The White House made a public push to defend President Bill Clinton during a series of investigations related to his affair with intern Monica lewinsky and other matters, according to thousands of pages of documents released by the National Archives.
The papers did not appear to reveal any new information that might affect a potential Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign in 2016. The documents, part of 10,000 pages of records from the Clinton administration released on Friday, focused on a number of painful chapters in the former first lady’s time in the White House and described how the President’s aides sought to defend her husband against impeachment.
The possibility of a presidential campaign has heightened interest in the documents by media organisations, political opposition researchers and historians.
Many records involving lewinsky are redacted. Behind the scenes, Clinton officials were adamant that they were not trying to discredit her. “There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House was directing or involved in any campaign against her,” Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a January 1999 memo.