The Juanita Broaddrick Files: Why Broaddrick’s Previous Sworn Statements Denying She Was Raped By Bill Clinton Do Not Cast Doubt On Her Subsequent Claims That She Was
When people try to discredit or discount the claims of Juanita Broaddrick in her allegations that she was brutally raped by then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton in April of 1978, her critics point to the fact that she originally swore under oath in a legal affidavit that any “rumors” or “stories” that Clinton had made “unwelcome sexual advances” towards her were “unfounded” and denied the allegation.
She reiterated this denial, again under oath, in a legal deposition conducted by the attorneys for Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton in January 1998.
After unsuccessfully contesting her subpoena to appear for her deposition, Broaddrick was deposed against her will and again claimed that Clinton did not make any “improper advances” towards her, and that her previously signed affidavit was “true and correct”.
To Broaddrick’s critics, these sworn statements are all that they need to claim that her subsequent claims that Clinton had in fact raped her cannot be trusted.
But there is a one problem with this line of reasoning: It completely ignores the myriad of independent evidence that strongly suggests that Broaddrick in fact perjured herself in order to maintain her privacy at the time, and that she was in fact raped by Bill Clinton.
The reasoning of Broaddrick’s critics who rely solely on the “sworn statement” argument to dismiss her fails and is completely unpersuasive as a means for discrediting her for all of the following reasons:
[*As with all of my articles, I encourage readers to click on all hyperlinks within the article to observe the independent evidence, reporting and proof of my arguments with their own eyes, rather than simply taking my word for it at face value.]
Reason # 1: Monica Lewinsky also swore under oath in the exact same case (Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit) that she never had an inappropriate sexual encounter with Bill Clinton. Yet it is still universally acknowledged that Lewinsky did in fact have such an encounter, and that she lied in her sworn statement for the exact same reason that Broaddrick claims she herself lied — in order to protect her privacy after being dragged in to court against her will by Paula Jones’s attorneys.
And just as outside evidence proved Lewinsky’s sworn statement to be a lie, so too does outside evidence prove that Broaddrick lied on her sworn statement as well. Failure to acknowledge this amounts to a politically-motivated double-standard of evidence.
If the rule is that anyone who swears to one thing under oath and then later recants their sworn statement is inherently untrustworthy, then you would have to therefore conclude that we can’t trust Monica Lewinsky today when she claims that she had a sexual affair with Bill Clinton while she was his underling intern in the White House.
Yet anyone claiming that we can’t be certain about Lewinsky’s story today is ridiculous.
No rational person would use Lewinsky’s previously sworn statement to try and now claim that Lewinsky never had an inappropriate affair with Bill Clinton.
Lewinsky subsequently changed her story and claimed she lied in her sworn statement just as Broaddrick did.
In fact Lewinsky went so far as to suggest that Clinton and a “high powered lawyer” convinced her to ultimately commit perjury in an affidavit as an easy way to get out of testifying in the Paula Jones lawsuit that she was hellbent on avoiding (just as Broaddrick was).
Lewinsky’s sworn statement under oath denying any improper encounters with Clinton carries just as much inherent weight (or lack thereof) as Broaddrick’s sworn statement. Yet critics use the previous sworn statements of Broaddrick to attack her current claims today, while automatically believing Lewinsky’s current claims and ignoring her own sworn statements in a clear double standard of reasoning.
It is at this point where Broaddrick’s critics point out that the reason people believe Lewinsky’s current statement and recognize that she lied under oath is because of the DNA found on her dress which proved her affair. But this only demonstrates the crucial point here: Perjury can be shown and proven with independent, outside evidence and proof of motive just like any other form of malfeasance.
If it hadn’t been for her dress stained with Clinton’s semen DNA, people to this day would still believe Lewinsky’s original denial that nothing happened between her and Clinton. And if she would have changed her story subsequent to her sworn statement, Clinton’s defenders would have simply attacked Lewinsky as an unreliable “liar”.
