Juanita Broaddrick

Broaddrick, who was known as Juanita Hickey at the time, first met Clinton when he made a visit to her nursing home during his 1978 gubernatorial campaign. Clinton was the Arkansas Attorney General at the time. Broaddrick wanted to volunteer for the campaign, and says Clinton invited her to stop by the campaign office in Little Rock.[11] She said she contacted the office a few weeks later while in the area for a nursing home conference and that Clinton said he would not be in the campaign office that day and suggested they meet at her hotel's coffee shop instead. Upon his arrival, however, he allegedly requested that they instead have coffee in her room to avoid a crowd of reporters in the lobby, and Broaddrick agreed.[3]

Broaddrick said the two spoke briefly in her room, with Clinton describing plans he had to renovate a prison visible from her window if he became governor. Then, according to Broaddrick, Clinton suddenly kissed her. Broaddrick says she pushed Clinton away and told him she was married and not interested, but he persisted. As recounted in the NBC interview:[3]

Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip ... He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him 'No,' that I didn't want this to happen but he wouldn't listen to me. ... It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to 'Please stop.' And that's when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip. ... When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says 'You better get some ice on that.' And he turned and went out the door.

When asked if there was any way Clinton could have thought it was consensual, Broaddrick said "No, not with what I told him and with how I tried to push him away. It was not consensual."[3]

Broaddrick shared the hotel room with her friend and employee Norma Rogers. Rogers attended a conference seminar that morning, and says she returned to their room to find Broaddrick on the bed "in a state of shock", with her pantyhose torn in the crotch and her lip swollen as though she had been hit. Rogers says Broaddrick told her Clinton had "forced himself on her".[11] Rogers helped Broaddrick ice her lip, and then the women left Little Rock. Rogers said that Broaddrick was very upset on the way home and blamed herself for letting Clinton in the room.[3] Broaddrick says she did not tell her husband, Gary Hickey, about the incident, and told him she accidentally injured her lip. He told NBC he did not remember the injury or her explanation.[3][12] David Broaddrick, however, has said he noticed her injured lip, and she told him that Clinton had raped her when he asked about it. Three other friends confirmed that Broaddrick had told them about the incident at the time: Susan Lewis; Louis Ma; and Jean Darden, Norma Rogers' sister.[3] Broaddrick did not recall the date of the alleged incident, but said it was spring of 1978 and that she had stayed in the Camelot Hotel. Records show Broaddrick attended a nursing home meeting at the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock on April 25, 1978.[3][12] The Clinton White House would not respond to requests for Clinton's official schedule for the date,[13] but news reports suggest that he was in Little Rock that day, with no official commitments in the morning.[3]

Three weeks after the alleged assault, Broaddrick participated in a small Clinton fundraiser at the home of a local dentist. Broaddrick said she was "in denial" and felt guilty, thinking that she had given Clinton the wrong idea by letting him into her room.[3] When she arrived at the event, she says, her friend who had picked the Clintons up from the airport told her that Hillary Clinton had asked if she would be at the event. Broaddrick says Bill Clinton did not speak to her at the event, but Hillary Clinton approached her, took her hand, and said "I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate what you do for him." When Broaddrick moved her hand away, she says, Hillary Clinton held on to her and said, "Do you understand? Everything that you do." Broaddrick says she felt nauseated and left the gathering. Broaddrick says she interpreted the incident as Hillary Clinton thanking her for keeping quiet.[14][15][16]

She divorced Hickey around 1979 and married David Broaddrick around 1981.[11]

Broaddrick opened a second facility, to provide services for mentally disabled children in Fort Smith, Arkansas.[1][17]

In 1984, Broaddrick's nursing facility was adjudged the best in the state, which brought a congratulatory official letter from the governor. On the bottom was a handwritten note from Clinton, saying, "I admire you very much."[7]

Broaddrick said that in 1991, Clinton called her out of a state nursing standards meeting to try to apologize: "'Juanita, I'm so sorry for what I did. I'm not the man that I used to be, can you ever forgive me? What can I do to make this up to you?' And I'm standing there in absolute shock. And I told him to go to hell, and I walked off."[8][13] Jean Darden, in whom Broaddrick had confided about the incident, also attended the meeting and said she saw Broaddrick talking to Clinton in the hallway.[3] Clinton announced his 1992 presidential campaign soon after that alleged interaction.

