Ex-White House intern turned anti-bullying activist Monica Lewinsky has announced on social media that she marks "survivor’s day 21", apparently referring to a questioning she endured in 1998 at the hands of the FBI and the Office of Independent Counsel over her relationship with Bill Clinton.
Citing a post she made on 16 January 2018 – the 20th anniversary of the interrogation – Lewinsky asked her audience if today, after watching The Clinton Affair and listening to the Slow Burn podcast, they realise what she meant back then.
Earlier, in an essay penned for Vanity Fair, Lewinsky reminisced about the day she was "cornered in a hotel room" by a team of "mainly male interrogators taking orders from [Special Prosecutor Kenneth] Starr" who were tipped off about her affair with the president by her friend Linda Tripp.
"…I was discouraged from contacting my attorney and threatened with 27 years in jail for filing an affidavit denying the affair with Clinton, among other alleged crimes", Lewinsky wrote. "I was offered immunity from that threat if I agreed to place monitored calls and wear a wire in conversations with two of the president’s confidants and possibly the president himself. I refused".
Lewinsky’s tweet evoked a generally positive reaction on social media, with many netizens congratulating her and sending their well wishes.
A number of people, however, did not agree with Monica’s attitude and were quick to give her a piece of their mind.
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal erupted in 1998, when reports surfaced suggesting the then-US president enjoyed an intimate extramarital relationship with a 22-year-old White House intern.
The subsequent events led to Bill Clinton being impeached by the US House of Representatives in December 1998, but a subsequent trial acquitted the president of the charges, allowing him to remain in office.