The problem for Broaddrick’s critics is that she too has a large body of independent evidence and witnesses backing up her claims of being raped. This includes the following non-comprehensive list:
- Norma Kelsey (aka Norma Rogers), who claims that she saw Broaddrick’s swollen and bruised face as well as her ripped and torn pantyhose shortly after the rape occurred that day.
- David Broaddrick, her boyfriend and the time (later to become her second husband) who also insists that he saw the bruises on her face and immediately knew that something had happened to her based on her depressed state of mind when he saw her.
- Susan Lewis, Louise Ma and Jean Darden, who all insist that Broaddrick confessed to them back in 1978 that she had been raped by Clinton — years before he contemplated running for President or had been a nationally known figure.
- Proof that Broaddrick had been a stalwart political supporter of Bill Clinton during his Arkansas Gubernatorial campaign, right up until the time she claims the rape occurred, which in turn demonstrates that she would have had no partisan political motive to make up lies about him in 1978, back when she first made these claims to her circle of friends.
- Other witnesses who insist that Broaddrick confessed to them about Clinton raping her well before he announced his run for President or before her story became public.
- Documented proof that Broaddrick was at the hotel she claims she was at on the day in question, and strong circumstantial evidence that Clinton was in the room with her (combined with his notable lack of an alibi, despite having a public calendar for his entire schedule during the week in question).
- Bill Clinton’s noted refusal to directly deny the allegation during the two (and only known) times the press has worked up the courage to allude to it in his presence — curiously choosing instead to either issue a non-responsive deflection or refer people to his attorney, rather than issue a simple denial of Broaddrick’s claim.
Just as independent evidence helps to prove that Monica Lewinsky clearly lied in her sworn statement by denying anything improper occurred between her and Bill Clinton, so too does the independent evidence which helps proves that Broaddrick lied in similar fashion in the exact case as Lewinsky did for the exact same reason as her — to protect her privacy.
And this of course ignores the most obvious instance of perjury and a sworn statement being false in the same case — that of Bill Clinton himself.
Do people seriously argue that we can’t know if Bill Clinton had a sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky because he issued a sworn statement claiming one thing but then later retracted his statement while he wasn’t under oath? To even attempt such an argument would be to insult one’s intelligence, yet they have no problem making that same argument somehow in Broaddick’s case.
But another key piece of evidence that supports Broaddrick’s underlying rape claim is the same one that also directly bears on the issue as to why Broaddrick’s denial of the rape under oath cannot be trusted (which brings us to Reason # 2)…
Reason # 2: Broaddrick was secretly taped without her knowledge freely and fully admitting that if she was dragged into court against her will by Paula Jones’s attorneys, that she would “deny anything” while stating “I won’t be cooperative” while trying to “evade all of this”, despite also claiming that Paula Jones was “telling the truth” and that Clinton did something to her that “was just a horrible thing for me” and that she “wouldn’t relive it for anything” — all but explicitly warning to others that she would commit perjury if forcibly put under oath against her will (which Jones’s attorneys eventually did).
Beverly and Rick Lambert (parents of country star Miranda Lambert) were hired by Paula Jones’s legal team to track down Juanita Broaddrick to get her to testify in the Jones case. When they approached her at her home on November 13, 1997, they were secretly wired and recorded their conversation with Broaddrick without her knowledge or consent (an action that was legal to perform under Arkansas law).
Broaddrick called the unknowing, clandestine taping of her conversation “very underhanded”, but they key, objective truth about the recording is that she is heard on this tape describing a “horrible” event that she doesn’t “want to relive”, — something that is “not pleasant and I won’t even go into it” other than the fact that it was “very private…about something 20 years ago” — but that if she was forcibly subpoenaed against her will, she vowed apologetically that they still “won’t get anything out of me” because she had to “try and evade all of this”.
