Monica Lewinsky thought the semen stain on her dress from President Bill Clinton was actually spinach dip, according to a new series of interviews on the Clinton affair.
Lewinsky reportedly carried on a multi-year sexual relationship with Clinton while he was president. Clinton lying about the nature of the relationship led to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. A key piece of evidence in the investigation into Clinton’s multiple affairs was a blue dress Monica wore during a sexual encounter with Clinton in the White House that was apparently stained with Clinton’s semen. For the first time, Lewinsky details how the dress came to become the most famous stained dress in American history in the new series, “The Clinton Affair,” on A&E.
The New York Post published excerpts of the interview Tuesday, detailing how the dress’s infamy came to be.
Lewinsky had been summoned to the White House in 1997 in the middle of her years-long sexual relationship with the president. After a public event, Clinton supposedly told Lewinsky he had a present for her and walked her back to the Oval Office.
“He said he had a present for me. I didn’t quite know — would I get to see him alone? Wouldn’t I?” Lewinsky said.
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The president’s secretary, Betty Currie, presented Lewinsky with presents from Clinton.
Clinton gave her a hat and allegedly said it was because “‘you always look so cute in hats,’ or ‘you and your hats,’ or something like that,” Lewinsky said in the interview. She said she also received from Clinton a “really beautiful copy” of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman.
Lewinsky said Clinton’s secretary hid in the White House dining room soon after to “hide” so her and Clinton could be alone.
“She brought me into the Oval Office and all three of us went into the back study, and she went into the dining room to hide there,” said Lewinsky. “Because the illusion to everyone else was that I was not alone with him.”
Clinton then stained her dress while they were both engaging in sexual activity.
According to the New York Post:
“And so we moved to the bathroom and were more intimate. There was some attention paid on me and then I was reciprocating, where up until that point he had always stopped before completion on his part,” Lewinsky said, delicately trying to explain their encounter.
“I sort of stood up and said I wanted to move past that stage and so he finally said OK.”
That’s when the dress was soiled, but Lewinsky didn’t notice at the time.
“So that finished and then I hugged him after. And he hugged me,” she said. “And off I went.”
In 1998 grand jury testimony, she said she initially thought the marks on her dress “could be spinach dip or something.”
Lewinsky said that she had dinner with friends that night and no one noticed the stain. “I went to dinner that night. None of these people said to me, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go to the bathroom, you’ve got stuff all over your dress,'” Lewinsky said in the series, according to the New York Post. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton Says Husband’s Sexual Harassment Allegations ‘Different’ Than Trump)
Hillary Clinton recently argued that her husband’s actions did not constitute an abuse of power since Lewinsky was an adult.