Elections

Podesta Emails Show Campaign Discussions Of Juanita Broaddrick ‘Slimefest’

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

Hacked emails released by WikiLeaks show that Hillary Clinton’s lawyer provided information to her campaign’s chairman, John Podesta, on how to deal with the “slimefest” that erupted earlier this year after Bill Clinton’s rape accuser, Juanita Broaddrick, resurfaced after years of silence.

“Dear John, Pursuant to our call last night, here are four documents which I mentioned,” begins the Jan. 7 email from Clinton attorney David Kendall to Podesta, whose Gmail account was hacked. (RELATED: Podesta Suggested Coordinating With State Dept. To ‘Hold’ Hillary’s Emails With Obama)

That was a day after Broaddrick ended years of silence about her alleged rape by Clinton.

“I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away,” she wrote.

Broaddrick has claimed that Clinton raped her in a Little Rock hotel room in 1978. She has also said Clinton bit her lip during the assault, and upon leaving told her: “You better get some ice for that.” She has also claimed that Hillary Clinton made a veiled threat to her several weeks after the incident.

The Clinton campaign has largely been silent in response to the resurfaced allegations.

Kendall shared four documents with Podesta in the email, which the campaign chairman then forwarded to Jennifer Palmieri and Brian Fallon, Clinton’s communications director and press secretary, respectively.

“The first is the affidavit and cover letter from her lawyer. This document makes clear that Broaddrick is indeed ‘Jane Doe #5’ in the Paula Jones suit,” Kendall wrote.

The document is dated Jan. 2, 1998 and includes Broaddrick’s name.

Kendall then made reference to releasing the document publicly.

“I believe this has been unsealed but before we release it publicly, I’d need to check,” he wrote.

In the affidavit, Broaddrick said that in Nov. 1997 she was approached by private investigators working for Paula Jones, who was then suing Clinton for sexual harassment. Broaddrick said that she declined to talk to the investigators but that she was subpoenaed. She denied in an affidavit taken after the subpoena that Clinton made any unwanted sexual advances towards her.

The second document provided by Kendall is redacted copy of the same affidavit which has Broaddrick’s name deleted. The document is public, the longtime Clinton lawyer noted.

“Broaddrick’s lawyers made a motion to quash her deposition subpoena, and that motion was denied, and she testified on January 9, 1998, at which time she reaffirmed the accuracy of her affidavit,” Kendall wrote.

He also informed Podesta that he was unable to find a copy of a deposition Broaddrick gave in the Jones sexual harassment case. But Kendall says Kenneth Starr’s Office of the Independent Counsel described her as saying that “if she previously had said that the President had sexually assaulted her, ‘it was untrue.'”

The third document Kendall shared was a history of the Paula Jones litigation taken from the Starr Report. (FLASHBACK: Three Explosive Details About The Clinton-Lewinsky Affair)

Kendall wrote that Starr gave Broaddrick immunity in order to “protect her from any prosecution for perjury if she now changed her story.”

“Voila! She did, disavowing her sworn affidavit and sworn deposition testimony,” Kendall wrote.

Kendall also shared a copy of a news article containing his comments to NBC reporter Lisa Myers for her 1999 “Dateline” interview with Broaddrick.

In that interview, which was conducted on Jan. 20, 1999 but delayed until after Clinton’s impeachment hearing, Broaddrick discussed her alleged rape for the first time in public.

“Any allegation that the president assaulted Mrs. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that, we’re not going to comment,” Kendall said in response at the time.

“I repeated that statement on a few occasions (mostly in 1999), but have never varied it. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can provide about this slimefest,” Kendall wrote to Podesta.

Broaddrick has said recently that she denied that she was raped in the affidavit because she did not want to relive her rape.

Reached for comment on Saturday, Broaddrick said she welcomed the release of anything that the Clinton team has.

“I hope that anything connected to me or my statements will be released. I have nothing to hide,” she told TheDC.

“They did not want these truths to come back up in the campaign,” she added.

Wikileaks had released just over 11,000 Podesta emails in eight separate batches as of Saturday. The group has claimed that it received as many as 50,000 emails in all. The FBI is investigating the Podesta hack. Federal agencies have said they believe that Russian hackers are behind the hack and several others carried out against Democratic operatives.

This post has been updated with comments from Juanita Broaddrick.

Follow Chuck on Twitter