Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in a new interview Thursday that former President Bill Clinton should have resigned following the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
When asked by The New York Times if Clinton, who stayed in office after his relationship with the former intern was revealed, should have resigned, Gillibrand said “yes.”
“I think that is the appropriate response,” she told the newspaper.
The Democratic senator also said that “things have changed today” regarding inappropriate sexual conduct.
{mosads}“I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction,” she said. “And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump, and a very different conversation about allegations against him.”
A spokesperson later told The New York Times that Gillibrand, who endorsed former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, was saying that if Clinton’s inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky had occurred now, he would have been compelled to resign.
Bill Clinton engaged in a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, who was 22 at the time, between 1995 and 1996. It was revealed in 1998.
Bill Clinton denied the inappropriate relationship, but later admitted it occurred, which lead to the Republican-controlled House voting to impeach him in 1998. He was later acquitted of the charges in the Senate and remained in office.
Gillibrand’s comments follow allegations of sexual assault levied at Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who was accused of groping and kissing a woman without her content during a USO tour in 2006.
Leeann Tweeden, a morning radio anchor in Los Angeles, wrote a post on the radio station’s website Thursday in which she said Franken grabbed her breasts while she was sleeping during a USO tour to entertain troops in the Middle East in December 2006.
Tweeden included a photograph of the incident as proof.
Gillibrand said she believed Tweeden’s account and later pledged to donate money she received from Franken’s PAC to Protect our Defenders, a group dedicated to ending the “epidemic of rape and sexual assault in the military.”
Gillibrand, along with Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), introduced legislation Wednesday that would overhaul policies to combat and report complaints of sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.