would gain control over the Senate after Republican Senator Jim Jeffords defected from his party in early 2001 and agreed to caucus with the Democrats. Al Gore reportedly confronted Clinton after the election, and "tried to explain that keeping Clinton under wraps [during the campaign] was a rational response to polls showing swing voters were still mad as hell over the Year of Monica". According to the AP, "during the one-on-one meeting at the White House, which lasted more than an hour, Gore used uncommonly blunt language to tell Clinton that his sex scandal and low personal approval ratings were a hurdle he could not surmount in his campaign... [with] the core of the dispute was Clinton's lies to Gore and the nation about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky." Clinton, however, was unconvinced by Gore's argument and insisted to Gore that he would have won the election if he had embraced the administration and its good economic record. Partial retraction from Starr In January 2020, while testifying as a defense lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial, Starr himself would retract some of the allegations he made to justify Clinton's impeachment. Slate journalist Jeremy Stahl pointed out that as he was urging the Senate not to remove Trump as president, Starr contradicted various arguments he used in 1998 to justify Clinton's impeachment. In defending Trump, Starr also claimed he was wrong to have called for impeachment against Clinton for abuse of executive privilege and efforts to obstruct Congress, and stated that the House Judiciary Committee was right in 1998 to have rejected one of the planks for impeachment he had advocated for. He also invoked a 1999 Hofstra Law Review article by Yale law professor Akhil Amar, who argued that the Clinton impeachment proved just how impeachment and removal causes "grave disruption" to a national election. See also Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Impeachment process against Richard Nixon First impeachment of Donald Trump Second impeachment of Donald Trump List of federal political scandals in the United States List of federal political sex scandals in the United States Second-term curse Sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Clinton Notes References External links "The Articles Explained". The Washington Post. (December 18, 1998.) Archived August 16th, 2000 from the original link. "The Starr Report", The Washington Post (September 16, 1998) "Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, President of the