Cox: there's enough people that go, can, I don't know, look past that and go, Yeah, it's just Trump being Trump, a little rascal, and then yeah, give him a pass.

[00:22:47] Kyle Risi: I mean, that's good, I get it, but talking, like having an affair with someone, is salacious in one aspect. But being derogatory towards a woman in that way. 

[00:22:57] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's another thing. True. And so that's [00:23:00] even worse. Yeah, because at least in a fair, oh, they 

[00:23:03] Kyle Risi: stole the parcel, even though it was worse.

[00:23:05] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. So hasn't really changed. 

[00:23:08] Kyle Risi: No, it hasn't really has it?

[00:23:09] So for the Republicans, to add insult to injury, because remember they are kind of the party of morality, Bill Clinton goes ahead and he appoints a bunch of women to high level positions more than any previous president had ever done before. 

[00:23:23] This included people like Janet Reno, who became the first female Attorney General, Madeleine Albright, she was the first female Secretary of State, and of course Ruth Ginsburg.

[00:23:33] She's that really famous kind of Supreme Court Justice, Who looks just like a much older version of Judge Judy. You've probably seen her like in a black gown and then like her doily around her neck. She's got those big glasses. She recently died. 

[00:23:46] Adam Cox: Oh, I think now that you've said, now that she's died. Oh yeah, now I know who she is. 

[00:23:49] Kyle Risi: So republicans knew they were going to have to dig a lot deeper if they wanted to get Bill and just to clarify I'm not really deeply connected to American politics. I don't really have a dog in the race.

[00:23:59] I'm not [00:24:00] vilifying the Republican Party because of some political bias. There's no doubt that if Bill Clinton had been a Republican president, the Democrats would have pulled kind of similar tactics to discredit whoever the Republican president was. 

[00:24:11] So I get the sense that this is just a pattern in politics.

[00:24:16] So the next thread that the Republicans try to pull on is in 1993 when A guy called Vince Foster, he's the deputy White House counsel, and he's found dead in a park near the White House. Okay. It appears that he's committed suicide as a result of the immense pressure that he was under in the wake of something called the Whitewater scandal.

[00:24:38] Does that ring a bell to you? 

[00:24:39] Adam Cox: Whitewater. No, I know of the other scandal with Nixon, but not the Watergate scandal. 

[00:24:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so that's the Watergate. So keep that in your brain in a second, because it will, it kind of loosely connect, there's a connection. Is Whitewater a place then, or? Yes, exactly. So Whitewater, to sum up, was an investigation into a controversial real estate investment made by Bill [00:25:00] and Hillary Clinton in the late 1970s.

[00:25:02] Now the allegation is that the Clintons had funneled money from this investment into the Clinton campaign. Now that's apparently very illegal. Initially they found nothing, but when Vince Foster was found dead it was implied that he might have been killed by the Clintons themselves to cover up information that could incriminate them if the investigation went any further.

[00:25:25] Adam Cox: So is this one of the first instances? Of the Clintons being corrupt because we've heard these stories of them like bumping off people since then. 

[00:25:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah, this is it. There's a list of people that have mysteriously disappeared or died, there's no evidence, it's all speculation, but this is where all this spread from, right? And so as this conspiracy started getting traction, the Republicans pressed for an investigation. 

[00:25:49] So reluctantly, Janet Reno, remember she's the first attorney general that was appointed by Bill Clinton. Uh huh. She appoints a special counsel to carry out an investigation and under Bill's [00:26:00] recommendation, she places a guy called Robert Fisk in charge.

[00:26:04] In the end, Robert Fisk concludes that it was a suicide and it was case closed, right? They find nothing. But to the Republicans, this looked like a cover up because Robert Fisk was appointed by Bill Clinton to lead the investigation. So the republicans called for Fisk's removal because they felt that he was working for Bill Clinton. So there might have been some kind of cover up in this whole whitewater scandal. 

[00:26:26] Adam Cox: Sure. So not a neutral party looking into it. 

[00:26:28] Kyle Risi: That's exactly it. So He is replaced by a guy called Kenneth Starr. He's a Republican who is very interested in getting the Clintons on anything that will stick. Now, Kenneth Starr takes charge of what will become known as the Office of Independent Council, or the OIC.

[00:26:46] Their primary task is to investigate Whitewater and other matters. Now, the other matters in this investigation title would only be appended to the To this [00:27:00] title when it becomes clear the investigation around whitewater had no substance. But for now, it was just the whitewater scandal and that's it But it will later be turned into and other matters. 

[00:27:13] Adam Cox: And other matters. 

[00:27:14] Kyle Risi: So this is where this kind of this conspiracy of people trying to bring him down are starting to collude with each other to try and kind of like make anything stick because they can't make anything stick. 

[00:27:23] So a whole year later in 1994, it's the presidential midterms. It's two years into his presidency. And this is an opportunity for the Republicans to gain more control.

[00:27:32] But they needed to organize and come up with a strategy. So the Republican House leader, a guy called Newt Grinridge makes this big speech accusing the Democrats and the Clintons of being sympathetic to pornographers and criminals. And his message taps into this very sensitive kind of sense of moral outrage that's happening in America at the time.

[00:27:52] Which is kind of, all left over from like the 1970s and the 80s. Just remember kind of like the satanic panic Episode that we did [00:28:00] last year. It's still kind of left over from that era. 

[00:28:02] So the aim of the speech was to dredge up fear and to try and sway public opinion. And it works. Like during the midterms, the Republicans managed to take full control of Congress for the first time since 1952. 

[00:28:15] They gained seats in the Senate and they win 54 seats in the House of Representatives. So they have like, even though it's a Clinton administration, they have almost equal power now in the government, which means that it's going to be a lot more difficult for the Democrats to pretty much get anything done now.

[00:28:32] Sure. Basically, they'd now recruited a lot more numbers for the army against the Democrats, and now they needed a strategy of attack. So the Republican House leader issues a handbook containing instructions on how Republicans can continue to portray the Democrats as perverts and traitors when debating against democrat bills or proposals or when being interviewed by reporters in the media. 

[00:28:56] Adam Cox: That's so crazy to say oh they're perverts. 

[00:28:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah, because they were [00:29:00] playing this card of morality. We are the party of morality and decency and they are the perverts. 

[00:29:05] Adam Cox: This is why I hate politics. I know. It's just like a show. And no one actually, should we just focus on running the country and not, slagging each other off? 

[00:29:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly. None of them cared about this morality thing at all. It was just a front. Yeah. So this wasn't all happening by accident. This was a very careful plan of attack. 

[00:29:25] So soon after the midterms in 1994, an article appears in the American spectator by a guy called David Brock. Now this becomes known as Troopergate because as we know, Americans love a gate scandal, hence why we have the Watergate scandal and we have all these different gate scandals and whatever. So this is one of them and it was called Troopergate.

[00:29:46] In the article it talks about how four state troopers from Arkansas helped Bill arrange various liaisons with various women.

[00:29:54] Oh. 

[00:29:55] So one specific account describes how Bill Clinton spotted a young woman at the [00:30:00] Excelsior Hotel and asked the troopers to bring her to him. And the article identifies the woman only as Paula. And the article claims that they brought her up to Clinton's hotel room where they allegedly had consensual sex.

[00:30:14] Adam Cox: Well, I'd hope so. Yeah, I'd hope so too. It'd make it sound like she was brought to him, but like, did she have And they had biscuits. Yeah, like, did she have any control? Like, hey, uh, Bill wants to see you, and you have to go, or was it a case like 

[00:30:27] Kyle Risi: I'm assuming she did have some agency, but the claim is that they had consensual sex.

[00:30:31] But this woman, His actual name is Paula Jones and she's going to become a very central figure in the story. When Paula reads the article in the American Spectator, she realizes the article is about her. She's outraged and she completely denies the account claiming it was 100 percent not consensual and that Bill Clinton had actually sexually assaulted her.

[00:30:52] What she's saying is that she went up to Clinton's room, she sat next to him and he exposed himself. Then he asked her to [00:31:00] kiss his penis. Now, Paula, a conservative and devout Christian, said of course she'd refuse, and she immediately left. She claimed that the article had damaged her reputation, and as a result, she had decided to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, demanding 750, 000 in damages. And to prove her story, she could give a very specific, detailed account of the very noticeable curve in Bill Clinton's penis.

[00:31:26] Adam Cox:  Yes. I have heard about this because, yeah, the fact that this woman could identify him by his penis. 

[00:31:32] Kyle Risi: And the thing is, most penises, in my view, they typically bend to the left or the right. So she can't be referring to that natural bend. Or kind of the slant. Do you know what I mean? I'm not saying that my willy's nice and straight. What I'm saying is like, when it's just hanging loose, it's just kind of like, Oh, it drifts more to the left, or more to the right.

[00:31:53] So she must be talking like, Banana dick.

[00:31:56] Adam Cox: Right. You know what I mean? So something that's clearly a [00:32:00] characteristic about his penis, which you could spot in a lineup. Oh 

[00:32:03] Kyle Risi: yes. Oh, that's different. 

[00:32:06] Adam Cox: That was Bill.

[00:32:07] Kyle Risi: Oh God. So when this news breaks, of course, it's huge. Jones lawyer, they hold a press conference. where Paula is introduced to the media and during the conference her lawyers promised that in time Paula would give, get this, a blow by blow account of what happened. So straight away that is not the kind of language that's probably going to help build credibility and will do nothing for kind of victims of actual sexual harassment.

[00:32:33] I was going to say who chose those I know! So bad. In hindsight, that is so bad. Probably at the time, it was kind of like, oh, we need media kind of attention on it. Let's use the language that's going to get that. But it's in poor taste, isn't it? Really poor taste. Although part of me, and again, possibly poor taste, is did she have to draw it?

[00:32:53] I don't know. And did someone have 

[00:32:55] Adam Cox: to like identify it? Yeah, no, she's seen it.

[00:32:57] Kyle Risi: I don't know. I hope she did draw [00:33:00] it. 

[00:33:01] So The story ends up just becoming a thing that people are just interested in purely for the salacious details of the president's penis. That's all they care about. They don't care that someone was assaulted, by a really powerful man. They just don't care. 

[00:33:15] Adam Cox: Yeah. Cause the thing is he's got all the power and it doesn't matter. Like people can throw mud at him or whatever. 

[00:33:22] Kyle Risi: He's just going to get away with that. Exactly. He, you've said it right. He is the one in power. So in response Clinton's lawyer, a guy called Bob Bennett, he issues a statement saying that the president has no recollection of ever meeting Paula and says that he is going to be seeking temporary immunity from any lawsuits that are filed while he is still in office.

