Bill Clinton sexual assault and misconduct allegations

In a 1999 episode of Dateline NBC, former Bill Clinton volunteer Juanita Broaddrick alleged that, in the late 1970s, Clinton raped her in her hotel room. According to Broaddrick, she agreed to meet with Clinton for coffee in the lobby of her hotel, but Clinton asked if they could go to her room to avoid a crowd of reporters; she agreed. Once Clinton had isolated her in her hotel room, Broaddrick states that he raped her. Broaddrick stated Clinton injured her lip by biting it during the assault.[13][14] In 1999, Clinton denied Broaddrick's allegations through his lawyer.

Supporters of Clinton have questioned her account by noting that, when Broaddrick testified about her alleged encounter with Clinton under oath, she denied having been raped by him. In her NBC interview alleging rape, Broaddrick stated that she had only denied being raped under oath to protect her privacy. Supporters of Clinton have also noted that she continued to support him, and appear at public events on his behalf, weeks after the alleged rape, and that Broaddrick stated that she couldn't remember the day or month the alleged incident occurred.[15] Broaddrick has stated that in 1978 she revealed the alleged assault to five intimates, and that they advised her not to cause trouble for herself by going public.

In October 2016, Leslie Millwee accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her three times in 1980. Millwee was then an employee at a now-defunct Arkansas based television station, and Clinton was then governor of Arkansas. Millwee told Breitbart News that on each of the three occasions, Clinton came up behind her and fondled her breasts, and on the second occasion, he rubbed his crotch against her and came to orgasm.[16]

According to Paula Jones' account, on May 8, 1991, she was escorted to Clinton's hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas,[17] where he propositioned and exposed himself to her. She claimed she kept quiet about the incident until 1994, when a David Brock story in the American Spectator magazine printed an account. In 1994, Jones and her attorneys, Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert Davis, filed a federal lawsuit against Clinton alleging sexual harassment.[18] In the discovery stage of the suit, Jones' lawyers had the opportunity to question Clinton under oath about his sexual history; in the course of this testimony, Clinton denied having had a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a denial that, after his affair with Lewinsky was subsequently exposed, eventually led to his impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.[19]

Several witnesses disputed Jones' account, including her sister and brother-in-law. These witnesses contended that she had described her encounter with Clinton as "happy" and "gentle". In addition, Jones had claimed to friends that Clinton had a particular deformity on his penis, a claim that was revealed to be false by investigators.[2]

In April 1998, the case was dismissed by judge Susan Webber Wright as lacking legal merit.[20] But Jones appealed Webber Wright's ruling, and her suit gained traction following Clinton's admission to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky in August 1998.[21] This admission indicated that Clinton may have lied under oath when he testified in the Jones case that he had never had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

On appeal, in the midst of his trial for impeachment based on his testimony in the Jones case, Clinton was faced with the prospect of having to go under oath again and testify more about his sexual history. Instead, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, paying Jones and her lawyers $850,000 to drop the suit; the vast majority of this money was used to pay Jones' legal fees.[22] Clinton's lawyer said that the president made the settlement only so he could end the lawsuit for good and move on with his life.[23]

In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without consent in the White House Oval Office in 1993.[24] Kenneth Starr granted her immunity for her testimony in his separate inquiry.[25][26]

Linda Tripp, the Clinton Administration staffer who secretly taped her phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky in order to expose the latter's affair with the president, testified under oath that Willey's sexual contact with President Clinton in 1993 was consensual, that Willey had been flirting with the president, and that Willey was happy and excited following her 1993 encounter with Clinton.[3] Six other friends of Willey confirmed Tripp's account in sworn testimony, stating that Willey had sought a sexual relationship with the president.[4] Ken Starr, who had deposed Willey in the course of investigating Clinton's sexual history, determined that she had lied under oath repeatedly to his investigators. Starr and his team therefore concluded that there was insufficient evidence to pursue her allegations further. In 2007, Willey published a book about her experiences with the Clintons.[27]

In a 1998 op-ed for the New York Times, feminist icon Gloria Steinem said of Willey and Jones, "Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection."[28] This article received some criticism from the media when it was published.[29] In 2017, it was described in The Atlantic as "notorious": "It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused."[30]

In 2016, on the U.S. television program The View, co-host Joy Behar referred to Bill Clinton's accusers as "tramps". Behar apologized for the sexual slur shortly afterwards.[31][32][33][34]

The allegations of sexual misconduct on Clinton's part regained publicity during the 2016 presidential campaign of his wife, Hillary Clinton.

Broaddrick's allegations resurfaced early in the campaign. In various media interviews, Broaddrick stated that Bill Clinton raped her and that Hillary Clinton knew about it and tried to threaten Broaddrick into remaining silent. She said that she started giving some interviews in 2015 because Hillary Clinton's statement that victims of sexual assault should be believed angered her.[35]

By late 2017, the allegations against Clinton and his standing within the Democratic Party were being reconsidered. This was prompted as a result of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, which quickly triggered the Weinstein effect and the #MeToo phenomenon, with as a consequence liberals and feminists reconsidering their lack of support for the alleging women at the time.[28][30][36] Michelle Goldberg wrote that Broaddrick's allegations meant that "Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."[37]

Sitting U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had succeeded Hillary Clinton in the Senate, went so far as to say Clinton should have resigned the presidency over his misconduct.[38] A HuffPost/YouGov survey alleged that 53 percent of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election believed that the accusations against Bill Clinton were credible, while 83 percent of Trump voters found the accusations credible.[39]

When asked in 2018 whether he would have approached the sexual misconduct allegations differently in the wake of the #MeToo movement, Clinton said that he would not.[40] Asked if he owed Monica Lewinsky a personal apology, he said that he did not.[40]

Several books have been published related to these incidents. These include:

• High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (1998) by Ann Coulter
• No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton (1999) by Christopher Hitchens
• The Hunting of the President (2000) by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons
• Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine (2005) by Candice E. Jackson