RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the post-debate analysis of Trump/s spot-on rebuttal of Team Clinton’s exploitation of the 2005 Trump “locker room” remarks, Megyn Kelly sparred with Trump manager Kelly Anne Conway over Trump’s trotting out of some of Bill’s “bimbo eruptions” in a pre-debate press conference. In what will undoubtedly be Team Clinton’s defense, Megyn Kelly claimed that Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick denied any rape in a 1998 affidavit.

Close, but no cigar, Megyn. The story is a little more complicated than that. It was not that her story was false as Megyn Kelly implied. Like many rape victims, Broaddrick felt no one would believe her and she simply wanted to put it behind her and not be forced to relive it, particularly in any legal setting: she resisted interviews, fearing no one would believe her charge against a popular President. As Breitbart reported in 2014:

In January of 1999, a month after Clinton’s impeachment by the House — and in the midst of the Senate trial grappling with whether Monica Lewinsky should testify — Broaddrick finally agreed to meet NBC’s Lisa Myers for an interview… Broaddrick’s decision to go forward with an interview came after “she contemplated all the layers of tawdry rumor about her that had multiplied in the wake of the other, larger scandal involving the president.”…

Broaddrick continued to refuse to cave to the media’s requests for interviews. In 1997, she was subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys, yet she continued to deny the assault.

“I didn’t want to be forced to testify about one of the most horrific events in my life,” she told Myers. “I didn’t want to go through it again.”

Broaddrick still refused to come forward when Kathleen Willey accused the President of unwanted sexual advances, saying that she “wasn’t brave enough to do it.”

When Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s office approached her in April of 1998, however, Broaddrick finally agreed to provide the details of Clinton’s alleged sexual assault, saying she feared lying to a federal grand jury. Starr would also grant her immunity from prosecution for perjury….

 

Starr never pursued Broaddrick’s allegations, however, because he was investigating charges of obstruction of justice against Clinton. Since Broaddrick was not alleging that the President urged her to lie, her allegations of the assault never went forward.

Broaddrick feared the retaliation of Team Clinton as well as the glare of a disbelieving media. Res she signed an affidavit denying the rape, again trying to avoid being forced to relive the horrible experience. But she told Starr and his office the affidavit was false. Starr didn’t pursue the rape story not because it was false, but because it was not part of his obstruction of justice investigation.

At the Trump press conference, Broaddrick, tired of being accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and afraid that her attacker would once again occupy the White House with the woman who orchestrated the attacks on Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions”, repeated her accusation:

“Actions speak louder than words,” Broaddrick said. “Mr. Trump may have said some bad words but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don’t think there’s any comparison.”

Broaddrick, who has said Hillary threatened her, appeared with fellow Clinton sexual assault victims Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey in an interview at presidential suite of the historic Watergate and related the tale of Bill’s assaults and their fear of Hillary’s retaliation:

In an exclusive video interview at the presidential suite of the historic Watergate Hotel, the victims of Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual assault — Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones — got together for the first time in person to express their personal fear of Hillary Clinton and to warn voters that Clinton does not stand for women’s issues.

The three women, who say their lives were forever changed by their experiences with the Clintons, used words like “terrified” and “frightened” to describe their feelings about the prospects of a Hillary Clinton presidency…

“We were not willing participants,” Broaddrick said. “These were crimes.” In a separate interview, Broaddrick shared her own story of brutal sexual assault which she says Bill Clinton perpetrated against her…

Later in this interview, Jones, Willey, and Broaddrick expressed fear at how a potential President Hillary Clinton would use the power of her office.

“It terrifies me and it should terrify all women,” Jones stated about Hillary’s presidential ambitions.

“It should terrify all men and women,” Willey added. “She will annihilate any enemy. All of her enemies. Anybody who has spoken against her. Across the board for I don’t know how many years. She will get rid of them.”

“No woman who advocates for women attacks the victims of sexual assault be it by her husband or anybody else,” said Willey.

The women argued that the term “enabler” best describes Hillary Clinton’s role in her husband’s alleged sexual crimes.

“There is not a better word for any of this,” stated Broaddrick. “Especially when she threatened me personally.”

Willey added, “She is complicit in everything that he has done.”

“She had helped him do it,” asserted Jones.

“She has turned a blind eye for decades against what he has done” stated Broaddrick. “And she has been the main one to help cover this up. And go after us.”

Megyn Kelly, who raised the issue of Trump’s views on women in the first GOP primary debate, could ask Juanita Broaddrick to appear on her show and doubt her credibility in person. Does Megyn Kelly object to Trump’s “objectification” of women and not Bill Clinton’s actually assaulting them?

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.