She also seemed supremely confident based on her experience that Paula Jones was telling the truth, despite the fact that she was steadfast in avoiding testifying in Jones’s case because she said “you can’t get to him, and I’m not going to ruin my good name to do it.”
Broaddrick further warned that even people speak to her attorney, she vowed: “I won’t be cooperative.”
Again, this conversation all unfolded despite the fact that Broaddrick had no idea that she was being secretly taped.
What does common sense tell you about Broaddrick’s sworn statement in light of that fact? Again, think of all of these points, including the Lewinsky affidavit and the reasons she lied under oath, in context together to determine the truth here.
Reason # 3: If Broaddrick’s critics insist that the believability of statements under oath should always take precedence over statements not made under oath, regardless of the amount of additional evidence suggesting otherwise, then they are obligated under their own rules of logic to believe that Bill Clinton is a rapist since Judy Stokes also swore as much under oath.
Many people forget (or never realized) that during the Paula Jones trial, a woman named Judy Stokes gave a sworn deposition just as Broaddrick had.
In Stokes’ sworn deposition, she stated under oath that her friend Elizabeth Ward Gracen tearfully told her in the mid-1980s that Clinton forced her into sex in the back of a limousine in 1982.
In other words, Stokes swore under oath that Gracen privately confessed to her that she had been raped by Bill Clinton.
Gracen herself has publicly denied the claim, eventually insisting that, although she did have sex with Clinton, it was a purely consensual encounter. Even in this regard, Gracen changed her story, since she had first denied even having a consensual encounter with Clinton to begin with, before being pressured to admit otherwise.
But here’s the rub for Broaddrick’s critics — Gracen refused to make any statement under oath about what actually happened between her and Clinton. She managed to avoid being subpoenaed by Paula Jones’s attorneys by conveniently fleeing the country for four full months while Paula Jones’ case unfolded.
As a result, all of Gracen’s denials about being raped were only made to the news media and never under oath, while her friend Judy Stokes stated the exact opposite while under oath and insisted that Gracen had in fact confessed to her about being raped.
Gracen could have easily issued her own sworn statement admitting to a consensual affair with Clinton but denying any rape, just as Dolly Kyle Browning did when she gave a sworn declaration that she and Clinton carried on an affair for years (just as Clinton did with Gennifer Flowers and many others). Browning admitted in her sworn statement that Clinton “threatened to destroy me” if she ever spoke about her affair — but she never claimed rape.
Gennifer Flowers also gave a sworn statement, admitting to a consensual affair with Clinton and also swore in that same statement that Clinton had asked her to commit perjury under oath if called to testify, just as he had with Monica Lewinsky.
So if we are to follow the same logic and rules of Broaddrick’s critics, shouldn’t we all automatically believe Judy Stokes’ statement that Gracen confessed about about being raped by Clinton since it was made under oath? And shouldn’t we also therefore dismiss Gracen’s denial since she refused to state her denial under oath and had already publicly changed her story by originally denying any encounter with Bill Clinton whatsoever before backtracking in the media?
Under the rules of “always believe the sworn statement versus unsworn statements under all circumstances, regardless of the other evidence”, then even Broaddrick’s critics are obligated to assume that Bill Clinton is a violent sexual predator and rapist based on the sworn testimony of Judy Stokes alone — irrespective of Broaddrick’s separate claim and the bevy of evidence that backs her claim up outside of her sworn statements.
(Incidentally: Even the account by Gracen regarding a “consensual” encounter with Clinton actually ends up boosting Broaddrick’s own credibility regarding her claim of rape at the hands of Clinton.
Former Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff noted on pg. 256 of his book Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story that Gracen, though characterizing it as “consensual”, said that sex with Clinton had been “rough” and that “Clinton got so carried away that he bit her lip.”
See the excerpt from Isikoff’s book here:
This is a remarkable admission since Broaddrick did not know Gracen when she gave her interview to Lisa Myers at NBC News, and claimed that during her rape, Bill Clinton forcibly bit Broaddrick’s lip in order to force her in to submission.
