“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” was Bill Clinton’s answer to a federal grand jury on August 17, 1998, when prosecutors pressed him on a present-tense denial his lawyer had made about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton’s argument was narrow and grammatical: the statement used “is,” and by the time it was spoken the relationship had already ended, so a denial framed in the present tense could be called literally true. The line became the most quoted moment of the Lewinsky investigation and the shorthand people still reach for when a public figure appears to be splitting a word down to nothing.
What Clinton Was Actually Being Asked
The exchange did not come out of nowhere. Seven months earlier, on January 17, 1998, Clinton had been deposed in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit against him. During that deposition, Clinton’s attorney Robert Bennett told the presiding judge that Lewinsky’s affidavit showed “there is absolutely no sex of any kind” between Clinton and Lewinsky. Clinton sat silently as the statement was made. The independent counsel’s office later alleged that Clinton “corruptly allowed his attorney to make false and misleading statements to a Federal judge” in order to shut down further questioning.
When Clinton finally testified before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury on August 17, 1998, via closed-circuit television from the White House, prosecutors put Bennett’s sentence in front of him. Clinton’s response turned on verb tense. Because Bennett had said “there is,” and because the relationship had ended before the January deposition, Clinton argued the statement was accurate at the moment it was spoken. His full answer to the grand jury: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”
He made a parallel move on the definition of “sexual relations” itself. The Jones deposition had used a specific written definition covering intentional contact with certain body parts for arousal or gratification. Asked whether oral sex fell inside that definition as he understood it, Clinton answered, “As I understood it, it was not; no.” He told the grand jury he believed his earlier deposition testimony had been “legally accurate” and that he “did not do those things that were within that definition.”
Why the Parsing Mattered Legally
Federal perjury law requires proof that a defendant knowingly lied under oath about something material to the proceeding. Clinton’s defense strategy was built around that “knowingly” requirement. If his answers could be read as technically consistent with the tense used, or with the definition read narrowly, then prosecutors would struggle to prove he had lied on purpose rather than answered a poorly worded question accurately.
The independent counsel’s office rejected that framing. It pointed to physical evidence, including a semen-stained dress belonging to Lewinsky that contained DNA matching the president, as well as Lewinsky’s testimony and corroborating witnesses. Legal analysis published by the Famous Trials project called Clinton’s approach a “laughably tortured definition” and argued that a witness cannot “assign private meanings to words and use an odd definition as a defense to perjury.” That same analysis concluded Clinton’s answers were “not just misleading, but literally false,” because the court-approved definition of sexual relations had been drafted specifically to include oral sex and Clinton understood as much.
There was a complicating point even critics acknowledged: Clinton’s false statements were made in what one commentator called “weak civil litigation,” and his motive was personal embarrassment rather than concealment of official misconduct. That distinction did not resolve whether he had committed perjury, but it shaped the political fight over whether the conduct rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
What the Parsing Cost Him
The grammatical defense did not spare Clinton from consequences, though it may have kept him in office.
Impeachment and Acquittal
On September 9, 1998, Starr transmitted his referral to Congress. On December 19, 1998, the House voted on four articles of impeachment. It approved Article I (grand jury perjury) 228 to 206 and Article III (obstruction of justice) 221 to 212. It rejected Article II, which alleged perjury in the Jones deposition itself, by 205 to 229, and Article IV (abuse of power) 148 to 285. The rejection of Article II is telling: it was the article most tightly bound to Clinton’s parsing of definitions in the civil deposition, and a majority of the House was not prepared to call that conduct impeachable on its own.
The Senate trial ended on February 12, 1999. On the perjury charge, 45 senators voted to convict and 55 to acquit. On the obstruction charge, the vote was 50-50. Both fell well short of the two-thirds needed to remove him, and Clinton was acquitted.
Contempt of Court
Acquittal in the Senate did not settle the factual question. On April 12, 1999, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright held Clinton in civil contempt, the first time a sitting president had been sanctioned for disobeying a court order. Her 32-page opinion found that Clinton had given “intentionally false” testimony that was “designed to obstruct the judicial process,” and it singled out his claims that he was never alone with Lewinsky and had no sexual relationship with her. Wright rejected the “legally accurate” defense directly, writing that Clinton’s own later admission of “inappropriate” conduct made the falsity of his deposition answers “beyond dispute.” She ordered him to pay over $90,000 in sanctions. Clinton later settled the underlying Jones suit for $850,000, without admitting wrongdoing.
Loss of His Law License
On January 19, 2001, his final full day in office, Clinton entered into an Agreed Order of Discipline with the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct. He admitted giving “knowingly evasive and misleading answers” during the Jones deposition and that his conduct was “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” He accepted a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and paid a $25,000 fine. In a public statement, he acknowledged that “certain of my responses to questions about Lewinsky were false.”
The same day, Independent Counsel Robert Ray announced he would not pursue criminal charges. Ray concluded he had enough evidence to prosecute but that the combination of impeachment, contempt, bar discipline, financial penalties, and Clinton’s public admission adequately served the interests of justice. In return, Clinton agreed not to seek reimbursement of legal fees.
Resignation From the Supreme Court Bar
On October 1, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court suspended Clinton from its bar and gave him 40 days to show cause against disbarment. Rather than fight, Clinton resigned from the Supreme Court bar on November 9, 2001, with his attorney David Kendall saying the step was taken “in acknowledgment that his actions merited censure.” The Court accepted the resignation on November 13. Clinton joined Richard Nixon as the only presidents to resign from the Supreme Court bar.
How the Phrase Was Received
Public reaction to the parsing was mixed and did not track cleanly with any single verdict. When Clinton’s videotaped grand jury testimony was released to television networks on September 21, 1998, a Pew Research Center survey found 59 percent of respondents considered the release a bad idea and only 33 percent supported it. Clinton’s job approval climbed to 62 percent after the broadcast, up from 55 percent the weekend before. But viewers who actually watched were harder on him personally: by a 50-to-38 margin they said he had not made a good case for himself, and 43 percent said they felt less sympathetic toward him afterward.
The phrase itself outlived the proceedings. Writer Philip Gourevitch, in a 1998 New Yorker essay, called the line an “epigraph” for modern cynicism about American politics. It became shorthand for evasion through language, invoked whenever a public figure appears to be defining a common word into a private and convenient meaning. CBS News grouped it with “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” “a place called Hope,” and “the era of big government is over” as a phrase that came to define Clinton’s presidency. Historian Douglas Brinkley said Clinton’s reliance on calibrated phrasing contributed to a perception that his presidency was driven by careful positioning rather than plain leadership.
The legal record and the cultural memory ended in roughly the same place. As grammar, Clinton’s argument about “is” was defensible on its own terms. As sworn testimony, a federal judge found it intentionally false. As a phrase, it stuck.