[00:33:42] How can you do that? Well, this is the thing though, this makes a lot of sense to me, right? Because the argument is, how is a sitting president supposed to effectively do his job when he's been bombarded with frivolous lawsuits, right? 

[00:33:55] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[00:33:55] Kyle Risi: The public at large agree with this as well. Like they go, [00:34:00] yeah, just let him get on with the job. Of course, in hindsight, Clinton is guilty, but at the time the facts weren't widely known. So his request for immunity at the time seems reasonable and kind of justifiable. It's thought that, kind of, Paula Jones was just being, used as a political pawn by the Republicans to try and get one up on the Republicans.

[00:34:22] So, it was obvious that it just contained no substance, and to a degree that was true, but they just didn't know that he did actually assault this woman. 

[00:34:31] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's still not appropriate. And to expect her just to kiss it. And also, what is Hilary thinking of this? She's just like, oh Bill, he's got his penis out again.

[00:34:41] Kyle Risi: I don't know what he's telling her. I think that he told her that it didn't happen. Because he had an opportunity to come clean, and everyone would have forgiven him. But he doesn't. And I think it's because he promised Hilary. that he didn't do this. 

[00:34:54] Adam Cox: But then he's had an affair before, so it's not like a first time offence. And I do wonder, just [00:35:00] given that she's obviously high profile, he's the president, and this sometimes happens when you're, in a relationship and you're in sort of 

[00:35:08] Kyle Risi: I hope not! No, what I'm 

[00:35:11] Adam Cox: what I'm trying to get at. And there's the stories about the Beckhams, right? And Rebecca Lou's. And so if you've got this much power, influence, money, and you don't want to damage your brand reputation, it's almost like those kind of things, you have to almost have an agreement, like we can't talk about that. Yeah, we'd have to carry on as a unit. 

[00:35:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah, we'll fight behind closed doors. It's all like smoke and mirrors on the outside when you're in public, all happy families, and then as soon as you get into the car it's like, don't talk to me! 

[00:35:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:35:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but I don't know what he's been telling Hilary. I feel bad for Hilary.

[00:35:42] And so, like, yeah, she's been used as political pawn by the republicans, and this is all true, but the sad thing is, Paula doesn't know that she genuinely believes that these people are trying to help her get justice, and had her best interests at heart, when in reality, They just wanted to get the president.

[00:35:59] So [00:36:00] now this brings us on to Ms. Lewinsky. Ms. Lewinsky. Do you know what? I've got a little story connected to Ms. Lewinsky. In real life. So, I used to work for a comic book store, as you know. And we used to do all these high profile events where we'd get kind of these stars from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, and all these different cult TV shows to come down and do signings and do Q& As.

[00:36:23] And one year we got Julie Benz, do you remember Julie Benz? So she was the very first vampire ever to appear in BOTV, I think like in episode 1. She was also, I can't remember her name, but she was in Desperate Housewives. She was the stripper. Ah, stripper! She was the stripper that was living with Terry Pratchett who was her TA assistant at school.

[00:36:44] Adam Cox: And she was also in Dexter, and she'd always speak with that sort of certain voice. A. M. S. R. A. M. S. R. voice. 

[00:36:51] Kyle Risi: Oh no, she was always breathy wasn't she? 

[00:36:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:36:54] Kyle Risi: Uh, well basically her. She'd come down along with um, a guy from Angel called [00:37:00] Andy Hallett and Andy Hallett was due to come but he cancelled the last minute because he had a heart attack.

[00:37:06] Like he was only like in his early 30s but it turned out that the very last minute he decided that he was going to come after all he was feeling a bit better. He came, they did the Q& A, it was all brilliant but then he wasn't feeling well enough to go back home so he thought let me just stay in Norwich for a week or so and it was my job to look after him for quite some time the whole time he was there.

[00:37:25] So I would like take him shopping, I'd get him anything he wanted, I'd spend time with him, and we became really good friends. I'm not sure if he was gay. I think he was. But we didn't obviously talk about that because I was, I was really young. I think I was like only 17, 18. But he told me the story about how he was really drunk one night walking through Beverly Hills and his mates thought it'd be really funny to put him in a garbage bin.

[00:37:49] Right. And the garbage bin they put him into was Monica Lewinsky's parents bin. And that triggered off the security and before you know it, there was SWAT teams that were there, a helicopter had [00:38:00] come and he was just stuck in this bin, petrified to kind of like emerge in case they shot him and he was put in their bin.

[00:38:08] Adam Cox: Wow. What a story. That's risky as well. 

[00:38:11] Kyle Risi: It's really risky. But Andy Hallett has died. 

[00:38:13] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:38:14] Kyle Risi: Had a heart attack and yeah, he died a few years later. 

[00:38:16] Adam Cox: He was such a good character, an angel. 

[00:38:18] Kyle Risi: He was such a good, he played Lorne, didn't he? He was a green guy. But anyway, we've digressed but I thought I really wanted to share that story because it's such a special memory that I have of Andy Hallett and Monica Lewinsky, that little connection.

[00:38:28] But anyway, 1995. We're about to meet Monica Lewinsky. So a brand new group of interns have shown up at the White House and among them is a young psychology major named Monica Lewinsky. Now she only took the internship because she didn't quite get the grades that she needed to do a PhD and so she was looking for another way to advance her career.

[00:38:50] What she didn't realize at the time was that this was going to be an internship that was going to change her life forever. So at the time, Monica is just 22. Remember, the midterms have just happened, [00:39:00] right? And the Republicans had managed to kind of take control of the, uh, a big majority of the House.

[00:39:06] This meant that it was easier for them to block whatever they could to make things difficult for the government. This included, um, uh, Government spending which ultimately led to a government shutdown, right? 

[00:39:20] As a result all government employees were sent home until an agreement could be reached leaving kind of essentially the White House Operating on a skeleton staff and since interns weren't paid They were still allowed to work.

[00:39:30] And cheap labor. And cheap labor, yeah, that's it. Which meant that Monica and other interns had way more access to areas of the White House they normally wouldn't have. Ah, okay. 

[00:39:41] So Monica's office was right next door to Bill Clinton's and with most of the staff at home, the atmosphere was just way more relaxed than usual. Bill was essentially just kind of twiddling his thumbs, negotiating, kind of. Twiddling his thumbs. Twiddling his thumbs, yeah, that's it. He was just, he can't do anything, right? So he's just waiting for There's deadlock to come to an end. [00:40:00] So he's just having meetings with various people around the office.

[00:40:04] Monica would see him wandering around, taking calls, meeting with executives. And while all this is happening, she's really starstruck by him. Like he's this great charismatic guy. Remember Bill Clinton won his election on that charisma and charm. People were drawn to him. Many people said that he had this way of making you feel like you were the only person in the room and so like, naturally, Monica being 22, she's not going to be immune to those charms, right? 

[00:40:34] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess you're just, um, he's a, you know, important man. Mm hmm. With power and everything like that. Who doesn't 

[00:40:39] Kyle Risi: like a bit of power? Who doesn't like a gentle spanking and a man in power? I do. Okay. I think there should be more spanking in this house, Adam.

[00:40:47] So what were you saying? 

[00:40:48] So basically they start exchanging flirtatious glances and eventually this evolves into flirtatious chat and over time it leads to more intimate encounters. 

[00:40:57] One night specifically while she was bringing [00:41:00] something to the chief of staff's office Bill Clinton in the Oval Office by himself, she pops her head around and they just have some small talk.

[00:41:06] Now how the conversation shifted to what I'm about to say I don't know. But she says, do you want to see how much higher my g string is than my pants?

[00:41:17] Yeah, so she lifts up the back of a jacket and the back of a shirt. Remember, this is the 1990s, a time when having your g string much higher than your pants was a whole look. It was almost like a competition to see how much separation you could get between the two. And clearly, this was something that Monica had mastered and was clearly proud of. 

[00:41:41] Adam Cox: Very good at it. 

[00:41:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I remember there was a scene in Smack the Pony where they all have like their g string really high up. And like one pulls it all over their shoulders, don't they? Because it's that big. That's the mankini. 

[00:41:52] Adam Cox: Yeah, that is crazy.

[00:41:54] So what are they talking about? So, um, how was your day? Yeah, it's really good. Thank you. Blah, blah, blah. Busy [00:42:00] meetings. Blah, blah, blah. What's on tomorrow? Blah, blah. Oh, I've got a meeting at 10. Yeah. I've got lunch at 12. Yeah. And she's just like, yeah, yeah. Do you want to see my G string? Yeah. Let's go. 

[00:42:08] Kyle Risi: Let's talk about something I can relate to, my g string.

[00:42:12] I guess I've got not much in common and this is probably one thing that they do have in common. It's a good icebreaker, isn't it? It is such a good icebreaker. I, this would be totally the thing I would bring up if I was 22. 

[00:42:23] Adam Cox: And you were wearing a g string. Because I'm 

[00:42:24] Kyle Risi: just that, I'm really socially awkward, right? So I'm like, oh, I need something to say, need something to say. First thing that comes to mind, do you want to see how high up my g string is compared to my, my trousers? I would totally say that. 

[00:42:35] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[00:42:37] Kyle Risi: So they have a giggle about it, and this was the first openly flirtatious moment that they have together. So she goes back to her desk, but late that night, while she was walking past the office, Bill calls her in again, And this time she tells him, I have a serious crush on you, you know that, and she tells him that she even told her mum about how much she was enjoying working there because of him.

[00:42:58] So they laugh and he says, [00:43:00] do you want to see my private office? Which she says, yes. So he takes her into his side office and they share a little kiss. And it only lasts a few seconds because Monica says like people are going to notice that she's away from her desk. 

[00:43:13] So she leaves, but then again, obviously Bill can't get her out of his mind. So through his secretary, Betty Curry, so she's going to play a quite important role in their affair, essentially. Monica is then summoned back to his office, and this time they have a full blown makeout session. There's touching and everything.

[00:43:31] And for Monica, this is really exciting. Like I'm getting really giddy for her. Like I can imagine how exciting this must have been. I obviously, I understand the dynamics at play here. Go girl! Get it! He's the President of the United States! Get you some! 

[00:43:49] Adam Cox: You've never said that before in your life. Take that, Shane! Damn it. Um, but, so, are you saying she's the one that, [00:44:00] um, instigated this kind of liaison? 

[00:44:03] Kyle Risi: No. Let me put it this way. This is a consensual relationship. Nothing would have happened unless Bill was also wanting it to happen. Sure. She could have wanted it as much, more than him. It wouldn't have happened unless Bill allowed it to happen. He is the President of the United States. He's the one in power here. 