Though Broaddrick was resistant to talking to the media, rumors about her story began circulating no later than Clinton's presidential bid in 1992. Broaddrick had confided in Phillip Yoakum, whom she knew from business circles and at the time considered a friend. When Clinton won the Democratic nomination, Yoakum, widely considered to have a Republican agenda,[11] contacted Sheffield Nelson, Clinton's opponent in the 1990 gubernatorial race. Yoakum arranged a meeting between Nelson and Broaddrick, who resisted Yoakum's and Nelson's push that she go public.[1] Yoakum secretly taped the conversation and wrote a letter summarizing the allegations, which began to circulate within Republican circles. The story reached The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in October 1992, but the papers dropped the story after Broaddrick refused to talk to reporters and Yoakum refused to release the recording.[11]

In the fall of 1997, Paula Jones's private investigators tried to talk to Broaddrick at her home, also secretly taping the conversation.[18] Broaddrick refused to discuss the incident, saying "it was just a horrible horrible thing," and that she "wouldn't relive it for anything." The investigators told her she would likely be subpoenaed if she would not talk to them. Broaddrick said she would deny everything, saying "you can't get to him, and I'm not going to ruin my good name to do it ... there's just absolutely no way anyone can get to him, he's just too vicious."[19] Broaddrick was subpoenaed in the Jones suit soon after and submitted an affidavit denying that Clinton had made "any sexual advances".[1][2] The recording of Broaddrick's conversation with the investigators was leaked to the press, but Broaddrick continued to refuse to speak to reporters.[18]

Despite Broaddrick's denial in her affidavit, Jones' lawyers included Yoakum's letter and Broaddrick's name in a 1998 filing.[18] The letter suggested that the Clintons had bought Broaddrick's silence, describing a phone call where Broaddrick's husband asked Yoakum to say the incident never happened and said that he intended to ask Clinton "for a couple of big favors".[20] This, along with the discrepancy between the letter and Broaddrick's affidavit, attracted the attention of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Clinton for obstruction of justice. After being approached by the FBI, Broaddrick consulted her son, a lawyer, who told her she could not lie to federal investigators.[11] After Starr granted her immunity, thus assuring that she would not be prosecuted for perjury regarding her affidavit in the Jones case, Broaddrick recanted the affidavit.[1] However, she insisted that Clinton had not pressured or bribed her in any way, and so Starr concluded that the story was not relevant to his investigation and his report only mentioned the recanting in a footnote.[1]

Rumors continued to circulate in tabloids and on talk radio, now with Broaddrick's name attached. Broaddrick was upset by a tabloid report that she had been paid to keep quiet, and decided to agree to an interview with NBC's Lisa Myers. Myers interviewed her on January 20, 1999, the day after Clinton was impeached. The interview only aired on February 24, 1999, 35 days later and after Clinton had been acquitted on February 12. NBC was accused of intentionally sitting on the story and invoking unusually demanding standards of corroboration until the impeachment process ended. Broaddrick and another source said NBC gathered the key corroborating evidence within 10 days of the interview, NBC assistant producer Chris Giglio said it may have taken him 14 days—in either case, while the impeachment process was ongoing.[18] Though the story was unaired, at least one Republican senator reportedly invoked it to convince undecided Republicans to vote for impeachment.[11]

While NBC waited to air the interview, Broaddrick was approached by Dorothy Rabinowitz, who wrote for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Upset with NBC's delay, Broaddrick agreed to speak with Rabinowitz, and the story debuted on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page on February 19.[7] NBC aired Myers' interview soon after.

