In 1994 the United States Department of Justice assigned former federal judge Kenneth Starr as independent counsel to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in a failed land deal during the 1970s. In 1998 Starr investigated reports that President Clinton had lied in a sworn deposition to conceal an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Starr’s discoveries prompted the U.S. House of Representative to pass two articles of impeachment against Clinton. The Senate acquitted Clinton in 1999.