[00:44:17] Adam Cox: So he's not coerced her or anything against her will. She's all for this at this moment in time. Yes, 

[00:44:23] Kyle Risi: for sure. 

[00:44:23] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[00:44:24] Kyle Risi: So it's important to note that even though this was the beginning of their physical relationship, it would never go beyond the White House.

[00:44:30] This was purely a workplace affair, but Monica comes to believe that there is something more between them. She doesn't fully understand at 22 that there are these power dynamics at play, but she's all in and she's really excited. And what's wild is that this whole situation was being facilitated by Bill Clinton's presidential secretary, a woman named Betty Curry.

[00:44:51] Most of the time, when the two would meet, it would be through Betty, who would contact Monica from her desk, uh, to come and see the president. And it was [00:45:00] always on Bill's terms. Monica had very little control in the situation. 

[00:45:03] Adam Cox: I wonder what Betty thought about this then, because she was like, oh, I've got to, like, arrange an affair, or I don't know.

[00:45:09] It's not really a meeting, is it? 

[00:45:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I don't know what was going through Betty's mind, I guess she can't not do it. 

[00:45:15] Adam Cox: I guess so, yeah, she looked like he's the boss But maybe if, this isn't the first president she's worked under and, like, you know, maybe Oh, it's the norm. It's the norm a little bit, like, oh, I've got to 

[00:45:25] Kyle Risi: fix this. Fall out of the, like, 1960s Mad Men kind of era, where everyone's having an affair. Well, that makes me sad. 

[00:45:31] Adam Cox: That's Betty's job. 

[00:45:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably. And so, I want to just add in a little bit of a detail here, because it might Seem like too much information, but it's actually a really important bit of information because each time bill clinton and monica would be together bill would never finish because I think he believed that by not reaching a climax ever, he wasn't technically cheating and somehow this gave him some kind of moral standing.

[00:45:57] And I point this out only because when he [00:46:00] finally does climax, he will end their relationship. It's strange, isn't it? It's really odd. But in total, Monica and Bill, they have about 10 encounters over a span of 18 months. That was it. It wasn't this full blown, all consuming love affair that the media made it out to be. It was just nothing. But, I guess to Monica, being 22, It was kind of everything. 

[00:46:21] Adam Cox: So I see how it was a 10 part series now. Because if it ended in a climax 

[00:46:25] Kyle Risi: Wha What? What? 

[00:46:33] Adam Cox: Well, I just Yeah, like Adam, 

[00:46:35] Kyle Risi: life isn't a Netflix drama. 

[00:46:38] Adam Cox: Like, that was the finale. Show's over. 

[00:46:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. 

[00:46:42] Adam Cox: Anyway, back to the story. Ignore my comment. 

[00:46:44] Kyle Risi: So, Adam. It's now 1996 and Bill Clinton is getting ready for his re election campaign.

[00:46:51] Clinton's are in a strong position, the economy is still doing really well, and his campaign slogan is literally, Building a bridge to the 21st century. [00:47:00] And it's looking like it's going to be a slam dunk, they're going to win, man. 

[00:47:02] But, there was a problem. They needed to make sure that there was nothing that could potentially risk their success. One potential issue, however, was that people in the White House were starting to notice that Monica Lewinsky was getting a little too close to the president. And I don't think anyone knew the full extent of what was happening, maybe except obviously Betty. Betty, yeah. But there was a concern that this could potentially become a problem for the campaign if rumors started to Especially since Clinton had a history. Of cheating on Hillary, right? 

[00:47:33] It's like, Bill, you haven't done anything bad, have you? 

[00:47:36] Bill, Bill, look at me. Bill, Bill, did you punk on someone's dress? Maybe that's like their natural routine daily. 

[00:47:44] Adam Cox: Like Bill, you haven't, you've behaved today, haven't you? Yeah. Good. 

[00:47:46] Kyle Risi: So what they do is they decide to move Monica to the Pentagon. Now, Clinton breaks the news to her, but he promises her that if he wins, he will bring her back to the White House. But, for now, she just needs to go to the Pentagon. So, naturally, [00:48:00] Monica, she's heartbroken.

[00:48:00] She goes back to her hotel apartment at the Watergate. That, by the way, that's where she's staying. Throughout her entire internship, she is living in the Watergate, where the famous Watergate scandal took place. Really? Yeah. So she comes from money, man. her parents are funding her to stay in this hotel apartment.

[00:48:17] Adam Cox: I was going to say, because an intern, you're probably not getting paid at all, right? Or low pay. Yeah. Why doesn't she just get an apartment? I'm sure that's cheaper than a hotel. Yeah, I don't know. Too much money. Maybe it's just inconsequential to them.

[00:48:29] Kyle Risi: So basically her job at the Pentagon was going to be accompanying the Secretary of Defense on various business trips. Bill Clinton, would still call her sometimes, but it would always kind of seem to happen after she just bumped into him at kind of like a White House events or something. But in between those encounters, she just wasn't on his radar at all. 

[00:48:47] So Monica realizes she needs to keep herself in his peripheral view. So she would kind of show up at all these different events knowing that if he saw her, then just a few days later he would call her. And like clockwork, [00:49:00] That's exactly what happened.

[00:49:00] So men are just so predictable and remember Monica is completely infatuated with Bill it's sweet, but also like girl like He's really not into you. 

[00:49:10] Adam Cox: Well, he's used, well not using, but you're still like a piece on the side at the end of the day. He's not serious and it does feel like he is leading her on.

[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: I don't think he's even leading her on, it's just more convenient for him, like he's there. Well for him it's like transactional, but for her it's obviously more romantic. 

[00:49:26] Yes, that is it, at one point, this just goes to show you how infatuated she was. She places an ad in the Washington Post's Lonely Heart section on Valentine's Day, and it's addressed to Hansen, which is how she would kind of address him, and it quotes like a Romeo and Juliet quote.

[00:49:42] I'll try to read it. I'm not very good at Shakespeare, but she goes, With love's light wings, I do approach these walls, out, And what can love do that dares love attempt? And what can so man, she is in full blown crush mode. 

[00:49:58] Yeah, and the fact that he hasn't shut [00:50:00] that down, I don't know, I just, I don't think that's right. Definitely not right. Like, I felt giddy for her when she was sucking off the president in the over office because that was fun.

[00:50:10] But now that she's moved on and she's like, desperately trying to win his affections and be on his radar. It's now become sad and I feel real bad for her. But she's 22, man. 

[00:50:19] Adam Cox: Yeah, she's young and I guess, yeah, maybe she thinks, oh, there's a real chance something could happen here, it feels like. But we just know that he's probably being a bit manipulative and a bit of a dick. Possibly doing this with other women as well. Probably, yeah. What a piece of crap. Shit, he's a scumbag.

[00:50:36] Kyle Risi: So meanwhile at the pentagon, Monica makes friends with a much older woman called Linda Tripp. Linda Tripp basically, she was also shipped off to the Pentagon because she too was a problem for the Clinton administration. Basically, Linda had worked under Reagan and she stayed on through the Clinton administration.

[00:50:54] So when Vince Foster's suspicious suicide happened, she started asking questions. [00:51:00] So the administration Wanted to keep her out of the way So what they did is they gave her a twenty thousand dollar kind of pay rise and they shipped her off to the pentagon 

[00:51:08] So basically the pentagon was a dumping ground for problematic women under the clinton administration, really 

[00:51:15] So as their friendship developed monica starts confiding in linda about this man that she is seeing at the white house She's very careful to not mention any names.

[00:51:24] She doesn't want bill to obviously get in trouble. She just needs someone You To kind of talk about what she's going through.

[00:51:30] Adam Cox: And I guess someone that's at work will know some of the protocols or whatever and things like that. You need someone you can just confide in at work and just, I don't know, have a moan, have a bitch, whatever it might be. Yeah, 

[00:51:39] Kyle Risi: that's it. You just want to kind of like rubber duck someone. Yeah, where you talk at them and then it helps you rationalize What you're thinking and 

[00:51:46] Adam Cox: stuff probably can't do that as easily with friends or family 

[00:51:49] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:51:51] So throughout all of these conversations Linda Tripp doesn't really know who this man is She just knows that he's someone very high up in the White House When Linda Tripp listens, Monica [00:52:00] expresses like, just this whirlwind of emotion, like she loves him, she hates him, she's frustrated, everything happens on his terms, and it feels like emotional roller coaster to Linda Tripp who's kind of sitting there listening trying to be a good friend.

[00:52:14] Monica even shares her plans of like how she would kind of just try and casually bump into this mystery man. And one of those moments is after the election where Clinton of course wins the re election and Monica attends the inauguration ball in this beautiful red gown and she's forced to stand there watching him dance with his wife to Nat King Cole's famous song Unforgettable. And she tells Linda how heartbreaking that was just to have to sit there and be forced to watch it, linda doesn't know that she's actually referring to that iconic first dance between Bill and Hillary Clinton at the inauguration ball.

[00:52:48] Of course, Bill notices her that night and a few days later, like clockwork, Betty Curry summons Monica to the White House. Monica arrives wearing this beautiful blue navy dress [00:53:00] and Bill takes her into his side office while Betty stands guard in the and he gives her a copy of Walt Whitman's, uh, Leaves of Grass, which is obviously filled with loads of dirty sexual kind of poetry. It was once banned, I believe, in America. And he also gives her a hat pin. Then, he takes her into the bathroom, and they do their usual sexy thing. Remember, Bill never finishes, because otherwise, he'd be cheating, right? 

[00:53:25] Adam Cox: I'm pretty sure he's cheating already. Yeah, like, come on, Bill. I mean, well, don't.

[00:53:30] Kyle Risi: You should've just left. This time, however, he comes close, and he pulls away, and Monica's like, No, like, I really want to do this for you. And he says, I don't trust you enough for that. 

[00:53:41] Adam Cox: Does he? Yeah, he says that. But he trusts her enough to do this, but just not to go all the way. Yeah, 

[00:53:47] Kyle Risi: and I'm like, what the fuck does that mean?

[00:53:49] And then all of a sudden, he just spaffs on her dress. I guess he comes really close and he leaves a very noticeable stain on it. Ugh. I know. Okay. I mean, I'm still excited by it, but [00:54:00] I know.

[00:54:03] I'm sorry. 

[00:54:05] Adam Cox: Okay, so that's Bill. Bill's done the deed. And so this is when he, this is the last time for him because he's like, I, you know, I've overstepped the market. 

[00:54:12] Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. Yeah, so this moment is important because in Clinton's twisted logic, he's convinced himself that as long as he doesn't climax, he wasn't technically cheating.

