The Dark Side of Bill Clinton

The dark side of history: https://thememoryhole.substack.com/

Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), has been publicly accused of sexual assault and/or sexual misconduct by several women: Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of raping her in 1978; Leslie Millwee accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1980; Paula Jones accused Clinton of exposing himself to her in 1991 as well as sexually harassing her; and Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of groping her without her consent in 1993. The Jones allegations became public in 1994, during Clinton's first term as president, while Willey's and Broaddrick's accusations became public in 1999, toward the end of Clinton's second term. Millwee made her accusations in 2016.

Clinton has denied all four accusations and responded by casting doubt on the credibility of the accusers. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases in 2017 and the many other such cases that emerged in the aftermath, the allegations against Clinton received renewed attention.

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.[2][3] 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 couldn't remember the day or month the alleged incident occurred.[4] 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.
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.[5]
Paula Jones
Main article: Paula Jones § Jones v. Clinton

According to Paula Jones' account, on May 8, 1991, she was escorted to Clinton's hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas,[6] 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.[7] 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.[8]

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.[9]

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.[10][11][12][13]

In April 1998, the case was dismissed by judge Susan Webber Wright as lacking legal merit.[14] 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.[15] 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.[16] 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.[17]
Kathleen Willey
Main article: Kathleen Willey § Claims

In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without consent in the White House Oval Office in 1993.[18] Kenneth Starr granted her immunity for her testimony in his separate inquiry.[19][20]

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.[21] Six other friends of Willey confirmed Tripp's account in sworn testimony, stating that Willey had sought a sexual relationship with the president.[22] 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.[citation needed] In 2007, Willey published a book about her experiences with the Clintons.[23]
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. A release announcing the results of Zercher's polygraph test stated that she had negative ratings for truthfulness on four questions asked the week prior.[24]

In 1999, Eileen Wellstone reiterated to reporters that she had accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1969, when they were students at Oxford.[25][26] Wellstone filed a complaint with the university, but no charges were brought against Clinton.[26]

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.[25]

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.[27]

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.[28]

In November 2017, sources within the Democratic Party told author and former foreign editor of Newsweek Edward Klein that Clinton was being accused of sexual assault by 4 women. The plaintiffs alleged that the assaults took place shortly after the end of his presidency in the early 2000s, while they were in their late teens. A member of Clinton's legal team confirmed the existence of new allegations against Clinton.[29]
2016 United States presidential election
Main article: 2016 United States presidential election

Charges of sexual misconduct on Bill Clinton's part resurfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. When a lewd recording of Hillary's opponent Donald Trump discussing the ability to grope women when in power was released during the campaign, Broaddrick, Willey, and Jones reemerged as critics of Hillary Clinton, accusing her of enabling her husband's alleged sexual assaults on them. Two days after the release of the recording, they appeared as guests at the second 2016 presidential debate and referenced Bill Clinton in pre-debate statements.[30][31][32]

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.[33][34] She said that she started giving some interviews in 2015 because she was angered by the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton's statement that victims of sexual assault should be believed.[34]
Reactions
Bill Clinton

Clinton has adamantly denied all four accusations. Through his representatives, Clinton has responded to the allegations by casting doubt on the credibility of the accusers, saying that (in the case of Broaddrick and Willey) they previously testified under oath that Clinton never made unwanted advances. Several witnesses close to Willey and Jones have stated that the two women described their encounter with Clinton as consensual.[9][21][22] Clinton has admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, both of which have generally been accepted as consensual.[25]

When asked in 2018 whether he would have approached the sexual misconduct allegations differently in the wake of the Me Too movement, Clinton said that he would not.[35] When he was asked if he owed Monica Lewinsky a personal apology, Clinton said that he did not.[35]
Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has largely remained silent on the topic of the allegations against Bill.[36][37] In her 2017 memoir What Happened, Clinton noted that Donald Trump "brought to our second debate three women who had accused my husband of bad acts decades ago", and wrote: "there were times that I was deeply unsure about whether our marriage could or should survive. But on those days, I asked myself the questions that mattered most to me: Do I still love him? And can I still be in this marriage without becoming unrecognizable to myself — twisted by anger, resentment, or remoteness? The answers were always yes. So I kept going."[37]
Other reactions

In a 1998 op-ed for The New York Times titled "Feminists and the Clinton Question", feminist icon Gloria Steinem was critical of the response to the allegations against Clinton, writing:

If all the sexual allegations now swirling around the White House turn out to be true, President Clinton may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy. But feminists will still have been right to resist pressure by the right wing and the media to call for his resignation or impeachment. The pressure came from another case of the double standard. For one thing, if the President had behaved with comparable insensitivity toward environmentalists, and at the same time remained their most crucial champion and bulwark against an anti-environmental Congress, would they be expected to desert him? I don't think so.