This lip biting helped contribute to the bruises on Broaddrick’s face that witnesses Nora Rogers and her then-boyfriend (and later second husband) David Broaddrick claimed they saw with their own eyes. Rogers said she helped treat Broaddrick’s fresh wounds immediately afterwards. According to Broaddrick, it is also what caused Clinton to coldly say to Broaddrick as he put his sunglasses on to leave the hotel room, “You better put some ice on that.”
What are the odds that Gracen and Broaddrick would come up with the same detail about Bill Clinton’s forcible lip-biting during sex when they never knew each other? Most reporters failed to note the obvious connection. )
In claiming that statements under oath should be given more weight than those not made under oath, regardless of the context and additional evidence regarding a claim, Broaddick’s critics simultaneously ignore the statements made under oath by Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky which have been proven to be false, the proven pressure by Bill Clinton and his representatives to try and persuade others to lie under oath, as well as the sworn statement by Judy Stokes which has only been contradicted by a statement from another person who herself refused to be put under oath in stating her denial — all given in the same case as Broaddrick’s sworn statement. Yet it is only Broaddrick who they apply this double standard of logic towards. Their blatant hypocrisy is self-evident here.
Reason # 4: If Broaddrick told the truth in her original sworn statement, that necessarily means that she must have lied to the FBI and Department of Justice officials when she insisted to them that her original sworn statement had been false, despite knowing the fact that lying to the FBI during a criminal investigation carries a much more practical and far greater risk of even harsher punishment than simple perjury in a civil case (which all lawyers know is rarely, if ever, prosecuted).
The arguments of the simpleton Broaddrick critics who ignore the full context and timelines of the evidence go something like this: “You can get criminally prosecuted for committing perjury by making false claims under oath, but there are no such consequences for lying to the press, so Broaddrick obviously must have told the truth in her signed affidavit while lying to the press for political purposes, personal spite, money, fame, etc.”
But there is a glaring problem and contradiction with this argument.
After making a sworn affidavit and deposition in the Paula Jones civil case denying that she had been raped, Broaddrick told FBI investigators that her previous sworn statements were false and that she had in fact been raped by Bill Clinton. She confessed to them that she had committed perjury in order to maintain her privacy — knowing that if she told the truth, the press would be ceaselessly battering down her door and that Clinton’s allies would relentlessly hound her.
And the fact remains that lying to the FBI during a criminal investigation (which they were in the midst of, in investigating Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones lawsuit) even when you aren’t under oath carries a far greater risk of far harsher penalties than lying to private attorneys in a civil court matter.
The FBI takes umbrage at people who mislead them, and often use the weight of government authority and threats of prosecution to make sure people are truthful with them during interviews.
Civil perjury however, rarely gets prosecuted — especially with regards to matters involving rape or sexual assault. (Ironically, this reality that every lawyer knows was used as one of the chief defenses by Clinton’s defenders against appropriateness of the Ken Starr investigation.)
Lying to the Department of Justice during their investigations is a very different matter. A broadly interpreted federal statute hands out tough penalties for those who lie to the FBI, and many people have been prosecuted under it. Just a small sample of high profile defendants who have been convicted under it include businesswoman and television personality Martha Stewart, General Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Olympic star Marion Jones among many others.
The breadth and common use of this Federal “False Statements” law is in fact so pervasive that legal commentators have written extensively about how its broad scope and willingness of the Feds to use it makes it ripe for abuse. They did this because every lawyer understands the “False Statements” act to be a genuine threat that officials regularly use, whereas few people in the legal profession take mere civil perjury seriously due to the rarity in which it is prosecuted.
Broaddrick’s own son is a lawyer who knows this reality full well. That is why he was the one who had to convince her to come clean with the Feds and admit that she lied on her previous sworn affidavit — because he knew that lying to the FBI is a far more serious offense.