[00:54:21] But now that he's climaxed, he's feeling guilty and so soon after this, he calls Monica and he ends their relationship. 

[00:54:27] Adam Cox: Wow, and I guess she's like, what? Yeah. I'm really pissed. Yes! And what did she do about the dress stain? 

[00:54:34] Kyle Risi: Well, we're gonna come on to that. So of course, she's devastated and of course She's also angry because remember Bill promised to bring her back to the White House if he won the election Yes, that hasn't happened and now he's broken things off 

[00:54:47] So she writes a formal letter to him stating dear sir, instead of like the regular. Hey handsome Mm hmm, and she tells him that If he wasn't going to give her the job that he had promised that she was then going to leave Washington and she's going [00:55:00] to move to New York and if she did that, she would have to explain to her parents why.

[00:55:05] Adam Cox: God. That feels a bit like, I'm going to have to tell them what happened. I'm telling my mum! I'll tell her! I mean, it's Is that the logic she went with? 

[00:55:14] Kyle Risi: Okay, carry on. So naturally, Clinton panics. He calls his friend and lawyer, a guy called Vernon Jordan, and he gets him to arrange a job for Monica at Revlon in New York.

[00:55:25] Now, it's around about this time that Linda Tripp finds out who this mysterious man is, right? Turns out that, in fact, Her friend Monica is sleeping or doing these things with the President of the United States. 

[00:55:38] Adam Cox: And now Did Monica actually say that, I guess, things have ended and she's kind of like, oh, she's let it slip, I guess, at some point.

[00:55:44] Kyle Risi: It's from my understanding, yes. And now that she knows everything, Down to kind of the exact details of the blue dress, right? She advises Monica not to have it cleaned and to keep it as an insurance policy should anything go wrong. [00:56:00] Ooh. Because she knows about like her writing a letter saying like, I need a job, you promised to bring me back to the White House.

[00:56:06] So she's like, okay, things might not pan out as you planned. Keep the dress, insurance policy. 

[00:56:10] Adam Cox: Wow, smart Linda. Is it? Well,

[00:56:14] Kyle Risi: I don't know. 

[00:56:14] Adam Cox: I guess you don't know you could be like, um, ostracized or he could like complain about her and that she never gets a job again.

[00:56:21] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I understand her parents are like, why would you ever quit a job in the White House? Yeah, so she needs to make sure that she does continue on in her career. 

[00:56:30] Kyle Risi: I think that's fair Yeah. 

[00:56:31] Adam Cox: He got his. 

[00:56:33] Kyle Risi: I think she got hers too.

[00:56:34] Not in the end. She got hers short term. Yeah, I feel, I feel bad for her. I need to stop glorifying what's happened. It was fun to begin with. Now it's 

[00:56:43] Adam Cox: actually very sad because I know what comes, um, her way is quite horrible. Exactly. 

[00:56:49] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So I'll draw a line in the sand now. It was fun to begin with. Now it's getting serious.

[00:56:53] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:56:54] Kyle Risi: So this is where Linda starts to play A real pivotal role in the story. Remember, Linda had previously worked at the White [00:57:00] House, right, under Vince Foster, in the years before, obviously, his suicide. She was angry with how the situation was handled following, obviously, Vince Foster's death. But she was also now resentful that she's been shipped off to the Pentagon. So, she had real beef with the Clinton administration and now that she knew that Monica's secret, it's was that she was doing that with the president. She decided to reach out to a friend of hers who was also a conservative literary agent called Lucille Goldberg.

[00:57:27] Now, Linda floated the idea of writing a book which might expose the White House for what they really were, right? But at the time, Lucille wasn't interested. She didn't think that the story was compelling enough. That was until Linda said that she had a friend that was also having an affair with Bill Clinton.

[00:57:46] And Lucille is like, now that's compelling. 

[00:57:49] Adam Cox: Oh, tell me more. Scandalous. 

[00:57:52] Kyle Risi: Yes. So she advises Linda to start recording their conversations. But the problem is that in New York, where Lucille is from, [00:58:00] recording conversations without consent is completely illegal. But in Maryland, where Linda was, it wasn't.

[00:58:06] Adam Cox: That is, that's so weird to have that so different by state. 

[00:58:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I mean, they do have their own laws and stuff. But yeah, so it's not allowed. But obviously, she doesn't know this at that time. So Linda, of course goes off to Radio Shack, she buys a tape recorder, and she starts recording every conversation between her and Monica from that moment on. And in total, there's 22 hours of recorded content. 

[00:58:27] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:58:27] Kyle Risi: And she hands Over all of those recordings to the feds what a betrayal. Yeah, Linda I thought you had Monica's best interest exactly. She doesn't I'm gonna flat out say she doesn't bitch So we need to check in with a few things at this point.

[00:58:41] Okay, right remember Paula Jones and the sexual harassment claim Right? Well, you will recall that Clinton's lawyer, Bob Bennett, tried to get temporary immunity until Clinton was out of office. Well, that finally, after loads of arguing, goes to the Supreme Court in [00:59:00] 1997. And they reject this notion of immunity, which is exactly what you said, like, how could they do that?

[00:59:07] The Supreme Court agrees and that means that this case can proceed after all. 

[00:59:12] Adam Cox: So 1997, is that two years into his second term? Pretty much, yeah. 

[00:59:17] Kyle Risi: Oh, 97? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, we're well in. We're well in. So Paula's lawyers draw up a 700, 000 settlement and they send it to Clinton's legal team who make some amendments to kind of the settlement. And when it comes back, Paula isn't happy with it. So she rejects the offer. And the issue is that she wanted Bill Clinton to read a statement out on television. 

[00:59:42] But the changes that they make to the language in that statement don't really sit well with her. So it's just no deal for her.

[00:59:50] So Paula's team start planning a trial and they even threaten that they're going to make everything public because you have to remember like Paula's image has taken a major hit. [01:00:00] Remember, This was a victim of an alleged sexual assault and yet the media portray her as this dumb hick or like kind of trader trash.

[01:00:08] Comedians are constantly mocking her with kind of these exaggerated kind of southern accents and the press write just relentless salacious articles about her. We forget that back in the 90s like victim blaming was very common. People thought that she must have seduced him in order to try and bring him down.

[01:00:27] So it was crucial to Paula that Clinton's statement that she wanted him to read out acknowledges his wrongdoing because her reputation was on the line. 

[01:00:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I guess she's had probably a lot of trouble since then. And she's the one that's actually had the most moral standing in all of this.

[01:00:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So they start preparing to go public, but before they can do that, Pauline needs a bit of a makeover if people are gonna take her more seriously. So they hire a team to work on her image. She gets lessons on how to sound less Southern. Isn't that crap?

[01:00:58] Adam Cox: That is really crap. [01:01:00] It really annoys me that they go people aren't gonna believe you and you need to get a haircut. You need to dress like this or whatever and change the way you speak. I just think that's horrible. Just believe someone who they are. 

[01:01:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. It's just the way that the world worked back then. I'm not saying, I'm not justifying it. That's just the way it was. This is why PR teams exist, right? They need to work on your image, they need to orchestrate how the public is going to perceive something. 

[01:01:22] Adam Cox: I can understand that if you're, I'm gonna be a president or whatever position of power. You've got to lead people and everything else Yeah, but this is someone who's defending herself for something that happened to her. That shouldn't need to happen. 

[01:01:33] Kyle Risi: Exactly 100 percent so she's just been coached on how to conduct herself in front of cameras and her lawyers knew that this was going to be very difficult because all they had was her word against his.

[01:01:43] So their goal was to instead try and prove that Clinton's behavior was actually part of a pattern rather than trying to prove that he'd, Actually did this 

[01:01:54] Adam Cox: fine. So that lends more credibility if he's done this more than once 

[01:01:58] Kyle Risi: Exactly. [01:02:00] So what they were going to need to do was speak to more women that Clinton had been involved with So the press are all on standby for all the details of who these women were one person On their list doesn't want to go public and when the press press Paul as lawyers about who she might be The only clue they give is that her husband had committed suicide.

[01:02:21] Really? Yes, so this is when a guy called michael Isikoff, he is a reporter for Newsweek. He thinks that he can use this information to try and figure out who this woman was, and he tracks down a young widow called Kathleen Wiley. 

[01:02:36] But when he contacts her, she refuses to speak to him and instead tells him to contact a woman that she had confided in following the assault.

[01:02:45] That woman, with Linda Tripp. Ah, Linda. Linda, again. 

[01:02:51] So Isikoff reaches out to Linda. Linda tells him that after Kathleen's husband started working for the Clintons in 1992, so at the very [01:03:00] beginning of his presidency, she began volunteering in the First Lady's office. And basically her job was like, helping with state dinners and similar events like that, working with kind of Hillary Clinton.

[01:03:11] But a year later, when her husband was facing serious financial trouble, Which of course led to his suicide. Kathleen went to Bill Clinton to ask for a paid position to try and help bring some money into their kind of their household. Kathleen claims that it was during that meeting that Clinton made unsolicited sexual advances towards her.

[01:03:32] But before it went any further, an aide knocked on the door, which allowed Kathleen to then make an escape. And so feeling shaken, she confided in Linda about what had happened. Now, Isikoff was like, This is a good scoop to which Linda says, if you like that, you're gonna love 

[01:03:49] Adam Cox: this. Why is everyone confiding in Linda?

[01:03:51] I know clearly she's a good like ear or you know Yeah. To speak to and, but actually she's gonna write you out. Yeah, she will. 

[01:03:57] Kyle Risi: So she's like, if you like that, you're gonna love this. And she [01:04:00] tells me about Monica and Bill and these secret tapes. Mm-Hmm. . This is when Isikoff is like, these tapes are completely illegal and they cannot be used in court.

[01:04:11] And this is where Linda's like, Fuck, I've been recording all these tapes and now they can't be used. So what's she gonna do?

[01:04:18] Adam Cox: I don't know, but surely she's gonna find a way for them to be used. 

[01:04:22] Kyle Risi: She does. So meanwhile, again, Like I said, a lot's going on here. We're going to jump back now to the Paula Jones trial. So while the Paula Jones trial is underway, women who had sexual contact with Bill Clinton were being deposed, which means basically they get brought to a room, they press record, they record them. They give their statements in this fashion. 

[01:04:43] Adam Cox: And they all say Bill's got a wonky penis. 

[01:04:45] Kyle Risi: So, Linda knows that she's got these tapes that really incriminate Bill Clinton, but she can't just hand them over because she's obviously obtained them illegally. She realizes that the only thing that she can do is somehow get herself subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case.[01:05:00]

[01:05:00] This way. She can get immunity against prosecution for making the tapes. Really? So in November 1997, Linda gets a call from Paula Jones's lawyers and they agree to subpoena her. 