On the topic of the accusation by Willey against Clinton, Steinem wrote: "He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ''no'' for an answer", and wrote on the accusation by Jones: "As with the allegations in Ms. Willey's case, Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection."[38][39]

Steinem's article received some criticism from the media when it was published, including from the New York Times itself.[40] Conservative commentator Ann Coulter derided Steinem's understanding of sexual assault as "the boss gets one free grope."[41][42] Caitlin Flanagan, writing for The Atlantic in 2017, described the article as "notorious" and that it "must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of [Steinem's] life", saying that the article "slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused". Flanagan added: "Moreover … it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party."[43]

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.[44][45][46][47]
#MeToo retrospectives
Main article: Weinstein effect

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 Me Too movement, with liberals and feminists reconsidering their lack of support for the alleging women at the time.[48][49][50] Michelle Goldberg wrote that Broaddrick's allegations meant that "Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."[51]

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.[52] A HuffPost/YouGov survey found 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.[53]

Some commentators have characterized Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, who was at the time a White House intern, as sexual misconduct because of the vast power imbalance between a president and an intern; Lewinsky was 22 at the time and described the relationship as completely consensual.[54] In 2018, Lewinsky herself began to question her long-standing view that her relationship with Clinton had been consensual, characterizing the relationship as a "gross abuse of power" wherein the power differential between the two was so great that "consent might well be rendered moot."[55] In October 2018, Hillary Clinton stated in an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning that Bill's affair with Lewinsky did not constitute an abuse of power because Lewinsky "was an adult".[56]

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.[57] However, former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile previously urged Clinton in November 2017 to campaign during the 2018 midterm elections, in spite of Kirsten Gillibrand's recent criticism of the Lewinsky scandal.[58]
Related books

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

The Clinton body count is a conspiracy theory that baselessly[1][2][3] asserts former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have secretly had their political opponents murdered, totaling as many as 50 or more.[4][5][6] Such allegations have been circulated since at least 1994, when a film called The Clinton Chronicles, produced by Larry Nichols and promoted by Rev. Jerry Falwell, accused Bill Clinton of multiple crimes including murder.[7][8] Additional promulgators of the conspiracy include Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene,[9] and others.

Several sources have discredited the conspiracy theory, such as Congressional Record,[10] the Lakeland Ledger, the Chicago Tribune, Snopes and others; pointing to detailed death records, the unusually large circle of associates that a president is likely to have, and the fact that many of the people listed had been misidentified or were still alive. Others had no known link to the Clintons.[11][12]
History

The Congressional Record (1994) condemns the list. While citing an article in U.S. News & World Report (August 8, 1994) by Greg Ferguson and David Bowermaster: "Whatever it is, Bill Clinton Likely Did It," it was determined that the original list, titled "Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?," was compiled by lawyer and activist Linda Thompson. The report concluded "Thompson admits she has 'no direct evidence' of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she says the deaths were probably caused by 'people trying to control the president' but refuses to say who they were."[10]
Alleged victims
Don Henry and Kevin Ives
Main article: Killing of Don Henry and Kevin Ives

Don Henry and Kevin Ives, two Arkansas teenagers, were killed and their bodies placed on railroad tracks on August 23, 1987. At the time, the boys' deaths were controversially ruled accidental, but after Kevin Ives' body was exhumed and a second autopsy performed, the original examiner's ruling was overruled and the cause of death for Kevin Ives and Don Henry was changed from accidental to homicide. Conspiracy theorists, as well as Linda Ives, the mother of Kevin Ives, posit that the boys came upon a drug drop from an airplane, similar to Barry Seal's operations, near Mena and were then murdered. It was alleged in The Clinton Chronicles that during Bill Clinton's tenure as the governor of Arkansas he profited from drug smuggling at the Mena Airport and covered up the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the boys.[7][13][14][15][16]
C. Victor Raiser II

C. Victor Raiser II was National Finance Co-chairman for Bill Clinton. He died in a plane crash along with his son and three others on July 30, 1992, during a fishing trip. Conspiracy theorists believe the crash to have been deliberately caused, however the National Transportation Safety Board ruled it as an accident, stating:[11][17][18]

[The probable cause of the accident was] the pilot's delayed decision in reversing course and his failure to maintain airspeed during the maneuver. Factors related to the accident were: mountainous terrain and a low ceiling.

