Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct, including rape, harassment, and sexual assault. Additionally, some commentators have characterized Clinton's sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky as predatory or non-consensual, while Lewinsky called the relationship consensual at the time before saying it was an abuse of power. These allegations have been revisited and lent more credence in 2018, in light of the #MeToo movement, with many commentators and Democratic leaders now saying Clinton should have been compelled to resign after the Lewinsky scandal.
Overview In 1994, Paula Jones initiated a sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton, claiming he had made unwanted advances towards her in 1991; Clinton denied the allegations. In April 1998, the case was initially dismissed by Judge Susan Webber Wright on the grounds that it lacked legal merit. 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. In 1998, lawyers for Paula Jones released court documents that alleged a pattern of sexual harassment by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. Robert S. Bennett, Clinton's main lawyer for the case, called the filing "a pack of lies" and "an organized campaign to smear the President of the United States" funded by Clinton's political enemies. In October 1998, Clinton's attorneys tentatively offered $700,000 to settle the case, which was then the $800,000 which Jones' lawyers sought. Clinton later agreed to an out-of-court settlement and paid Jones $850,000. Bennett said the president made the settlement only so he could end the lawsuit for good and move on with his life. During the deposition for the Jones lawsuit, which was held at the White House, Clinton denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky—a denial that became the basis for an impeachment charge of perjury.
In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged that Clinton had groped her in a hallway in 1993. An independent counsel determined Willey gave "false information" to the FBI, inconsistent with sworn testimony related to the Jones allegation. On March 19, 1998, Julie Hiatt Steele, a friend of Willey, released an affidavit, accusing the former White House aide of asking her to lie to corroborate Ms. Willey's account of being sexually groped by Clinton in the Oval Office. An attempt by Kenneth Starr to prosecute Steele for making false statements and obstructing justice ended in a mistrial and Starr declined to seek a retrial after Steele sought an investigation against the former independent counsel for prosecutorial misconduct.
Also in 1998, Juanita Broaddrick alleged that Clinton had raped her in the spring of 1978, although she said she did not remember the exact date. To support her charge, Broaddrick notes that she told multiple witnesses in 1978 she had been raped by Clinton, something these witnesses also state in interviews to the press. Broaddrick had earlier filed an affidavit denying any "unwelcome sexual advances" and later repeated the denial in a sworn deposition. In an interview with NBC Dateline in February 1999 wherein she detailed the alleged rape, Broaddrick conceded that she had denied under oath being raped, but claimed it was only to avoid testifying about the ordeal publicly.
The Lewinsky scandal has had an enduring impact on Clinton's legacy, beyond his impeachment in 1998. In the wake of the #MeToo movement (which shed light on the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace), various commentators and Democratic political leaders, as well as Lewinsky herself, have revisited their view that the Lewinsky affair was consensual, and instead characterized it as an abuse of power or harassment, in light of the power differential between a president and a 22-year old intern. In 2018, Clinton was asked in several interviews about whether he should have resigned, and he said he had made the right decision in not resigning. During the 2018 Congressional elections, The New York Times alleged that having no Democratic candidate for office asking Clinton to campaign with them was a change that attributed to the revised understanding of the Lewinsky scandal. However, former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile previously urged Clinton in November 2017 to campaign during the 2018 midterm elections, in spite of New York U.S. senator Kirsten Gillibrand's recent criticism of the Lewinsky scandal.
Accusations
Juanita Broaddrick
In a 1999 episode of Dateline NBC, former Bill Clinton campaign 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. Broaddrick stated that once Clinton had isolated her in her hotel room, he raped her. Broaddrick stated Clinton injured her lip by biting it during the assault. 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 said 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 said that she could not remember the day or month the alleged incident occurred. Broaddrick has alleged 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.
Leslie Millwee 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.
Paula Jones
According to Paula Jones' account, on May 8, 1991, she was escorted to Clinton's hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas, 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. 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.Tiersma, Peter. "The Language of Perjury", languageandlaw.org, November 20, 2007
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.
However, legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a 15,000 word piece in the November 1996 issue of The American Lawyer defending the merits of the case, which included a large number of contemporaneous witnesses to whom Jones had confided at that time, and asking why the national media had not treated her accusations more seriously. Taylor's article led to numerous media organizations revisiting the case, and indicating that it indeed had merit.
In April 1998, the case was dismissed by judge Susan Webber Wright as lacking legal merit. However, 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. 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.
In October 1998, Clinton's attorneys tentatively offered $700,000 to settle the case, which was then the $800,000 which Jones' lawyers sought. In November 1998, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, paying Jones and her lawyers $850,000 to drop the suit, but acknowledged no wrongdoing and offered no apology; the vast majority of this money was also used to pay Jones' legal fees. 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.
Kathleen Willey
In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without consent in the White House Oval Office in 1993. Kenneth Starr granted her immunity for her testimony in his separate inquiry.
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. Six other friends of Willey confirmed Tripp's account in sworn testimony, stating that Willey had sought a sexual relationship with the president. 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.
Other accusations In April 1998, Inside Edition reported that Cristy Zercher, a former flight attendant, had accused Clinton of groping and fondling her on a 1992 campaign flight while his wife Hillary was sleeping nearby.
In 1999, Eileen Wellstone reiterated to reporters that she had accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1969, when they were students at Oxford. Wellstone filed a complaint with the university, but no charges were brought against Clinton.
A campaign staffer, Sandra Allen James, accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in his hotel room in 1991. She claimed that he exposed himself to her and forced her to conduct oral sex on him while they were sitting on the couch.
A former professor from the University of Arkansas claimed Clinton had groped a female student and tried to trap her in his office when he was a professor. This would later be backed up by a piece written by Daniel Harris and Teresa Hampton, which alleged that students at the university confirmed that Clinton had tried to force himself on them when he was a professor.
Karen Hinton, who served in the Clinton administration under the HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, told journalist Michael Isikoff that Clinton had harassed her at a fundraiser in 1984. Hinton claimed that Clinton had been staring at her and that he wrote down his hotel room number and a question mark on a napkin and gave it to her, which she said made her feel humiliated. Her allegations were published in Isikoff's book Uncovering Clinton.