Mueller's midterm elections
by Byron York
| July 31, 2018 12:00 AM
Nineteen-ninety-eight was a year of scandal in Washington. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating whether President Bill Clinton lied about a sexual affair with former intern Monica Lewinsky. The Clinton legal and public relations team furiously resisted Starr's probe, and the battle, which began with news of the affair in January, stretched through the spring, and into summer, and into fall.
The November 1998 midterm elections approached. Although Clinton wasn't on the ballot, voting shaped up as a referendum on him and the Lewinsky matter, with impeachment hanging in the balance.
In Starr's offices, lawyers discussed how to handle the upcoming elections. The independent counsel had to report on what he found, but any prosecutorial action close to November might influence the vote, something prosecutors traditionally try to avoid. So the Starr team set a deadline of Labor Day for finishing its report on the Lewinsky matter and sending it to Congress.
"We were very concerned about issuing the report too close to the midterms," recalls Sol Wisenberg, a senior duputy of Starr's. "We were shooting for before Labor Day. We weren't indicting anyone, but we were very conscious of the midterms."
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