Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich now calls Clinton impeachment a mistake, citing sex framing

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said during an interview Wednesday that impeaching former President Bill Clinton was a mistake, pointing to what he considered to be the "real problem" of Clinton committing perjury.

Asked by "Pod Force One" host Miranda Devine if he thought it was a mistake to impeach the former president over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich said yes.

"I think it was a mistake because the real problem wasn't Lewinsky," he said. "The real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment while he was governor. And perjury is a felony. In fact, 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." 

He said allowing the impeachment to be about sex "trivialized it." Gingrich was the speaker of the House during Clinton's impeachment.

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"By allowing it to be about sex, it trivialized it. I realized that we were really off course in August of that year when I was at the OK Cafe in Atlanta with my two daughters who at that time were, I guess, in their early 20s," he said. "And they both said to me, 'If our friends lose money on their 401(k) because of some stupid intern, we are going to be mad at you because frankly it ain't a big enough deal for us to lose a lot of money, right?'"

Gingrich added, "I realized at that point I had completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving."

Clinton's spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

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Gingrich appeared to refer to Paula Jones' case against Clinton, which began while the former president was governor of Arkansas. The case eventually led to his impeachment in 1998.

After Jones launched a sexual harassment lawsuit in 1991, Ken Starr, an independent counsel assigned to the case, began an investigation that would uncover not just the details about the Jones incident but also the Monica Lewinsky scandal that finally led to Clinton’s impeachment in the House of Representatives.

Jones recieved an $850,000 settlement as a result of her private suit.

The case that would eventually lead to Clinton’s impeachment first came to the public’s attention when the Drudge Report picked up a story, initially abandoned by Newsweek, that Clinton was having an affair with an intern at the White House.

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Clinton denied the allegations when answering questions under oath from Ken Starr, who, at the time, was investigating Paula Jones' claims.

The former president was impeached on perjury and obstruction of justice before he was acquitted by the Senate.

Fox News' Leo Briceno contributed to this report.