Today In History: Obama Designates Historic House For Equal Pay Day; Susan McDougal Stays Silent On Whitewater, Clintons

April 12, 2017, is the 102nd day of the year, with 263 days remaining. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase, with illumination at 98 percent.

Obama designates historic house on Equal Pay Day

“Today is Equal Pay Day,” President Obama began in a 2016 speech that followed his designation of a historic house in DC, “which means a woman has to work about this far into 2016 just to earn what a man earned in 2015.”

The monument, inaugurated as the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, is an homage to activist and suffragist Alva Belmont — a former president of the National Women’s Party that fought for equality — and the party’s founder, Alice Paul.

“What better place to commemorate this day than here at this house, where some of our country’s most important history took place,” Obama said.

Watch Barack Obama inaugurate DC’s Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument

Susan McDougal refuses to testify against President Clinton, First Lady

Whitewater figure Susan McDougal had constantly been in and out of the courtroom and in and out of jail collectively for more than three years, with her legal woes springing from her trial and consequent conviction in May 1996 on Whitewater-related fraud charges.

Ultimately, McDougal was acquitted of embezzlement charges unrelated to the Whitewater involvement, but her defense accused then-Independent Counsel Ken Star of engineering McDougal’s prosecution to force her into testifying against the Clintons.

She was released early from jail in July 1998 after serving the entire contempt sentence and four months of the Whitewater sentence. Originally, she had been sentence to two years, with an additional 18 months tacked on when she refused to answer further questions from the Whitewater prosecutors.

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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons via Ser Amantio di Nicolao