MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell struggled Wednesday to say that Bill Clinton gave a "faulty deposition" in the Paula Jones case during a rehashing of Clinton-era scandals from the 1990s.
After Morning Joe ran a clip of a 1994 White House press conference by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton about the Whitewater real estate controversy, Mitchell suggested the "years of investigations" into the Clintons have led to Hillary Clinton's "resistance to scrutiny."
"I do think that all of those experiences informed and shaped her resistance to scrutiny, arguably even the fact that she ends up with the private server after all of those years of investigations and the special prosecutor and Ken Starr, which she resisted to the last moment," Mitchell said.
Mitchell said President Clinton wanted to be "as far away as possible" from his wife when he announced the special prosecutor that Hillary opposed.
Mitchell then became visibly uncomfortable as she brought up Bill Clinton's lie to Paula Jones' attorneys about his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
"Which she had said, it was going to lead to no good, because it didn't turn up anything on Whitewater," she said. "It did turn up, of course, his, um, faulty deposition on Paula Jones, and that's what led to the impeachment, so she has a very uncomfortable and painful history here."
Clinton testified under questioning from Paula Jones' lawyers that he didn't have a sexual relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky. The statement, which he later admitted was false, led to his 1998 impeachment, although he was later cleared of the charges of obstruction and perjury and retained office.