Juanita Broaddrick Bill Clinton Rape Accusations-Unproven!
Summary of eRumor:
Juanita Broaddrick, a volunteer in Bill Clinton’s first gubernatorial campaign, has accused Bill Clinton of raping her in a Little Rock hotel room in 1978.
The Truth:
Juanita Broaddrick’s allegations that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978 first reached a national audience during a 1999 appearance on “Dateline NBC.”
Broaddrick, a volunteer for Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign, said during the interview that she didn’t tell anybody at the time because “I just don’t think anyone would have believed me.” The Washington Post summarized her accusations like this:
In a gripping account punctuated by sobs, the Arkansas woman told “Dateline NBC” that in her Little Rock hotel room, Clinton suddenly “turned me around and started kissing me, and that was a real shock. I first pushed him away. I just told him ‘no.’ . . . He tries to kiss me again. He starts biting on my lip. . . . And then he forced me down on the bed. I just was very frightened. I tried to get away from him. I told him ‘no.’ . . . He wouldn’t listen to me.”
However, questions have been raised about the accuracy of Broaddrick’s claims given that she signed an affidavit during the Paula Jones investigation in 1998 stating that the claims were untrue and that she had “repeatedly denied the allegations” made by newspaper and tabloid reports:
3. I met President Clinton more than twenty years ago through family friends. Our introduction was not arranged or facilitated, in any way, by the Arkansas State Police. I have never been an Arkansas state employee or a federal employee. I have never discussed with Mr. Clinton the possibility of state or federal employment nor has he offered me any such position. I have had no further relations with him for the past (15) years.
4. During the 1992 Presidential campaign there were unfounded rumors and stories circulated that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies. Newspaper and tabloid reporters hounded me and my family, seeking corroboration of these tales. I repeatedly denied the allegations and requested that my family’s privacy be respected. These allegations are untrue and I had hoped that they would no longer haunt me, or cause further disruption to my family.
However, a Wall Street Journal report from 1999 details the sequence of events from 1992 to 1999 that supposedly led Broaddrick to deny the accusations before she suddenly came forward with them during special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s investigation in 1999 :
Trouble began in 1992, when the story Mrs. Broaddrick had shared with a small circle of friends reached a wide public, thanks to a business associate by the name of Philip Yoakum. A bitter opponent of Mr. Clinton, he urged that she come forward during the presidential campaign, which she declined to do. When the Paula Jones lawsuit came along, the plaintiff’s lawyers approached her, but Mrs. Broaddrick was determined to stay clear of involvement. That was how she came to sign the false affidavit.
It was this matter that the White House spokesmen and others point to when dismissing her account. Her lawyer, Republican state Sen. Bill Walters, prepared the affidavit–the model for which he says he got from White House lawyer Bruce Lindsey, who was happy to oblige. Her lawyers, Mrs. Broaddrick relates, didn’t actually know the facts–that the sexual advances in question were very far from consensual. Her goal was to keep out of everything.
When Kenneth Starr’s investigators came around, explains her 28-year-old son, Kevin, a lawyer, it was a different matter. “I told my mother–and she understood it–that this was another whole level. She knew it was one thing to lie in a civil trial so she could get away from all this, but another to lie to federal prosecutors and possibly a grand jury.”
Fearful of punishment for that earlier perjury, she was prepared to admit to the independent counsel’s officers–after receiving immunity–that her prior affidavit had been false. In the event, it became a footnote in the Starr report, and carried no weight as far as obstruction of justice charges were concerned. Both Mrs. Broaddrick and her lawyers emphasize that no one from the White House had harassed her or subjected her to other pressures aimed at keeping the story quiet.
The story was brought back onto the national stage during the 2016 presidential eleciton when Donald Trump appeared with Broaddrick and other women who had accused Clinton of sexual assault in a press conference held before his second debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump also retweeted an interview that Broaddrick gave to right-wing news site Breitbart on October 9th, the day after the debate.
Clinton has denied the allegations through his attorneys all along. There’s no way that we can make a determination one way or another that Broaddrick’s allegations are true or false — which is why we’re calling them “unproven.”