Former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday slammed President Donald Trump's reference to impeachment proceedings against him as a lynching, but in 1998 during an interview on CNN, Biden warned Bill Clinton's impeachment could be viewed as a "partisan lynching."
"Even if the president should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense," Biden said at the time.
Clinton was impeached Dec. 19, 1998, by the House of Representatives on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice, though prosecutors failed to convince two-thirds of the Senate that Clinton was guilty of "high crimes or misdemeanors."
Trump on Tuesday called the current process unfair and illegal.
"So some day, if a Democrat becomes president and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!" he tweeted.
Biden was not the only Democrat to call Clinton's impeachment a "lynching" or a "lynch mob" in 1998. According to The Washington Post, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and then-Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., all did so.