[01:05:13] For Linda, it's important that it looks like Linda Tripp has been blindsided so that she can act shocked and defensive, pretending to protect Monica Lewinsky, who is supposed to be her friend.

[01:05:24] Adam Cox: But she's orchestrated this. 

[01:05:25] Kyle Risi: Yes. So now that they have these tapes, it means that they are now. interested in speaking with Monica, right? So Bill Clinton sees somehow that magically, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Monica's name is now on this witness list. And he calls her, and he tells her, he doesn't think that she's going to be called or subpoenaed, but he says that if she does, she can sign an affidavit and won't have to actually be deposed and deposed. Like be in a room with these people she can just sign a written statement and then send that in and sign [01:06:00] it 

[01:06:00] So he doesn't ask her to lie, but he also doesn't encourage to tell the truth So monica gets a subpoena. She panics because the subpoena specifically asks her to produce the hat pin That he'd given her as a gift.

[01:06:13] So her first question is, How does the Paula Jones inquiry know that I got this gift? So she naturally calls her old friend Linda Tripp and tells her all about it. Of course, Linda records the entire conversation. 

[01:06:27] Adam Cox: It's like, hang on a minute, let me just, um, let me just, uh, turn off the kettle.

[01:06:31] Yeah, yeah, just, 

[01:06:32] Kyle Risi: just, hang on, in a minute. 

[01:06:34] Adam Cox: Those clunking buttons. What's that weird 

[01:06:36] Kyle Risi: noise? Oh, nothing, just the washing machine. So, once that conversation happens, Monica then calls Vernon Jordan. She is the, the lawyer friend of Bill Clinton who got her the job at Revlon.

[01:06:48] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. He tells her not to panic and that they call this just a vanilla subpoena, which will just ask two questions. Did you have sex with the president and did he ask for it?

[01:06:58] Adam Cox: I mean, that [01:07:00] will, 

[01:07:00] Kyle Risi: yeah, that'll do it. So he puts her in touch with a lawyer called Frank Carter, who says that she can just sign an affidavit. He'll send that to her. She won't have to be deposed in person. She can just sign their documents and that'll be it. It'll be over. 

[01:07:15] So a few days later, Betty Curry, Clinton's obviously secretary, arranges a little Christmas visit between Monica and Bill. So of course they're supposed to be over at this moment in time. But I think because of in light of everything that's happening, I don't know if Monica sees this, but it's clear that Bill is just trying to sweeten her in case it gets any further.

[01:07:34] Adam Cox: Fine, I guess, does she hate him at this point or maybe just, you know, over him but still happy to entertain this? 

[01:07:40] Kyle Risi: That's probably the best way of saying it, she's hopeful. 

[01:07:42] Adam Cox: Hopeful, okay. 

[01:07:43] Kyle Risi: So during this visit, Bill Clinton gives her more gifts and this is really messed up because at the end of this latest kind of little meeting, she has to hand the gifts back over to Betty because she knows she can't keep them just in case the lawyers come looking for them.

[01:07:57] That seems pointless. It does seem pointless. [01:08:00] I don't know. I guess maybe he already bought the gifts. I don't know.

[01:08:04] So now for a little bit of a segue because while all this is happening, Kenneth Starr, remember he's the guy who's doing the Whitewater investigation, right? This is still continuing. It's not looking good for them and there's even talks about giving up on the case because they still haven't been able to prove that Clinton had funneled money into their campaign at the start of his presidency, right?

[01:08:25] It's just nothing. There's nothing there. But then seemingly out of the blue, Kenneth Starr contacts Linda Tripp, and almost as magic, the Paula Jones case and the Whitewater case have now somehow connected themselves together.

[01:08:40] Which I will explain in a bit, but Linda Tripp basically, tells him that Monica Lewinsky has been subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case and tells them that Monica and Bill have been discussing what they were going to be saying in the affidavit and that they've both agreed to lie [01:09:00] under oath.

[01:09:00] Adam Cox: Wow, she's a right blabbermouth. Yeah. but that's the key thing here, right? And it's just she won't bill out then, but I feel like she's definitely got like a thing against him. 

[01:09:09] Kyle Risi: She's got a vendetta against him based on how she's been treated in the whole Vince Foster suicide and how that was dealt with 

[01:09:16] Adam Cox: yeah, okay. 

[01:09:17] Kyle Risi: But the key thing is here is that these two previously unrelated things the Paula Jones case and the whitewater Investigation have now magically connected themselves because Kenneth stars just randomly called Linda trip out of the blue 

[01:09:33] Adam Cox: That doesn't feel like, was it random? Or did someone like, tip him off? 

[01:09:36] Kyle Risi: It seems random at the moment, but we'll talk about why in a little bit, how they become connected.

[01:09:42] Adam Cox: Is it Betty? Betty's like, blab, that's it, I want out of 

[01:09:46] Kyle Risi: this. I want out!

[01:09:47] And basically, like I said, Linda has told him that they have now discussed, They're affidavit in that they're both going to lie under oath. So this is a smoking gun that Kenneth Starr needs to nail the president because this is [01:10:00] witness tampering essentially. 

[01:10:01] And it's also obstruction of justice in a criminal case So Kenneth Starr gives Linda full immunity and she hands over the tapes and she tells them also about the magical blue dress.

[01:10:14] They now know that that exists. They then asked Linda to meet with Monica, wearing a wire, hoping to get a clear recording of their conversation, admitting to the affair, proving that Monica's affidavit was a lie. But the problem is, Kenneth Starr's investigation does not have jurisdiction over Monica. The Paula Jones case, right? Remember the investigation focus on whitewater and other matters is where this other matters comes into play, 

[01:10:44] because basically star reaches out to Janet Reno, the Attorney General, and she reluctantly agrees to expand the jurisdiction to include the Paula Jones's case. And now Kenneth star knows that bill will lie under oath in the Paula Jones deposition. And [01:11:00] this will finally give them grounds to impeach him the exact thing that the republicans had been aiming for from the very very start because remember they couldn't make the whitewater work. 

[01:11:10] Adam Cox: So they're not going to be able to nail him on that but this they'll be able to nail him for just lying under oath.

[01:11:14] Kyle Risi: Hence other matters is now part of the equation. 

[01:11:17] Adam Cox: I see. 

[01:11:18] Kyle Risi: Sneaky isn't it? So Linda calls Monica, she tells her that she too has been subpoenaed in the Paula Jones case and is worried about lying under oath. Remember, Linda knows about the affair, so if she's going to protect Monica, she'll have to lie. And Monica panics, and she persuades Linda to lie for her when she gets subpoenaed and deposed, and even offers to help her kind of through the process, saying that she knows a guy who helped her with her case. Affidavit, that's Vernon Jones, she called and that he can do the same for Linda. 

[01:11:50] So in January the 13th 1998 They meet for lunch at the Ritz Carlton in Pensacola City, which is I believe just below where she's [01:12:00] staying It's like a big complex And they're going to discuss signing the affidavit.

[01:12:04] Linda is of course wearing a wire, Monica is visibly emotional, and Linda is of course under a lot of pressure to get this recording, so she's really nervous. At one point, while they're sitting chatting, Linda It's the kind of microphone kind of slips down and she can tell that Linda's a little bit shaken up. She becomes a little bit suspicious. 

[01:12:25] Linda has to then nip off to fix the microphone and while she's away Monica then rifles through her handbag. But it's in that moment that the FBI suspect that Linda has botched the whole effort and so they send agents down to escort Monica to room 102 at the Ritz Carlton, where members of Kenneth Starr's team are waiting to interrogate her. 

[01:12:46] Adam Cox: Right, so at the moment, I'm guessing they haven't got a full confession through Linda because she's messed up and Therefore, but she must have said enough, Monica, on this tape for them to call her into as an interrogation.[01:13:00]

[01:13:00] Kyle Risi: God knows. I think they've just panicked and they're like, okay, we just need to rescue this. Linda's been a dud. Let's just bring her into this room. We're going to interrogate her. We're gonna convince her that she doesn't need a lawyer. We're just gonna get this information that we need from her.

[01:13:12] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[01:13:12] Kyle Risi: Are they allowed to do that, I guess? No, not really. Oh. So there's a moment where Linda Tripp is still there, right? And she is like, great, you've got her, I can now go. And Monica is like, insists, like, Linda, you are coming with me. You pretended to be my friend and you betrayed me. Now you can sit and watch exactly what happens next. 

[01:13:31] So there's this awkward moment where, Monica Lewinsky is being interrogated about all these things that Linda Tripp has told these people and she has to sit there and listen to it all the while knowing that Monica knows now that Linda is the one who dug her in.

[01:13:46] Adam Cox: Wow. Yeesh. I did not know, yeah, someone dropped her in. Yeah. I thought perhaps, yeah, I did not know the length of this story. 

[01:13:56] Kyle Risi: And it's so complicated, right? There's all these different things that are happening. You've got the [01:14:00] Paula Jones cases happening, you've got this Whitewater investigation happening, you've got Linda Tripp who's got her own agenda, you've got the Republicans who are like trying to get dirt on the presidency.

[01:14:08] It's just a mess.

[01:14:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:14:10] Kyle Risi: So Monica is held in that room 102 for 11 hours while the FBI interrogate her. They tell her that she could be charged for signing a false affidavit and witness tampering, but they will give her immunity if she agrees to wear a wire during a future conversation with Bill, Betty Curry, or Vernon Jordan.

[01:14:29] She of course refuses and she asks for her lawyer Frank Carter who is connected to Bill So of course the FBI refuse and say that if we contact your lawyer all he is going to do is just tell Bill Clinton. So they completely refuse because they want to make sure that Bill Clinton still goes ahead and lies under oath because he is going to be deposed in just 12 hours time. So this all needs to be a secret, word cannot get back to Bill. 

[01:14:57] Adam Cox: Are they gonna have to like hold her hostage so like she doesn't [01:15:00] say anything? 

[01:15:00] Kyle Risi: It looks like that way. Yeah, so Monica says if I can't call my lawyer, can I at least call my mum and the FBI deny that request as well And they threaten that if she isn't careful, they will prosecute her mother as well.

[01:15:11] And eventually Monica is allowed to reach out to her mother who then jumps on a train, her mother then calls her father, who then contacts their family lawyer, who is a guy called Bill Ginsberg, who then advises her to just leave the hotel room since you are not under arrest and do not sign anything. Do not accept any immunity deal. Just get out of that hotel room. 

