Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day of her husband’s fateful assignation with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been inside the building when it occurred, according to records of her daily schedule as First Lady released yesterday.

The 17,481 pages of Mrs Clinton’s schedule were released by the National Archives, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed nearly a year ago by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog.

The former First Lady’s schedule for February 28, 1997, the day that Ms Lewinsky’s blue dress became stained in an encounter with Mr Clinton, shows that his wife held several meetings in the White House that morning, and spent the night there.

Mr Clinton’s encounter with Ms Lewinsky took place in an Oval Office bathroom in the early evening. Chris Farrell, director of research at Judicial Watch, said that the Clintons had used every means possible to delay the release of the documents, and that another 20,000 pages of material were yet to be made public.

More importantly, he told The Times, Mrs Clinton’s phone records as First Lady — potentially far more revealing about her activities — have yet to be made public.

More than two million documents relating to Mrs Clinton’s work on her doomed healthcare plan in her husband’s first White House term have yet to be released and are the subject of another lawsuit. The archives said that 4,746 of the pages released yesterday had been partly redacted, mostly to protect the privacy of third parties.

Papers on five days will not be released because they could not be located, the archives added. The documents appear to do little to bolster Mrs Clinton’s claim that her White House years make her more qualified to be president than Mr Obama. The release came as Mrs Clinton’s hopes of forcing fresh contests in Michigan and Florida after their nullified January primaries appeared doomed, a significant setback to her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mrs Clinton held a rally in Michigan in a last-ditch attempt to get a re-vote in the state. Her appearance came a day after Florida Democrats officially dropped plans for a new vote there. Last night prospects for a fresh contest in Michigan appeared doomed after a lack of votes in the state legislature to back the plan.

Mrs Clinton called on Mr Obama to back re-votes, saying that a failure to do so was “wrong, and frankly un-American”. Her aides argued that angering Democratic voters in the two states could help Republicans in the general election. New polls show John McCain, the Republican nominee, with leads over both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton.

Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates for violating party rules by moving their primaries up the nominating calendar. Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama did not campaign in either state, and Mr Obama’s name was not on the Michigan ballot. Mrs Clinton won both states but the results were nullified.

Because it is virtually impossible for Mrs Clinton to overtake Mr Obama in elected delegates in the ten remaining contests, a central part of her strategy was to force re-votes in Florida and Michigan. Fresh, ratified victories in both, her aides believe, would provide “game-changing” wins that could sway unelected super-delegates her way.

Mrs Clinton was also desperate for new contests because without them, it is virtually impossible to overtake Mr Obama’s lead in the popular vote. The former First Lady hopes that a popular vote win will provide a powerful case for why superdelegates should give her the nomination.

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