(CNN) With the votes on Friday in the House Judiciary Committee, Donald Trump is now only the third president in history who will face an impeachment vote in the House. The last one to do so was Bill Clinton, who was impeached by the House but not removed by the Senate in 1998.

Joe Lockhart was Clinton's press secretary during the impeachment hearings, vote and Senate trial. I reached out to him to talk about his memories of that historic moment and what lessons Trump (and his team) can learn from it. Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: The Judiciary Committee has now voted for two articles of impeachment. Full House vote expected next week. Can you remember back to this moment in 1998? What was the thinking in the White House? And what was the President's state of mind?

Lockhart: We found out we didn't have the votes to block impeachment while we were doing Middle East peace negotiations in Israel. Some of the staff felt like we could turn enough Republicans to stave off a vote. But we were no match for Tom DeLay and his pressure tactics. So we knew we were going to lose the vote but we were really jammed with other issues.

We were in the final stages of preparing a military strike against Iraq. We spent a fair amount of time debating the timing, the " wag the dog " thing. But at the end of the day we decided to treat the Iraq issue like impeachment wasn't happening.

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