[01:15:31] Adam Cox: Why don't set, accept any immunity deal then? Is it just because this could backfire? It could 

[01:15:36] Kyle Risi: backfire. There could be an entrapment there. Just, we, we don't know the situation. Like, you need a lawyer there. You don't have one there. Just, Get out. You're not under arrest. Don't answer any questions. 

[01:15:46] Adam Cox: This must be really scary. Yeah! 

[01:15:48] Kyle Risi: For a 22 year old! But these government agents, like the FBI, God! So now, it's the next day. Bill Clinton, completely unaware of any of these developments, walks into his deposition, with On the Paula [01:16:00] Jones case.

[01:16:01] So he appears unflustered. He's in full control of the room. Paula Jones is present. She's staring him down like she's determined to make him tell the truth. But interestingly, the judge in the case has instructed the legal team conducting the deposition that they are not allowed to ask any questions that might embarrass the president.

[01:16:17] This means that they can't use any language that directly inquires about sexual activities. So to get around this, they use a chart with written definitions of sexual contact. So instead of like reading out specific acts, like, did so and so give you a gobby? No, they've got to point to a chart and then kind of like he will agree or deny it, but they can't physically say the words.

[01:16:39] Adam Cox: So, did you do Cell B2. And he's gotta look at it and go, No, I didn't do that one. Oh, that one down there? No, I didn't do that one.

[01:16:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's essentially what happened. So out of the 77 acts listed on these charts, Clinton omits one. To [01:17:00] one. And that was the one involving Jennifer Flowers, which everyone knew about. She was obviously the woman that he'd already acknowledged having an affair with years before he became president, right?

[01:17:08] Right. Okay. When it comes to Kathleen Wiley's testimony, he denies like any wrongdoing. He says, Oh, you know, that poor woman, she's been through a lot with her husband's suicide. And as an actually as an interesting side note, it was the night that Clinton allegedly assaulted Kathleen that her husband died.

[01:17:28] Adam Cox: Really? But not, but we don't know if it's because of that, it's the money problem.

[01:17:31] Kyle Risi: It was because of the money problems, but if this was a podcast about conspiracy theories, this would be a significant discussion point because of course as we talked about earlier on, the Clintons have got all these conspiracy speculation y things about them killing people, but it just so happened that he committed suicide on the night that this happened.

[01:17:49] Right harsh, isn't it? Yeah, but Clinton just maintains that on the night that she approached him He just embraced her he kissed her on the forehead and she's just misunderstood his [01:18:00] intentions But he insists there was like nothing sexual involved. 

[01:18:03] Adam Cox: But even kissing on a forehead someone that you work with 

[01:18:06] Kyle Risi: It's still more innocent than like, I don't know, grabbing her by the pussy. I don't know. I don't know what he did.

[01:18:12] Then the lawyers ask, Have you ever been alone with a woman called Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office? Obviously, Yeah. This doesn't surprise him because he knows that there's an affidavit there. So he replies no. However, this changes when they start asking about gifts that they've exchanged.

[01:18:30] He realizes that the only way they could know about the gifts is if Monica had been talking. Because remember, they only asked two questions. Did you have sex? And did he ask for it? This is outside of that realm.

[01:18:43] So it's at this moment during the recording of that deposition that you can kind of sense that his confidence just kind of wanes. And this is the first time that he utters those famous words. I had no sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. So it's now on tape. 

[01:18:58] So [01:19:00] outside of the deposition, Michael Isiakov, he's the journalist from Newsweek.

[01:19:04] He is preparing to publish the story about Monica Lewinsky and the tapes on that very same day that the deposition is happening. But at the last minute, they decide not to because they get word that Clinton may have purged himself under oath, so they don't want to kind of publish the story in case they get some facts wrong. 

[01:19:21] So they hold back on the story, but there's someone else who is willing to be far less cautious. And that's a man named Matt Drudge who runs the Drudge Report on what we now call. The internet, which at the time in 1998 was kind of brand new technology. 

[01:19:35] So, remember Lucille Goldberg? She was the literary agent who had advised Linda Tripp to make the recordings. Uh huh. So she finds out that Newsweek have decided to shelve the story. And she contacts Matt Drudge, and she tells him about this article that they were planning on releasing but have decided to hold back.

[01:19:53] And remember the internet was largely unregulated at the time. So Matt Drudge publishes the information [01:20:00] that Newsweek was sitting on this huge story and soon everyone knows. Shortly after that, the Washington Post, they become the first kind mainstream media outlet to publish the story, bringing this whole kind of idea of the affair between Monica Lewinsky and the President of the United States to the public's attention. This is where they first hear about it. 

[01:20:20] Adam Cox: So the Washington Post only publishes it because it was posted on the internet. That's right. Yeah, 

[01:20:25] Kyle Risi: yeah. I think the idea is that no one wants to be the first to publish it in case they get accused of being like the source of it all. But because it's on the internet, 

[01:20:34] Adam Cox: they can just say, oh, a source, all this was reported on this. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not whatever. Okay. 

[01:20:39] Kyle Risi: So following this, the day before Clinton is due to address the state of the union on January the 26th, which is going to be hosted by his good friend, Kevin Spacey. Now, I'll let you make your mind up about what that says about Bill Clinton and the friends that he's kept. 

[01:20:54] So he goes on live television and he repeats those famous words he says I did [01:21:00] not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. Okay, it's not quite that. 

[01:21:06] Adam Cox: Did I sound a bit special? You did sound special. 

[01:21:09] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, this is such a shame because he uses the words that woman, this is a huge blow to Monica. Remember for Monica, this was love. And to hear those words, that woman, he suddenly seems to have just kind of severed any ties with her and it just comes across really cold.

[01:21:25] Hillary Clinton then gives this now iconic TV interview where she talks about a vast right wing conspiracy that is hell bent on bringing down her husband ever since he announced that he was running for president. 

[01:21:38] And the thing is, she's not wrong, Adam. Yes, sleazeball, But politically, there really was this coordinated right wing effort to destroy him. Of course, Republicans framed it as kind of moral justice for these women, but we all know now that it was never really about them at all. It was about scoring political [01:22:00] points. 

[01:22:00] Now remember how the Paula Jones case and the Whitewater investigation, they were originally separate, right? But somehow they've become connected when Kenneth Starr just randomly contacts Linda Tripp out of the blue. How did he know to contact her? 

[01:22:13] Adam Cox: Someone must have I don't know. Gave him some information, right? 

[01:22:16] Kyle Risi: Right wing conspiracy! So, let me explain. So, there is this network of Republican lawyers who are all closely following the Paula Jones case, right?

[01:22:25] These same people are very heavily invested in the success of the Whitewater investigation, hoping that it would dig up some dirt on the Clintons. But of course, after time, they just hit a dead end and they come up with nothing, right? And this is kind of like a cycle. It's going on for years and years and years. It's getting to the point where they're thinking about just shelving the whole investigation.

[01:22:46] So these Republican lawyers, they were known as the elves and they were the ones who told Kenneth Starr about Linda Tripp and the tapes via the Paula Jones case, so they're the ones who decided to tip off Kenneth [01:23:00] Starr.

[01:23:00] Adam Cox: I see. 

[01:23:01] Kyle Risi: And they were even the ones who advised him on how to expand the Whitewater investigation to include it. other matters. 

[01:23:08] Adam Cox: Right, so they're saying this is how there's a loophole and how you can class it into that investigation. So those lawyers obviously have a vested interest being tied with the Republicans.

[01:23:19] Kyle Risi: That's it. And just like that, Starr's investigation gets a whole new lease on life. So Hillary wasn't far off. This vast conspiracy was actually real. And these L's were funding and pushing. The anti Clinton movement behind the scenes. 

[01:23:33] We know that these elves included people like Brett Kavanaugh, who is now Supreme Court justice appointed by, Donald Trump, George Conway as well, who is famously Kellyanne Conway's kind of husband.

[01:23:44] They were all part of this effort and they use Paula Jones's case to set Clinton up in essentially a perjury trap. They didn't care about Paula Jones at all. It was about manipulating the situation for political gain and justice just wasn't the driving [01:24:00] force behind any of this. 

[01:24:02] Adam Cox: So now that the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, had Paulers case been resolved?

[01:24:06] Was that still ongoing then? 

[01:24:08] Kyle Risi: No, so that's still going on, it's about to. So following Hillary Clinton's TV interview, Bill Clinton addresses the Democrat Party at the State of the Union, and everyone just shows their support, nobody turns against him. Honestly, at this point, Adam, Clinton could have admitted to the affair with Monica, just like he had done with others in the past.

[01:24:28] If he had owned up, there wouldn't have been the scandal anymore. Like, there wouldn't have been this perjury trap. There would be no impeachment. It wouldn't have given Kenneth Starr's investigation the ammunition it needed, but he didn't. And this is why I said earlier on, it's possibly because he had told Hillary this hadn't happened.

[01:24:45] Adam Cox: Right, so he could have omitted it rather than lying under oath, and he would have got pardoned for that? 

[01:24:50] Kyle Risi: I think it just wouldn't have been a case, right? 

[01:24:52] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[01:24:52] Kyle Risi: So meanwhile, as all this unfolds in the media, Monika and her mother, they're held up at the Watergate apartment, with the press kind of [01:25:00] completely surrounding the hotel.

[01:25:01] Awful things are just being said about them in the media, the press even end up finding her old high school teacher who she'd once had an affair with, they pull him in front of a press conference and he claims that all she constantly did was just talk about sex and how she even joked about going to DC to get her presidential knee pads.

[01:25:21] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess they're just making her out to be way worse exactly like yes She shouldn't have perhaps entertained this she was I don't know. She just infatuated . Yeah She did make a mistake, but it doesn't seem like she's some I don't know evil woman, 

[01:25:36] Kyle Risi: And of course the presidential knee pads joke is completely made up, but even if it wasn't, it doesn't make Clinton the victim here at all. No. And that's what they're trying to do, right? They're trying to make her as the perpetrator. 

[01:25:47] Adam Cox: Yeah, she's the one that like brought this on sort of thing and corrupted Bill Clinton, even though he's the one that's had all the affairs before. 

[01:25:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he's the president he was the one who had the power in that power dynamic.

[01:25:59] Adam Cox: Exactly. [01:26:00] This is your boss at the end of the day. And so therefore he's the one that's in the wrong. 

[01:26:04] Kyle Risi: So the media, they label her as a tramp and a spoiled, troubled Jewish princess. So add some anti Semitism into the mix. 

[01:26:11] Adam Cox: Why, why even bother with that? That's just not needed. 