One of two things must be true here: Either Broaddrick lied to Paula Jones’ private attorneys in the midst of a civil case, or she lied to the FBI during the midst of a criminal investigation. It must be one or the other. So which one of these do you think would have made Broaddrick more nervous in terms of her considering the consequences for not telling the truth? What does common sense tell you?
(And for those who think that Broaddrick is now lying about being raped by Bill Clinton out of partisan, political spite, how do you explain the fact that she refused to help Paula Jones’ attorneys at a critical moment through their client’s lawsuit?)
Reason #5: Like Monica Lewinsky, Broaddrick was given immunity for past perjury in the Paula Jones case by the Department of Justice in exchange for her agreeing to speak to Federal investigators. Just as the case with Lewinsky, the Feds never would have agreed to this grant of immunity in the first instance, unless they were already fully convinced that Broaddrick’s previously sworn statements were, in fact, false.
Both Monica Lewinsky and Juanita Broaddrick were both given immunity from perjury by the Feds in exchange for their agreeing to talk to the FBI and DOJ Special Prosecutor Ken Starr. Like Lewinsky, Broaddrick steadfastly refused to say anything to the Feds until she first secured a promise for immunity from perjury for her previous sworn statements.
Take a moment to ask yourself why both women insisted they be given immunity, and why the Feds agreed to it in the first instance.
Judge William J. Bauer from the U.S. Court of Appeals states a simple truth that everyone who ever has practiced criminal law already knows: The Feds never grant immunity to people for offenses unless they are already convinced that they actually committed the offenses in the first instance. Granting someone immunity is not something that they do cavalierly or “just in case”.
As Bauer explains, “[T]he granting of immunity does not involve an innocent person. Immunity is only granted to a participant in a crime in an attempt to convict other participants.”
The immunity naturally covered only her previously sworn statements in the Paula Jones lawsuit. It is completely fatuous to suggest that the FBI would ever consider granting someone immunity to someone for the future privilege of lying to them and shield them from those consequences. The very concept of immunity only applies to past behaviors, not anticipated future behaviors.
Why did the FBI grant both Lewinsky and Broaddrick immunity? Simple — They were fully convinced that both women had lied in their previous sworn statements, which therefore means that they believed Broaddrick when she later told them that she had in fact been brutally raped by Bill Clinton.
When confronted with all of these arguments, Clinton apologists start spinning blatant falsehoods by articulating conspiracy theories that independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr somehow coerced or financially bribed her to retract her affidavit and lie about being raped in a supposedly obsessive quest to tar Bill Clinton with anything under the sun. They then try and ridiculously float the completely contradictory claim that, supposedly after coercing Broaddrick to falsely claim that she had been raped, Starr didn’t bother to include her claims in his report to Congress because he felt she wasn’t credible enough.
All of this conspiracy mongering is completely fatuous, naturally.
It is a flat-out lie to claim that Starr didn’t find Broaddrick to be credible. That is why he authored a separate, secret file on Broaddrick that was meant for Congressional eyes only. He didn’t include it in his public report to Congress because it had nothing to do with the charges of obstruction of justice against Clinton and he had no direct jurisdiction to pursue such a claim whose statute of limitations had long since expired.
NBC News’s Lisa Myers confirmed the fact that Starr found Broaddrick’s claim of rape to be completely credible after she spoke to several sources from Starr’s team who all confirmed as much.
(Contrary to what the Clinton apologists claim, Starr never had carte blanche jurisdiction to pursue Clinton for anything and everything under the sun. His jurisdiction was actually quite limited and he even had to obtain hard-fought, special permissions from the federal courts and Clinton’s own Attorney General before pursuing the question of obstruction of justice, in accordance with the express terms of the Independent Prosecutor statute.)
Concluding Thoughts
Broaddrick’s critics may be surprised to learn that she willingly posts her previous sworn affidavit and deposition transcript on her own website, despite the fact that she knows that people cite these documents as somehow being “proof” of her not being believable.
