MIKE GREACIA

On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill
Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and
obstructing justice, began in the Senate. As instructed
in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief
Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside (below),
and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only
attempted to remove a president on one other occasion:
the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson,
who incurred the Republican Party’s wrath after he proposed
a conservative Reconstruction plan.