[01:26:14] Kyle Risi: They draw kind of comparisons to fatal attraction. They accuse her of zealously pursuing the president. They were slut shaming her just for having a sexuality and being 22. If you're a promiscuous woman, you're blamed. For men, it's different as we know. This is what Monica refers to later on as the nuts and sluts defense. You're either crazy or you're a whore.

[01:26:40] So she's never going to win this fight. No. So never once did they ever see her as a young woman caught up With a powerful man they fail to acknowledge the power dynamics at play and it's just shocking men usually escape scot free while women rarely ever do. I hope that's changing [01:27:00] now But even still that stigma still is around.

[01:27:03] Adam Cox: I feel like that only changes when there's enough people Speaking up. If it's one person, they can be silenced. Two people, silenced. But then when you've got 20 people now saying the same thing, that's only when they can actually go, Okay, this is actually a big enough story to take someone down. I don't know if it's changed enough.

[01:27:20] Kyle Risi: No. So in August of 1998, Kenneth Starr brings people before a grand jury to decide can go ahead. And it's a massive media circus. The first person to testify is Betty Curry, Clinton's secretary. What does Betty say? It's long and arduous. I'm not going to get into that and I can't remember. I didn't write it down! 

[01:27:40] Adam Cox: You could have just said, yeah, I 

[01:27:42] Kyle Risi: No, I think Betty, she does say some interesting things, but it just wasn't anything of note.

[01:27:47] She kind of like I just arrange meetings. It's just my job. Yeah, essentially.

[01:27:52] Next, Monica testifies. But she has immunity, which means that she won't get into trouble for anything that she might say. [01:28:00] And that's important. There's a bit of a journey to get that, but she's finally got it. But basically when it comes to Monica, they make her describe every single sexual act in the most minute detail. Full perspective, right? This trial is about proving whether or not Bill Clinton committed perjury and lied under oath. So it just seems unnecessary for them to have to delve into such detail.

[01:28:23] It feels more like they're trying to humiliate her and of course him, but it's just unnecessary. They also force her to turn over the infamous blue dress with the white stain on it, which proves that they had been intimate. So when they obtained the dress, Kenneth Starr's team contact Clinton's lawyers saying that they have evidence that requires a blood sample.

[01:28:44] They don't tell them it's for the blue dress, or that they even have the blue dress. And I guess they could have asked for a sperm sample, rather than a blood sample, but maybe that just wasn't exactly the appropriate thing that you'd ask for from a sitting president.

[01:28:58] Probably not. Can [01:29:00] you just spunk in this cup, please, Mr. President? 

[01:29:02] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess blood is fair enough they can tell from that, right? 

[01:29:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but in spite of that you still end up with this really bizarre situation where they're going to the White House in the middle of the night to get a blood sample from a sitting president to compare the DNA to a stain on a 20 year old's dress, and of course their results show it's Clinton sperm.

[01:29:22] Adam Cox: Ooh. Ugh. How do you get out of this situation? 

[01:29:25] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And I can't help but imagine like kind of the scene reminiscence of like, daytime television shows like Trisha, where they're reading out the results of the DNA test when they announce it's his, I envision, like, Hillary Clinton on one side of the room, like, all devastated and crying and Clinton looking shocked and denying it.

[01:29:42] And then Monica's on the other end just going, Yeah. I told you. It's just Yeah, it just feels like a weird drama. But finally, in August of 1998, Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president to testify before a grand jury investigating his [01:30:00] conduct. And this is historic, because he does something really fucking weird.

[01:30:06] He tries to play semantics and uses kind of these linguistic loopholes as a way to say that he wasn't lying during his previous deposition. 

[01:30:16] Adam Cox: So this is the bit I think that has jogged some memory because he's got these weird terminology for him, he wasn't having an affair because of, he never, came to climax.

[01:30:24] Mm hmm. So is he now going to say, oh, that's not sexual relations. I don't class oral sex as sex. 

[01:30:32] Kyle Risi: You're almost there. Yes, so basically he starts saying these encounters did not constitute sexual relations as he understood the term to be defined. Like, I'm sorry, Mr. President. Last time I checked, a willy in the mouth is definitely sexual relations. 

[01:30:47] Adam Cox: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how long sex ed has been going, but I'm pretty sure he seems to have done it enough yeah, that he should know what that's all about.

[01:30:55] Kyle Risi: Well, I've been doing sex this whole time! 

[01:30:57] Adam Cox: Exposing yourself? [01:31:00] Jeez. 

[01:31:00] Kyle Risi: So, Paula's lawyers respond, wait a minute. During the deposition, you said there was No sexual relationship. And Clinton explains that his statement wasn't a lie because of the word infidelity.

[01:31:11] It is, he clarifies, that the original statement was that there is no sexual relation, meaning there was no sexual activity going on at the time in the deposition. 

[01:31:23] Adam Cox: Has his lawyer, like, probably said, oh, if you said it like this, we can get around this. 

[01:31:27] Kyle Risi: Yeah, essentially, like, he is a lawyer, he comes from a lawyer background, he's got a lot of good lawyers on him, he's probably got the best lawyers in the world, so they're playing this weird semantic game.

[01:31:36] Adam Cox: And this is what so annoys me because if any regular Joe would ever say this in court, they'd be like, shut up. Who's going to believe that? Who's going to buy that? 

[01:31:45] Kyle Risi: But to be fair, like the whole court case itself is just ridiculous. Bear in mind, this is the, this is some weird political game. They're trying to catch him out for Lying under oath. That's it. 

[01:31:55] Adam Cox: I think all the money that goes into like this court. Exactly! Like, he's not there [01:32:00] running the country. Fair enough. You could say that, okay, well he lied under oath. What else is he lying about? That's what you could get at. I get it. But this is someone's personal life. 

[01:32:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[01:32:09] Adam Cox: And in the day. 

[01:32:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, and he's running country really well. 

[01:32:13] Adam Cox: Yeah, although at least they thought he was, I don't know. 

[01:32:16] Kyle Risi: So after this, Clinton goes on national television and he admits that he had inappropriate relations with Monica Lewinsky. However, he insists that he believed that his answers were legally accurate.

[01:32:28] Adam Cox: No one else does, but sure, whatever, Bill. 

[01:32:31] Kyle Risi: Obviously, he is ridiculed widely for this, like critics, commentators, comedians are relentlessly mocking for this for a while. So now it's clear that impeachment is And Kenneth Starr must now turn all this information over to Congress because ultimately it's going to be up to them to decide whether or not to impeach the president.

[01:32:52] And there is this amazing footage of Starr's team offloading like 36 of these boxes, kind of just filled with [01:33:00] evidence at Congress. And they're all very careful to place warnings on the reports about kind of personal details that should not go public. 

[01:33:08] So to ensure that none of it does, the House Rules Committee draft these regulations on how to properly handle the information. But nobody wants to take responsibility for keeping it a secret. So it ends up on the internet. And this becomes a real defining moment Because one of the biggest stories in the world is using the internet as a primary vehicle to reach the public, to escape all these kind of weird rules and regulations that control how information is disseminated.

[01:33:38] Adam Cox: What, when the internet was the wild west, I guess, in a way. 

[01:33:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So the report that gets leaked details all of their sexual acts, the oral sex, even the use of marital aids, which refers to the infamous cigar incident. 

[01:33:53] Adam Cox: Oh, God, 

[01:33:54] Kyle Risi: yeah, I forgot about that. 

[01:33:55] Adam Cox: Mmm. Why would you even use a cigar? 

[01:33:59] Kyle Risi: Should I, should I [01:34:00] say it on the podcast? I mean, it's private. It's a private thing. 

[01:34:03] Adam Cox: I don't think we need to 

[01:34:04] Kyle Risi: go into the detail Okay, I'll give you the summary so I have the section highlighted in red in my notes because it's not gross or perverted, but it's just Extremely private. It's an intimate moment between two people It's like it's kind of in the realm of the famous conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles When they're talking about the the tampon basically where he wishes he was her tampon. 

[01:34:27] So basically At one point, the president inserts a cigar into Miss Lewinsky, and he then puts the cigar into his mouth, and then he just says, Mmm, tastes good.

[01:34:38] Adam Cox: Cigar. 

[01:34:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think that pro it's America. So they're probably more angry about the fact that it was a Cuban cigar and they're supposed to be banned.

[01:34:49] Adam Cox: Poor Monica, the fact that this is all getting revealed. 

[01:34:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. So this is humiliating for Monica. While Bill could just kind of brush it off, she was Like, lad. Yeah, [01:35:00] exactly. She's painfully aware that everyone in the world was reading about these intimate moments that actually meant a lot to her.

[01:35:07] Like, very little regard for her feelings was kind of like paid. So get this, the report mentions the word sex 548 times, right? So remember, this is the, the white water investigation. For perspective, this investigation started as a way to look into the Clinton's dealings with Whitewater, a real estate scandal, something that is only mentioned twice.

[01:35:37] Adam Cox: Twice. So completely overlooked because there is nothing. 

[01:35:40] Kyle Risi: There's nothing there. They made all about other matters. 

[01:35:44] Adam Cox: Other matters. 

[01:35:44] Kyle Risi: Is not just like, Oh, appended on the side. It's the main focus of this investigation. It's just mental. This tells you something, that they really focused on the sensationalist parts of the story.

[01:35:57] In the press, Monica is labeled a homewrecker, [01:36:00] Michael Moore shames her on TV, Joan Rivers kind of cracks jokes about her at her expense, John Goodman, which is funny, plays Linda Tripp in the SNL sketch. He dresses up as Linda Tripp. And Monica is just the butt of the joke. And. It's horrific for her. In her mind, her entire life is ruined and she can't even defend herself because she's under legal quarantine.

[01:36:23] But up until that point, nobody in the world even knew what Monica's voice sounded like. The first time anyone heard her voice was when the trip tapes were released on the Drudge Report website. As for Clinton, nobody cared. Isn't that mental? So his approval ratings were still really sky high. People had jobs, the economy was good, and they just did not care. 76 percent of Americans were against impeachment. So he wasn't going to get impeached. 

[01:36:56] Adam Cox: I think that he could recognise that it's nothing about his [01:37:00] ability to be a president, this, that he's being impeached for, this is about a personal matter. 

[01:37:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah, luckily, most sensible people could look past that. Basically there was no pressure on him to resign. He wasn't going to go anywhere as long as people were on his side.

[01:37:16] So the House proceeded with the impeachment inquiry anyway, and in September, Clinton gave the grand jury his testimony, which was televised, and his performance made people just feel very sorry for him, so that only helped his case even more. But by November 1998, Clinton settles his case with Paula Jones for 850, 000.

