It has been a terrible week for President Clinton. The only consolation for him was that he was thousands of miles away touring South America as the bad stuff piled up back in Washington and Little Rock.
It seems now a fact of life that almost every time he goes on a foreign trip which should give him a break from the domestic hassles, they still follow him. To the chagrin of the President and his staff, TV viewers who should have been watching his triumphal progress through Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina on the first South American trip of his presidency, instead saw much more of videos of his fund-raising functions which are now being investigated by two Congressional committees as well as the Attorney General's office and the FBI.
It was just Mr Clinton's luck that the tapes of the fund-raising coffee mornings were being turned over to investigators as he was doing his thing in South America, but the timing was also the fault of the White House which had been asked for the tapes more than two months ago and could not find any until an official keyed in "coffees" on the database.
As the President flew from Washington, he left behind a fuming Attorney General, Janet Reno, who had been made to look foolish as the White House failed to tell her about the tapes before she sent a letter to the Senate investigating committee showing that she was unaware of them.
A grim Ms Reno went on TV to insist that her investigation was not closed and that she may have to question the President on the fund-raising activities. The next day as she prepared to be questioned by a House of Representatives committee, she announced that her investigation would continue until December before she would decide if there was enough evidence to hand over the case to an independent counsel.
This means that she is investigating both the President and Vice-President Al Gore for alleged abuses of the law on election funds. This is the first time that the occupants of the two highest offices are being simultaneously investigated by their own Justice Department.
In Brazil, Mr Clinton found himself being questioned by the White House press corps on this embarrassing development as he gave a joint press conference with President Fernando Cardoso. He had to struggle to contain his notorious temper.
The night before on Air Force One he had agreed to answer questions from the travelling press on the fund-raising in the expectation that the reporters would lay off this when he reached Brazil. He should have known better. There has hardly been a trip abroad when the press has not hassled him on some domestic issue while showing little or no interest in his meetings with the foreign leader.
At a NATO summit in the Elysee Palace in Paris, Mr Clinton got the news that the Supreme Court had ruled that Paula Jones's sexual harassment case could go ahead and not wait until the President's second term expired in 2000. Guess what the press wanted to ask him about? This week, Paula Jones and her claim for £700,000 damages are still haunting the President.
The in-fighting between the lawyers is getting dirtier as embarrassing details about what Ms Jones says are "distinguishing characteristics" in the President's genital area are being openly discussed. It now has emerged that the President's annual check-up two weeks ago was used by his lawyers to provide counter-evidence to Ms Jones's claim.
This allowed his principal lawyer, Robert Bennett, to go on television at the weekend and say: "In terms of size, shape, direction, whatever the devious mind wants to concoct, the President is a normal man." Now Ms Jones's lawyers wants the reports of the urologists which support Mr Bennett's claim and an "independent" medical examination of the President's anatomy.
Meanwhile, the President was trying to forget all about Ms Jones and her allegations as he kicked a football with Brazil's soccer legend, Pele. Ms Jones's lawyers have also asked the President for written answers to 72 questions including whether he asked a state trooper to summon Ms Jones to a hotel room in May 1991 when she was an employee of his office as governor of Arkansas and whether he had an affair with a woman he later appointed a judge.
A disgusted Mr Bennett says another question would compel the President to list "every woman that he ever kissed outside of marriage". Ms Jones is on the receiving end of questions from the former state trooper, Danny Ferguson, inquiring into her sexual past. She is also suing Mr Ferguson for libelling her over the alleged encounter in the hotel room so his lawyers are trying to dig out dirt about her past.
Mr Bennett had also threatened to do this but quickly backed off when feminists who normally support Mr Clinton protested loudly.
But Mr Ferguson does not have the same constraints. Yes, this has been a week the President will want to forget although his popularity ratings are holding well at 55 per cent.