An early effort in congress saw Republican congressman Bob Barr write a resolution, co-signed by eighteen fellow House Republicans, which sought to launch an impeachment inquiry in 1997.
By October 1993, a petition was being nationally circulated to impeach Clinton for, among other offenses, allegedly abusing his office and causing "great prejudice to the cause of law and justice". The petition was organized by Carol and Michael Benn.[1]
By this time, anti-Clinton activists had collected 100,000 signatures supporting his impeachment, and had launched at least four different websites on the internet.[4] Among the groups circulating petitions supporting an impeachment of Clinton was a group named the "National Impeach Clinton ACTION Committee", which was run by the far-rightJohn Birch Society, who called for Clinton to be impeached for the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy.[6][7][8]
In December 1997, conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote an op-ed calling for Barr's calls for an impeachment to be heeded, arguing that an impeachment inquiry should be launched into allegations that Clinton and his vice president Al Gore had made campaign fundraising phone calls from their White House offices, as well as into the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy.[9]
Directly after the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal came to light, Barr ramped up his efforts to push for Clinton's impeachment, appearing regularly on television, as well as even publishing a scholarly article in the Texas Law Review on the subject.[10] Barr was the first lawmaker in either chamber of the United States Congress to call for Clinton's resignation over the scandal.[11] In February 1998, Barr traveled to Los Angeles, at the John Birch Society's expense, to speak to them about his efforts to impeach Clinton.[10] In 1998, after the scandal broke, an additional fourteen congressman co-sponsored the resolution, three of them by early March 1998 and an additional nine in September 1998.[12]
On October 8, 1998, in the aftermath of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and a month after the release of the Starr Report, which largely focused on the scandal, an impeachment inquiry was launched. On December 19, 1998, Clinton was impeached on allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton was acquitted in his subsequent trial.[13]