Who was the first US First Lady to appear before a Grand Jury?

The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from the publication of a New York Times report during the 1992 presidential campaign and throughout Hillary's time as first lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation; at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses. Madison Guaranty later failed and Hillary's work at Rose was scrutinized for a possible conflict of interest in representing the bank before state regulators that her husband had appointed. She said she had done minimal work for the bank.

Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were. The records were found in the First Lady's White House book room after a two-year search and delivered to investigators in early 1996. The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation concerning how they surfaced and where they had been.

On January 26, 1996, Clinton became the first first lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury. After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.