Where Are They Now: The Stars Of The Clinton Impeachment Scandal

News emerged this week that Edward Snowden had obtained legal counsel from Plato Cacheris, who worked on high-profile espionage cases and also represented Monica Lewinsky.

This news got us wondering about what Cacheris and other major stars of the 1998-1999 Bill Clinton impeachment have been up to since the biggest presidential scandal since Watergate.

To refresh your memory: The saga can be traced to an allegedly shady 1978 real estate deal the Clintons were involved in through their company Whitewater Development Corp.

Kenneth W. Starr was appointed in 1994 as independent counsel to investigate Whitewater, which never resulted in criminal charges against the Clintons. However, about four years later he dug into more salacious parts of Clinton's past when Pentagon employee Linda Tripp told him about her friend Monica Lewinsky's affair with the president.

Clinton famously denied having "sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," a former White House intern who was just 21 during their affair in 1995. However, Clinton was forced to fess up after she produced a stained dress that commemorated their fling. He was later impeached by Congress for lying about the affair, meaning he was formally charged with misconduct.

Clinton also allegedly urged Lewinsky to hide their affair after she was subpoenaed by lawyers for Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who accused Clinton of sexual harassment.

As you probably recall, the Senate acquitted Clinton of both perjury and obstruction of justice in 1999. We know what Clinton has been up to since then. Here's what the other big Monicagate players have been doing, starting with Lewinsky herself:

Monica Lewinsky

Not long after the Clinton scandal, the diet company Jenny Craig hired the full-figured Lewinsky as a "celebrity" spokesperson. She then moved to Manhattan in search of a second act, becoming a socialite who designed purses. Later, she decamped for London, where she earned a master's degree from the London School of Economics.

Lewinsky appears to be avoiding the spotlight these days, though. In 2012 The New York Post reported she was working on a sexy tell-all memoir. She has yet to release such a book, but if she does it could certainly put a damper on Hillary Clinton's expected presidential run.

Plato Cacheris

Lewinsky's lawyer Cacheris made the news recently when it became known that Edward Snowden had obtained his counsel last summer to try to reach a plea deal that would let him come back to the U.S.

Since representing America's most famous intern, he has worked on high-profile espionage and whistleblower cases. Perhaps the most important case he worked in involved John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst who blew the whistle on the agency's torture program and is currently serving a 30-month prison sentence.

Cacheris also represented a former Defense Department analyst named Lawrence Franklin who got a decade in prison for passing military information to pro-Israel lobbyists.

Kenneth W. Starr

The lawyer whose name will always be associated with his report is currently the president of Baylor University, a Christian institution based in Waco, Texas. Before joining Baylor in 2010, Starr worked on some of the most noteworthy political cases in recent history, including a fight against campaign finance reform and the crusade against gay marriage in California.

Starr also represents the company Blackwater in a wrongful death suit filed by the families of four contractors killed in Iraq. While much of his legal work has focused on fighting for traditionally conservative causes, Starr has also tried to get the death sentences of two convicted murderers overturned.

Speaking about the Lewinsky affair in 2010, Starr said, "Who is not sorrowful for the entire chapter in American history?"

Paula Jones

Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, filed the case that arguably precipitated Clinton's impeachment because Lewinsky was deposed in that lawsuit. While Jones settled that case for $850,000, she told CNN in 2000 that most of that money went to pay her lawyers. She ended up posing nude for Penthouse, a decision she justified by saying she needed to pay her taxes and pay for her children's education. (That Penthouse issue still spurred the conservative commentator Ann Coulter to call her "trailer-park trash.")

A decade after her Penthouse photos, Jones was interviewed in Ken Gormley's book the "Death of American Virtue," which recounted the entire Lewinsky mess. In the book, Jones lamented "the mud they'd drug me through," according to a New York Times review.

"I never lived in a trailer in my life," said Jones, who complained about the trauma of Clinton's alleged harassment.

Henry John Hyde

Hyde was the Congressman who chaired the House Judiciary Committee and led Clinton's impeachment trial. Just a few months before that trial, Salon published a withering article called "This Hypocrite Broke Up My Family," which revealed Hyde had in fact had an extramarital affair.

After failing in his efforts to convict Clinton, Hyde went on to lead the House International Relations Committee, which invested billions in fighting HIV and AIDS, according to his New York Times obituary. He died in 2007 at the age of 83.

Cheryl Mills

Mills was deputy White House counsel under Clinton and defended him during his impeachmnent trial. She took a break from politics after leaving the Clinton administration, working at Oprah's Oxygen Media and as a senior vice president at New York University.

But she couldn't stay away from the Clintons for long. Hillary Clinton picked Mills as general counsel for her 2008 presidential run and then appointed her as chief of staff when she was Secretary of State. Politico noted last year that Mills will probably play a key role in a Hillary Clinton presidential run for 2016.

Robert S. Bennett

While Mills represented Clinton during the official impeachment proceedings, Bennett worked as Clinton's personal attorney throughout the Lewinsky scandal.

Bennett has worked on a number of other politically scandalous legal cases since Monicagate, including the case against New York Times reporter Judith Miller over the leaking of a CIA operative's name. Mills also represented former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz in a huge scandal that led to his resignation from the bank.

More recently, Mills defended Megaupload against allegations that it had orchestrated a huge piracy scheme, before he was forced to withdraw from the case in 2012 because of a conflict of interest with another of his firm's clients.