Fox’s Newt Gingrich defends impeaching Bill Clinton by claiming it “was more than partisan politics”

Written by Media Matters Staff

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Fox’s Newt Gingrich defends impeaching Bill Clinton by claiming it “was more than partisan politics”

From the October 10 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Even Ben Sasse, who is always critical of the president, said it's a partisan clown show. What's interesting to me, watching this as an outsider, is, well, you've been through this. You were speaker when there was independent counsel, that statute then changed to the special counsel, but there were 11 specific indictments that were put forward by Ken Starr in his final report. It's not like this got pulled out of nowhere. 

And when you set up the conditions, in your particular case, for the Democrats, the minority at the time, to deal with issues, well, you were fair. There was a full vote of the House, correct me if I'm wrong. You also allowed all sorts of -- let's see,  every single -- you gave every single opportunity for them to present their case as well, did you not?

GINGRICH: Well, look, we followed the same principles that had been established by Peter Rodino, a Democrat, in 1973 during Watergate. And we did it very deliberately.

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There was a real effort based on how they had handled Watergate, to make sure that the country could see that this was more than partisan politics.