Clinton library to release thousands of documents

On Friday, the Clinton Presidential Library will release as many as 5,000 pages of previously confidential records dating to Bill Clinton's tenure, a document dump eagerly awaited by journalists and Republican opposition researchers alike. The documents had been withheld from the public under the Presidential Records Act, but the law's protections expired in January of last year.

Politico earlier this week reported that 33,000 pages of Clinton-era documents are currently under lock and key, and the White House later confirmed that 25,000 of those pages had been cleared for release.

In early February, the Washington Free Beacon gave the world a taste of what such documents might hold, reporting that Hillary Clinton had once referred to Monica Lewinsky as a "narcissistic loony toon," among other things. The Free Beacon based its report on the personal papers of Diane Blair, a deceased friend of the Clinton family.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The forthcoming trove of documents could touch on everything from Whitewater to Vincent Foster to the impeachment. All of this comes on top of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) bringing up Lewinsky every chance he can get. The Clintons would surely like to bring the country back to the 1990s, but this is probably not what they had in mind.