Mary Mahoney

Mary Mahoney was a former White House intern who, in the early summer of 1997, was gunned down during an attempted robbery inside the Starbucks in the Georgetown suburb of Washington, D.C. where Mahoney was working behind the counter. The robber entered the store and shot Mahoney after she attempted to take his gun. He then shot two Starbucks employees and fled. However, conspiracy theorists believe Mahoney was killed on the orders of the Clintons.[11][19]
Vince Foster
Main article: Suicide of Vince Foster

Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993. An autopsy determined that he was shot in the mouth, and no other wounds were found on his body.[20] His death was ruled a suicide by five official investigations, but he remains a subject of conspiracy theories that he was actually murdered by the Clintons for knowing too much.[21]
Jerry Parks

Jerry Parks, head of security for the Clinton headquarters during his presidential campaign in 1992,[22] was killed on September 26, 1993, as he left a Mexican restaurant at the edge of Little Rock, Arkansas, by a man in another car that shot him ten times using a 9mm handgun. Parks’ son, Gary, asserted that his father collected a secret file of Clinton's "peccadilloes", and that his father was using the file to try to blackmail the Clinton campaign.[7][23]
Edward Eugene Willey

Edward Eugene Willey, Jr., a Clinton fundraiser whose wife, Kathleen Willey, alleged on the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her on November 29, 1993. Kathleen also testified on the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against Clinton. Edward was found dead in the Virginia woods, and his death was ruled a suicide.[24][25][26]
Ron Brown

Ron Brown, who served as the Secretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Prior to this he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Brown had been under investigation by an independent counsel for the Commerce Department trade mission controversy and was a material witness, who had been noticed to testify, in Judicial Watch's lawsuit against the Clinton Commerce Department.[27][28][29] He and 34 others died in the 1996 Croatia USAF CT-43 crash.[30][26]
Jim McDougal

Jim McDougal, a financial partner of the Clintons in the real estate venture that led to the Whitewater scandal. McDougal died of a heart attack at the Federal Correctional Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 8, 1998.[6]
John F. Kennedy Jr.

John F. Kennedy Jr., who was, according to polls, the most popular Democrat in New York. According to friends, Kennedy considered seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Daniel Moynihan in the 2000 United States Senate election in New York[31] but died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999. Hillary Clinton was elected to Moynihan's vacated seat on November 7, 2000.[32][33]
Seth Rich
Bike rack dedicated to Seth Rich, who conspiracy theorists believe was murdered by the Clintons
Main article: Murder of Seth Rich

The unsolved 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staff member Seth Rich prompted conspiracy theorists to speculate that Hillary Clinton arranged his death; the theory was based on a debunked Fox News report, later retracted, that Rich had been responsible for Wikileaks' release of DNC emails during the 2016 United States presidential campaign.[34][35][3] Various elements of this theory have been promoted by Julian Assange and prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones, Newt Gingrich, and Sean Hannity.[36][37]
Jeffrey Epstein
Main article: Death of Jeffrey Epstein

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, being held on federal charges of child sex trafficking, was found dead in his cell at the high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on August 10, 2019.[38] An official autopsy later declared the cause of death as a suicide by hanging.[39] His death led to conspiracy theories being relayed on social media, particularly relating to Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump. Hours after Epstein's death, Trump retweeted claims that Epstein's death was related to Clinton, including the hashtag #ClintonBodyCount.[40][41] Lynne Patton, a Trump appointee at HUD, said "Hillary'd!!" and used the hashtag #VinceFosterPartTwo in an Instagram post about Epstein's death.[42] Political commentator Dinesh D'Souza attempted to use the time he spent in a federal correctional center to lend authority to the conspiracy theory that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein's death.[43]
Christopher Sign

Reporter Christopher Sign broke the news of a meeting on June 27, 2016, on the Phoenix Sky Harbor tarmac between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The timing of the meeting happened during the 2016 presidential election when then-candidate Hillary Clinton was under scrutiny for how she handled certain emails during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State.[44] Sign was found dead in his Alabama home on June 12, 2021, and his death was investigated as a suicide.[45] Several right-wing figures, including Lauren Boebert, Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, as well as the pro-Trump cable news channel One America News Network, suggested that Sign had been murdered by the Clintons.[46]
Jovenel Moïse
Main article: Assassination of Jovenel Moïse

Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, 2021, when gunmen attacked his residence in Pèlerin 5, a district of Pétion-Ville.[47][48][49][50] Martine Moïse, the first lady of Haiti, was hospitalized for wounds sustained during the attack.[51][52][53] Some right-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Clintons were involved in Moïse's death, pointing to political controversies regarding aid given to Haiti by the Clinton Foundation, such as "hurricane-proof" classroom trailers that were found to be structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde. Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who claim that Donald Trump is secretly waging war against a cabal of child traffickers that includes the Clintons, heavily discussed the idea that they had a hand in the assassination. Discussion of the unfounded claim caused the term "Clintons" to become a top trend on Twitter.[54]
Jean-Luc Brunel

Jean-Luc Brunel, suspected of being involved in a global pedophile ring organised by Epstein, died by suicide in prison before going on trial, on February 19, 2022. Senator Ted Cruz attempted to link Brunel's death to the Clintons by asking "Anyone know where Hillary was this weekend?".[55]
Others

Fabricated tweets stating "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton." were supposedly sent by figures such as celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain,[56][57] basketball player Kobe Bryant,[58] Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,[59][60] former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe[61][62] and Queen Elizabeth II[63] prior to their deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_body_count_conspiracy_theory