On Friday night, February 19, 1999, Clinton's attorney, David Kendall, denied the allegations on Clinton's behalf. Kendall stated: "Any allegation that the president assaulted Mrs. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that, we're not going to comment."[21]

When asked about Broaddrick's claims at a news conference on February 24, 1999, Clinton said: "Well, my counsel has made a statement about the ... issue, and I have nothing to add to it."[13] As of November 2020, he has not made any further public statements on the matter, and has not been sued or charged with any crimes in connection with Broaddrick's allegations.[18][12]

Because there was limited corroborating evidence for Broaddrick's allegation and she had previously filed a sworn statement saying there was no assault, some thought her allegation was not credible.[22] As The New York Times summarized it in 1999, "There is no physical evidence to verify it. No one else was present during the alleged encounter in a Little Rock hotel room nearly 21 years ago. The hotel has since closed. And Mrs. Broaddrick denied the encounter in an affidavit in January 1998 in the Paula Jones case, in which she was known only as 'Jane Doe No. 5'. Through all those years, she refused to come forward. When pressed by the Jones lawyers, she denied the allegation. And now, she has recanted that denial."[11]

In March 1999 Slate magazine ran a much-cited article called "Is Juanita Broaddrick Telling the Truth?", that gave possible grounds upon which Broaddrick should be believed, or should not be believed, regarding each of a number of key points. On the disbelief side, it was suggested that the five people who said Broaddrick had confided in them soon after the incident could be lying. This argument proposes that Rogers and Darden may have developed a grudge against Clinton; in 1980 as governor, he had commuted the life sentence of Guy Lavern Kuehn, the man who murdered their father in 1971. Skeptics also noted that even if these people were telling the truth, Broaddrick could have been lying to them at the time the original events took place.[22]

Some details in Broaddrick's account corresponded with other women's allegations. In an interview that emerged after Broaddrick's allegations, Elizabeth Gracen had said that Clinton bit her lip during a consensual encounter that became rough.[23]

Broaddrick said that after the assault, Clinton told her not to worry about pregnancy because childhood mumps had rendered him sterile.[7] When contacted about the issue, Gennifer Flowers, who Clinton later admitted to a sexual relationship with, also said that Clinton had thought he couldn't have children.[24] Clinton would go on to father one child, Chelsea Clinton, who was born in 1980.

In March 1999, shortly after the allegations publicly aired, 56% of Americans believed the allegations were false, while a third believed that Broaddrick's allegation of rape was at least possibly true. Similarly, 66% of the public felt that the media should stop pursuing the story, while 29% felt the press should continue to investigate the allegation.[25]

The public and media had "scandal fatigue" from the repeated sexual misconduct allegations against Clinton and, after his impeachment and acquittal, many felt the allegation had nowhere to go.[26] Many reporters had encountered the story while it was being disseminated by Republican activists and felt they had already looked into it.[27] Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, said "This is a story that's been knocked down and discredited so many times ... [E]veryone's taken a slice of it, and after looking at it, everyone's knocked it down. The woman has changed her story about whether it happened. It just wasn't credible."[27] Julia Malone, a Cox Communications reporter, became frustrated by what she perceived as media neglect of the story and held a National Press Club panel on the issue entitled "Too Hot for a 'Scandal-Weary' New Media to Handle?"[18] Sam Donaldson of ABC News said he was frustrated over his fellow reporters' unwillingness to press Clinton to respond to the allegations: Clinton refused to comment when Donaldson asked about the allegations, and no one else would press the issue.[18]

Judgement on the Broaddrick matter has varied among book-length treatments of the Bill Clinton years. While Christopher Hitchens' 1999 book, No One Left to Lie To, argued that Broaddrick's claim was credible and shows similarities to Paula Jones' later allegation of sexual harassment,[28] Michael Isikoff's book, Uncovering Clinton, said that Clinton's lawyers figured that he might well have had consensual, extramarital sex with Broaddrick, but they did not believe he would have forced himself on her,[14] and Joe Conason and Gene Lyons' 2004 book The Hunting of the President argued that Broaddrick's claim is not credible, noting that the FBI had found evidence for the allegations inconclusive.