Inside Monica Lewinsky’s $1.6 Million Childhood Mansion—as She Reveals How ‘Upper Middle-Class’ Family Supported Her After Bill Clinton Scandal

Monica Lewinsky has candidly opened up about the fallout from her infamous affair with former President Bill Clinton, detailing how her “upper middle-class” family was forced to support her in the aftermath of the scandal because she was unable to get another job.

In 1998, Lewinsky—who was a White House intern at the time—found herself at the center of an extraordinary furor when news of her romance with Clinton broke.

Political figures in Washington, D.C., and the Oval Office were left scrambling as the FBI attempted to investigate the affair claims, shining a harsh spotlight on Lewinsky, who was just 24 years old at the time.

Now, Lewinsky, 51, is speaking out about the affair and the brutal toll that it took on her life in a wide-ranging interview with “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper, revealing for the first time that she believes Clinton, now 78, should have “resigned” from his position when the world learned of the tryst.

“I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign,” she said.

When news of the scandal broke, Lewinsky holed up inside her mother’s apartment in the infamous Watergate building in an attempt to seek refuge from the torrent of public criticism and abuse.

It was a far cry from the very privileged and sheltered life she had enjoyed growing up in a lavish $1.6 million Beverly Hills, CA, mansion with her parents, Bernard Lewinsky and Marcia Lewis, and her brother, Michael.

However, she conceded to Cooper that she was all the more grateful for her “upper middle-class” family during the aftermath of the Clinton scandal—because it gave them the ability to provide for her when she was left without any job prospects.

“Nobody would hire me. I was so lucky that I came from an upper middle-class family that could help support me because I couldn’t earn an income, but when you’re sitting inside a scandal like this you really come to understand why a lot of times women make the choices they do,” she admitted.

Lewinsky—who secured her unpaid internship in D.C. from 1995 to 1997 thanks to a family friend—went on to explain that her inability to secure work was in no way a result of her lack of qualifications and expertise, but rather the fact that nobody wished to associate themselves with her name, particularly after Clinton’s wife, Hillary, threw her own hat into the presidential ring in 2008.

Although she spent her mid-20s plotting legal strategy and dodging hordes of reporters and camera crews, Lewinsky spent her childhood enjoying $20,000-a-year family vacations, private tennis lessons, lavish gifts, exclusive prep schools, and pricey babysitters, before she landed her stint at the White House.

The extent of the Lewinsky family’s extravagant lifestyle was revealed shortly after the news of her affair with Clinton broke. In documents pertaining to her parents’ divorce, her mother, Marcia, listed her expenses at more than $25,000 per month, according to the Washington Post.

These expenses reportedly included first-class travel, $720-a-month tennis lessons for Lewinsky and her brother, and $760-a-month “psychiatric care” for the kids.

“I and my children have maintained an affluent lifestyle and have traveled first class extensively,” Marcia said in court papers. “We have always provided the children with expensive extracurricular lessons and tutoring to satisfy any desires that either they or we may have.

“I and the children have never had to worry about the cost of anything that we reasonably desired. I have always been able to buy whatever clothes either I, or the children, needed or desired and I have always been able to spend substantial amounts of monies for grooming, health and aesthetic purposes.”

As a child, Lewinsky spent her days frolicking around her family’s $1.6 million Beverly Hills mansion.

The property sits in the star-studded community of The Flats and was a mere mile from the home of Frank Sinatra.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home sprawls across 4,742 square feet and comes complete with a resort-style pool and chic, Spanish-inspired designs.

Although the property, which was built in 1928, was worth just under $2 million at the time, it is now estimated to be worth over $8 million.

However, Lewinsky’s opulent lifestyle collapsed when she turned 14 and her parents divorced, which shined a light onto the family’s crippling financial woes.

According to the Washington Post, Bernard owed more than $250,0000 in unpaid income taxes—and the IRS was threatening to seize their Beverly Hills pad as a result.

Meanwhile, the outlet states that Marcia was forced to borrow $13,500 from her sister just to pay for her legal fees in the divorce proceedings.

According to settlements filed at the time of the divorce, Marcia walked away from the marriage with $554,749 in proceeds from the sale of the house, $6,000 in alimony, $5,000 a month in child support and $25,000 for her lawyers’ fees.

Following their split, the couple’s stunning Beverly Hills property was snatched up, and Bernard soon remarried and moved into a $4 million Los Angeles home with his new wife, Barbara.

Two years after her parents split, Lewinsky transferred from Beverly Hills to Bel-Air Prep, which still had a reputation for being pricey but was not known as a top-rate private school.

She attended a Santa Monica junior college for two years before transferring to Lewis & Clark, a liberal arts college in Oregon, which is where she spent her days babysitting and earning $3 an hour.

Following graduation, Lewinsky packed her bags and headed to D.C., where she moved in with her mom in an apartment inside the Watergate complex.

Although it is unclear how much Marcia paid for the space, a two-bedroom apartment in the building is up for sale today for $595,000.

Lewinsky spent days wondering if her life was “over” as she allowed the effects of the affair to “sink in” at the Watergate apartment.

“[I] felt like my life was over, certainly my life was going to change. I was threatened with jail and essentially told if I didn’t cooperate and wear a wire that I would go to jail for 27 years, so I kind of saw this train starting to barrel down the tracks,” Lewinsky told Cooper of the moment she was interviewed by the FBI.

When the news broke, Clinton and Lewinsky denied the affair, with the president uttering what would become one of the most memorable lines of the scandal: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

It was only months later, when the president was subpoenaed, that he admitted he had engaged in  “inappropriate intimate contact.”

In December of 1998, Clinton was impeached. The former president was brought up on charges of lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

The Senate voted to acquit Clinton in February 1999.

After leaving office, Clinton opened up about why he chose to engage in the affair with Lewinsky while speaking to CBS.

“I did something for the worst possible reason – just because I could. I think that’s just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing something – when you do it because you could.

“And I thought about it a lot, and there are a lot of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations, but none of them are an excuse. Only a fool does not look to explain his mistakes,” he said in 2004.

Lewinsky then went into hiding and attempted to shield herself from the ongoing whispers surrounding her name and reputation.

In 2018, Lewinsky began lifting the lid on her side of the story, and her parents even discussed their feelings about their affair in the A&E docuseries, “The Clinton Affair.”

Last month, Lewinsky announced that she would be retelling her life story on her own podcast, “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky,” which was released Feb. 18.

The 51-year-old told Cooper that she felt like she was being too lenient with the former president at the time of the scandal.

“At the same time, I hear myself say that and it’s like, ‘OK, but we’re also talking about the most powerful office in the world,’” she said. “I don’t want to be naive either.”

Lewinsky confessed that her future was derailed following the scandal, but she was thankful she held onto her “true self.”