Monica Lewinsky calls Bill Clinton ‘wholly inappropriate’ for affair with 22-year-old intern

Monica Lewinsky says Bill Clinton was “wholly inappropriate” during thier relationship, despite her consent to a sexual affair with the most powerful man in the world.

Speaking to CNN to promote her new FX series "Impeachment: American Crime Story", Ms Lewinski told anchor and one-time love interest Jake Tapper that her consent didn’t make her former boss’s actions acceptable.

“I certainly wasn’t considered a victim back then, and I dance around the victim language a lot, but I think what’s really important to remember in today’s world is that we never should have even gotten to a place where consent was a question,” Ms Lewinski said.

“So it was wholly inappropriate as the most powerful man, my boss, 49 years old. I was 22, literally just out of college. And I think that the power differentials there are something that I couldn’t ever fathom consequences at 22 that I understand obviously so differently at 48.”

The Clinton-Lewinski affair has taken on increasing attention in recent years, starting with the #MeToo movement, accelerating with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and continuing with actress Rose McGowan’s taunts to Hillary Clinton.

Mr Clinton’s friendship with the convicted paedophile has been the source of constant speculation, while Ms McGowan recently tweeted to Ms Clinton that “she’s been in a hotel room with your husband and here comes the bomb”.

Ms Lewinsky has in the past defended Mr Clinton’s actions, saying that the only “abuse” she felt in the past had come in the aftermath when she was made a scapegoat to protect his power and position.

“Sure my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship,” she wrote for Vanity Fair in 2014.

Four years later, she wrote for the same magazine changing her position on whether that consent was relevant given the power imbalance between an intern and a president.

“Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote.

“I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.”

Ms Lewinski served as a co-producer on the dramatisation of her affair with the president, which lasted for two years between 1995 and 1997 and lead to the 1998 impeachment.

At 48, Ms Lewinski is a similar age Mr Clinton was during their affair two decades ago. The anti-bullying activist said she’s speaking about the affair more now because the Internet had evolved the way people who make mistakes, like her, are being harassed online.

“At this point, we were at a kind of a social change, in a way, the social landscape was changing with how we were looking at so many different issues that had happened that were now ready,” she said.