Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich admitted in an interview that it was a “mistake” to impeach former President Bill Clinton over the sex scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, saying it drew attention away from Clinton’s perjury charge.
Gingrich, a Republican congressman from Georgia, led the 1998 House impeachment inquiry into Clinton, which arose after the affair between Clinton and Lewinsky became public. But reflecting on his role to “Pod Force One with Miranda Devine,” the Republican expressed remorse.
“I think it was a mistake because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky,” Gingrich said. “The real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment while he was governor.”
Gingrich was referring to Clinton’s comments stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones in 1994, when Clinton was still governor of Arkansas. In a deposition, Clinton denied Jones’s allegations, though he settled out of court with her in 1998.
Gingrich said the perjury stemming from that deposition was more serious than the affair with Lewinsky, an unpaid White House intern.
“I realized we were really off course in August of that year,” Gingrich explained, saying that his two daughters had pointed out that the fallout from the scandal wasn’t worth the effort to impeach Clinton.
“I realized at that point I had completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving,” Gingrich said.
While dismissing the shock of the scandal, which generated large swaths of media attention, Gingrich also emphasized the severity of the perjury charge against Clinton stemming from the deposition.
“He was stripped of his law license in Arkansas after he left the presidency and for five years couldn’t practice because he clearly committed a felony,” Gingrich said. “By allowing it to be about sex, it trivialized it.”
While Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in the House, he was later acquitted by the Senate.
Decades after the scandal, many have expressed regret for pushing a narrative that mocked Lewinsky, who was 22 at the time of the affair, while Clinton, the sitting president of the United States, was 49. Media outlets and comedians made countless jokes about Lewinsky – something she later wrote about to advocate against cyberbullying and public shaming.
Although Gingrich had led the impeachment inquiry into Clinton in 1998, ironically, he later admitted to having an extramarital affair with a congressional staffer at the same time of the inquiry.
However, the former speaker had defended himself against hypocritical accusations, pointing out that Clinton’s impeachment was for perjury – which he said was a more serious offense than an affair.