They shouldn’t be.
When people bother to take the time to study the full range of evidence in the Broaddrick case, along with the specific timeline that the evidence became public, it becomes clear that Broaddrick’s previous sworn statements actually bolster her claim about being raped by Bill Clinton, rather than detract from it.
She obviously has nothing to hide.
When you bother to take the time to actually read the deposition transcript and study the language in Broaddrick’s responses to questions put to her by Paula Jones’ attorneys, the impression you are left with is not someone who giving simple, straightforward answers to such questions, but one who is trying her best to avoid answering them and evade the truth as much as possible by pretending she doesn’t understand.
Ask yourself if someone would respond in this manner if the actual truth was that nothing happened between her and Bill Clinton.
Then factor in what she already admitted to the investigators hired by Jones’s attorneys while she was secretly being taped by them without her knowledge, and factor in the reality that she all-but explicitly told them she would willingly commit perjury if they forced her to take part in the Paula Jones case.
Then factor in how Monica Lewinsky behaved the exact same way in the Paula Jones lawsuit by also swearing under oath that nothing happened between her and Bill Clinton, while noting that Lewinsky’s current story admitting a sexual encounter with him is now universally accepted as true.
Then factor in Bill Clinton’s own universally acknowledged perjury in the case in addition to Lewinsky’s, proving that people routinely commit perjury in civil cases in order to protect their privacy.
Then factor in the many witnesses who all insist that Broaddrick confessed to them back in 1978 that Clinton had raped her, including people who saw her bruises and torn clothing from the encounter.
Then factor in the testimony by Judy Stokes, insisting that a crying, distraught Elizabeth Ward Gracen confessed to her that she herself had been raped by Bill Clinton, and then factor in that Gracen herself admits that Clinton was a harsh lip-biter, just as Broaddrick described regarding own encounter with him.
Then factor in the reality that women such as Dolly Kyle Browning admitted that Clinton threatened to “destroy” them in the media if they spoke the truth about even consensual affairs they had with Clinton, and then factor in the desperation that Broaddrick had been under at that time to protect her privacy and that of her family at all costs.
Then factor in the reality that Broaddrick insisted to the FBI that she lied on her sworn affidavit and that she had in fact been raped by Clinton, all the while knowing that she would have faced a far greater practical threat of criminal charges if she lied to them as opposed to lying to Paula Jones’ private lawyers.
Then factor in the reality that Broaddrick has documented evidence of being at the hotel on the day in question where she claims the rape took place, then factor in the notion that Clinton has never offered an alibi for that day.
Then factor in the notion that Bill Clinton refused to even directly deny Broaddrick’s allegations during the two and only times the question was ever put to him or even alluded to.
Factor in the timeline of all the evidence and consider it as a whole.
After considering all of those factors and more, what does common sense tell you about Broaddrick’s statements made under oath in the Paula Jones case as to if these particular statements were truthful or not?
As with all cases, evidence is to be assessed as a whole in order to determine how its individual elements are to be considered. Cherry-picking single bits of evidence divorced form the larger whole and its full context can always lead to whichever predetermined conclusion a biased investigator wishes to arrive at.
Some of Broaddrick’s critics will repeatedly cite the affidavit as conclusive “proof” that Bill Clinton did not rape her, knowing full well that their target audience is unfamiliar with the larger, full set of facts surrounding the case, and thus will easily be duped by the argument.
One is not obligated to make any final judgements either way regarding an event they were not a part of. But if you dismiss Broaddrick’s claims simply and purely because she once made statements under oath denying her claims before later retracting them and admitting that she perjured herself, then it is conclusive proof that you are incapable of assessing evidence and drawing reasonable conclusions from what it all signifies when you consider a case as a whole.
Her story has been no more “inconsistent” than Monica Lewinsky’s.
As with Lewinsky, the proof of Broaddrick’s claim remains considerable. That is why even many politically liberal outlets are not so quick to dismiss her claims.