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  • 2016-05-04 (xsd:date)
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  • Clinton Impeachment House Speakers' Sex Scandals (en)
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  • On 27 April 2016, the popular Twitter account @WillMcAvoyACN published the above-reproduced tweet, which said that every Republican Speaker of the House involved with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton was subsequently felled by a sex scandal: The impetus for the tweet was probably the recent sentencing of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was accused of sexually abusing at least four teenaged boys while working as a wrestling coach, then subsequently convicted of illegally structuring bank accounts to pay off accusers. A 2 May 2016 New York Times profile of Hastert's fall from grace pointed out that his appointment to the Speaker position was a result of cascading sex scandals: As accusations against Hastert emerged in mid-2015, the Chicago Tribune reported that he was dubbed the 'Accidental Speaker,' plucked from a junior position in the GOP leadership in December 1998 during the chaotic moments after newly nominated Republican Speaker Bob Livingston of Louisiana disclosed an extramarital affair and turned down the post: The arc of Clinton's impeachment was long, arguably commencing with the President's appearance in front of a federal grand jury on 18 August 1998 (during Newt Gingrich's tenure as Speaker). By November 1998, Gingrich resigned from his post as Speaker, facing a challenge from Rep. Bob Livingston: President Bill Clinton's impeachment was complicated by sex scandals affecting House leadership at the same time, but he was formally impeached on 19 December 1998: Hastert assumed the role of Speaker in the vacuum left by Livingston's swift downfall, and his tenure began on 6 January 1999. In February 1999, Clinton was acquitted: Three people could be considered Speaker of the House during Clinton's impeachment: Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and Dennis Hastert. Livingston's sex scandal took place at the same time as the impeachment, and Hastert's came to light years after he left office. Whether Gingrich was technically involved in a sex scandal was more of an issue of semantics. In a March 2007 interview, Gingrich (then mulling a run for President) admitted to participating in an extramarital affair at the time of Clinton's impeachment: Gingrich's dalliances weren't necessarily a sex scandal in that his dalliances didn't dominate headlines, and he readily admitted (after the fact) that he had been having an affair at the same time that he was pursuing the impeachment of President Clinton for similar reasons. It is technically true that the Speakers of the House during Clinton's impeachment eventually had public sex scandals. Hastert was criminally charged and sentenced to prison, House Speaker-designate Livingston's bid to assume the role failed when his own infidelities were exposed, and Gingrich later admitted to extramarital affairs of his own. (en)
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