Monica Lewinsky Says Bill Clinton 'Escaped a Lot More Than I Did' After Their Scandalous Affair: 'Gross Abuse of Power'

Monica Lewinsky is revisiting her infamous past with former President Bill Clinton.

Nearly 30 years after their controversial affair, Lewinsky, now an activist and public speaker, spoke candidly about the unequal scrutiny she faced compared to Clinton, despite his 1998 impeachment.

"I haven’t spoken to him in almost 30 years and I don’t know what his internal landscape is," she said. "I think he escaped a lot more than I did."

She called the intense public humiliation “excruciating” and added that life during that period “was almost unbearable."

"This was a gross abuse of power. Full stop,” the former White House intern said, reflecting on the scandal.

Lewinsky also acknowledged her own role in the affair, noting that it was consensual.

"That doesn’t mean I didn’t make mistakes, that I didn’t make wrong choices, that my behavior didn’t hurt other people. But at the heart of it was a gross abuse of power,” she explained.

As OK! previously reported, Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton shook the nation and led to his impeachment in December 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The media frenzy that followed left her scrambling to share her side of the story for years.

“It was 22 to 24-year-old young woman's love,” Lewinsky said on the “How To Fail” podcast in June 2025 when asked about her feelings during the tryst.

“I think there was some limerence there and all sorts of other things, but that's how I saw it then. I think it was also an abuse of power,” she added.

Back in 1995, Lewinsky, just 21, landed an unpaid internship at the White House under Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. A few months into the job, she began a sexual relationship with Clinton — details that were later revealed through secretly recorded tapes made by Linda Tripp, per CNN.

Later that year, Lewinsky was hired for a paid position in the Office of Legislative Affairs, delivering mail to the Oval Office regularly.

Now, she’s pushing back against the narrative that she was just a naive intern who stumbled into the White House.

“My very first job out of college was working in the White House. I don't think that that's the kind of trajectory that someone thinks then 10, 12 years later, that person's not going to be able to get hired,” she said.

“Then I worked in the Pentagon as well and traveled the world with my boss, who is the Pentagon spokesman, and we traveled with the Secretary of Defense,” Lewinsky continued.

She insisted she was unfairly labeled a "bimbo."

“I'm by no means a genius, by no means going to be the cream of the crop but I wasn't a bimbo. I wasn't a dumb bimbo,” she said. “So I was portrayed to be, and that was a big struggle for me to deal with that.”