[01:37:38] He doesn't have to issue an apology and suddenly the Republicans don't have a need for her anymore. And so it's like, bye. See you, Paula. Like, thanks for being our pawn. 

[01:37:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. Essentially. I know she gets 850, 000, although that's probably to pay some of her fees that she's been churning out. 

[01:37:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:37:55] Adam Cox: So yeah, so she doesn't win. Monica doesn't win. 

[01:37:59] Kyle Risi: No. Clinton [01:38:00] obviously wins. So at the same time that Clinton settled, many Republican politicians started making headlines of their own sexual scandals. Turns out that the party of morality wasn't that great at keeping it in their pants either.

[01:38:15] So the Republicans decided to make an example of one of those people and that was a guy called Bob Livingston who had been having multiple affairs and was pressured to resign. And on his way out, he was like, I'm resigning because of my affairs and that's exactly what the President should do. So he took one for the team.

[01:38:33] Right. Just so he could kind of get their message out like, I'm going to resign. Probably coming up 

[01:38:37] Adam Cox: to retirement anyway. 

[01:38:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably got a nice big payout as well. Yeah. Of course, Bill Clinton's like, you can suck it. I'm still not going to resign. Not the right 

[01:38:47] Adam Cox: choice of words there. No, 

[01:38:48] Kyle Risi: probably not. But yeah, he essentially says, no, I'm not going to resign. So they go to an impeachment trial in January 99. And by February, the Senate votes on articles of impeachment. They need 67 votes to convict [01:39:00] him and remove him from office. 

[01:39:01] They just get 45 for conviction and they get 55 votes against and that means that Clinton gets away with it. He doesn't get impeached. It was quite close actually then. Yeah, but remember this the conservatives or the Republicans had the vast majority of control anyway, but it still didn't pass because I guess there were some Republicans out there that were like, yeah, this is stupid. 

[01:39:25] Adam Cox: Yeah, it kind of makes us look a bit stupid or petty.

[01:39:27] one thing I do want to mention is that in 1998 a woman named Winita Brodwick came forward with rape allegations against Bill Clinton. Now none of her testimony was included in the Jones trial or the impeachment trial.

[01:39:44] The most serious allegation in this case essentially just vanished. So it's wild to me. It sounds like this would have been an easy win if that's what they led with, right? So do we know if that's true or it's not been proven or anything? 

[01:39:58] Kyle Risi: It's just disappeared. I think [01:40:00] it's true, but it just disappeared. I don't know if they settled that off court, but if they were going to get him for anything, that would have been the easy thing to do, right?

[01:40:07] Yeah. So it makes you question like what's going on there. But the crazy thing is, is that, remember 2015, Hillary Clinton ran for president, right? So she made this whole big song and dance about how all women should speak out against sexual assault.

[01:40:22] And Juanita Brodwick, she goes to Twitter and she says, I did speak out but nothing happened. Oh. Yeah. And she was allegedly raped. 

[01:40:30] Adam Cox: And then you've got Hilary who's standing by Bill this whole time. Not good, is it? How could you say that? That's hypocritical. Yeah. Women 

[01:40:38] Kyle Risi: should speak out. But you stood by your man. Stand by your man, 

[01:40:43] Adam Cox: don't know why you've gone for that. 

[01:40:44] Kyle Risi: That's from that song from I don't know. I think it's from James Bond 

[01:40:49] What's even crazier and shows the extent to which politicians will play dirty is that all three key women in this investigation, Juanita Brodwick, Paula Jones, and Kathleen [01:41:00] Wiley, they were all relentlessly brought up during Trump's campaign when he was running against Hillary and still these women are just being used as pawns to make the other side look bad?

[01:41:11] It's just ridiculous. It's just they've got no regard for any justice or any morality. None of them have. 

[01:41:17] Adam Cox: Or personal. Yeah, nothing personal. It's all for the greater cause of the party. How's uh, so how is Monica doing after all this? 

[01:41:25] Kyle Risi: Well, interesting. So after all these years, Monica is actually doing really well.

[01:41:29] She's a champion for anti bullying campaigns, and she works as a broadcaster. She does loads of funny, like, she's really good at poking fun of herself, but she's also kind of a real advocate for a lot of these things that are happening, like these injustices against women.

[01:41:44] What's really interesting is how she really controls her narrative now, right? Before she was kind of this pawn that was used. Now she actively speaks out against people like misspeaking about the facts of this case, which I [01:42:00] just think is really great. She's very active on Twitter. She's really insightful.

[01:42:03] She's really funny. And I just love how she's taken charge of this entire story in a really dignified way. Do you remember when the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton's emails during her presidential run?

[01:42:15] Adam Cox: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[01:42:16] Kyle Risi: So apparently all of this was tied to a guy called Anthony, get ready for his name, Anthony Weiner. So he'd apparently sent an inappropriate picture of his penis. 

[01:42:28] Adam Cox: Weiner. 

[01:42:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And this was apparently on a woman's laptop who worked with Hillary Clinton, right? And at the heart of that investigation, they were not interested in these emails. They were interested in unearthing this photograph that was on the laptop, that was what was at the heart of all of this, but they disguised it under like, she was misappropriating US government to kind of like, store emails that were really sensitive. They didn't give a shit. The Republican Party, just wanted the pictures of this wiener.

[01:42:57] It's like damn high school, [01:43:00] like nothing has changed. 

[01:43:02] Adam Cox: Yeah, it seems like it's going to be interesting going into whoever gets the next election. What dirt's going to come up? Yeah, there's always going to be dirt. What wieners are going to be involved?

[01:43:13] Kyle Risi: If you want to start a scandal in Glutowina. And so Adam, that in a nutshell is the multi layered story of Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton scandal. It's a story of everyone pretending to be the good guys fighting for morality when in fact they were all just in it for their own gain. 

[01:43:31] Adam Cox: Yeah, I had no idea that they, that I don't know how many layers and how many people were working in the background to try and bring them down.

[01:43:39] And actually, how far it went in terms of this impeachment and stuff like that, all because of his private life. Horrible, isn't it? But they still wheel him out. I think they wheeled him out when Hillary was, wheeled him out. Is he in a wheelchair? Well, no, I guess they got him out because he's still, I think, considered quite a well respected president, even though his image has been tarnished. And actually, [01:44:00] is he a piece of shit? Well, yeah, people still seem to like him. 

[01:44:04] Kyle Risi: People also seem to forget that he's implicated in the whole, Epstein kind of flights. Yeah. He's on the logs, isn't he? 

[01:44:11] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. So what else is he involved in? And Yeah. How many other people have they killed?

[01:44:16] Conspiracy. 

[01:44:17] Kyle Risi: Maybe we should do an episode on the conspiracies of people that they've killed. 

[01:44:20] Adam Cox: Conspiracy of the Clintons. One thing I did find out about, Bill Clinton is, do you know that he's won a Grammy? 

[01:44:27] Kyle Risi: No! Yeah. About what? What did he do? 

[01:44:30] Adam Cox: He won a Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Spoken World Album for Children, narrating the Russian National Orchestra's album Wolf Tracks and Peter and the Wolf.

[01:44:40] Kyle Risi: What?! That's incredible! Yeah, 

[01:44:43] Adam Cox: so, yeah. That's, I'm pretty sure not many, presidents have a Grammy. 

[01:44:47] Kyle Risi: No. No. Where does he keep his Grammy, do you reckon? 

[01:44:49] Adam Cox: I don't know. In his closet of lies? Calm down.

[01:44:54] Kyle Risi: So there is this, uh, really incredible fact before we end this episode. Um, because [01:45:00] before all of this kicked off, we never really used the word intern. It wasn't common really in English until this scandal blew up in the aftermath. You might remember, Gordon Brown was kind of gearing up to take office from, uh, Tony Blair.

[01:45:15] And famously, he said, at the Labour Party conference in Blackpool in 1998, while talking about stable economic policy, he said, we will have no U turns, no left turns, no right turns, and definitely no in turns. And it was all because of what was happening with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.

[01:45:34] Adam Cox: And then people are like, started using that word more common. It just became more common. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:45:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[01:45:39] Adam Cox: What was it before? Work experience? 

[01:45:40] Kyle Risi: don't know. 

[01:45:41] Adam Cox: Not that, yeah. Dog's body? I don't know. 

[01:45:44] Kyle Risi: you think that you have a more of a well rounded view of what had happened? 

[01:45:49] Adam Cox: Yes, I do. I think Linda has a lot to answer for. She does, bitch! I don't know what she's up to now. 

[01:45:55] Kyle Risi: I don't think she's doing well. I think she's gone through like a really messy divorce. I think she's quite lonely, [01:46:00] from what I gathered from the documentary. But I think she brought that on herself. 

[01:46:04] Adam Cox: Yeah, thinking that she could play both parties. Yes, snitches get stitches. Yeah,if anyone's I'm angry about Linda. 

[01:46:10] Kyle Risi: Mmm. Actually, do you know who played Linda?

[01:46:13] I could get this wrong. In the impeachment, story, I think she was played by Who's the one that I hate from American Horror Story? 

[01:46:21] Adam Cox: Not Sarah Paulson. 

[01:46:22] Kyle Risi: Yes! Sarah Paulson! Can I do the impression of Sarah Paulson? Do the 

[01:46:27] Adam Cox: impression 

[01:46:27] Kyle Risi: of Sarah Paulson. Okay, give me a line to say. Can I have an apple?

[01:46:31] Okay, this is how Sarah Paulson would say it. Adam, can I have an apple? 

[01:46:40] Adam Cox: She does cry a lot in her roles. She does, 

[01:46:42] Kyle Risi: always crying. Give me something else to say. 

[01:46:44] Adam Cox: Um, I don't know. Don't touch my cat.

[01:46:52] Kyle Risi: Don't touch my cat!

[01:46:54] Adam Cox: It's always the same. Yeah, but she, she is really good. I still like her, it's just certain [01:47:00] roles, when she puts on the waterworks, it's like, I 

[01:47:02] Kyle Risi: remember seeing one scene where she cried so hard that snot was coming out of her nose, and I was like, that's acting. It's real acting. Yeah, that's 

[01:47:10] Adam Cox: acting. When it like runs down the nose and into the mouth, you're like, wow, she didn't even blink. 

[01:47:15] Kyle Risi: I don't think 

[01:47:15] Adam Cox: she's that good. 

[01:47:16] Kyle Risi: Like, I can't, I'd like to in a freak show because that's the first time I came across a character but then when I realised every single character was that, I was like, mmm, yeah, nah, nah nah nah nah.

[01:47:27] But yeah, shall we run the outro? 

[01:47:30] Let's run the outro. 

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[01:48:18] See ya.