Clinton accuser retells story in backdrop of court drama

WASHINGTON — Two decades after she publicly accused Bill Clinton of raping her, Juanita Broaddrick traveled to the nation’s capital to again tell her story and to highlight her support for Brett Kavanaugh.

It’s a story Clinton categorically denies — his legal team called it “false and outrageous” when it first surfaced in 1999. Kavanaugh’s defenders in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere resurrected the claim, arguing that there’s a double standard when the finger of blame is pointed at Democrats.

On Saturday afternoon, while senators were debating Kavanaugh’s fitness for the nation’s highest court, the former Van Buren nursing-home owner addressed conservative activists at the Trump Hotel. The topic was “#MeToo and Media.”

She was among speakers at last week’s Women for America First Summit. Other speakers included White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Republican National Committee chairman Ronna McDaniel, and President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

Saturday’s crowd listened as Broaddrick recounted that Clinton, then Arkansas’ attorney general, raped her during a 1978 meeting at the Camelot Inn in downtown Little Rock.

Outside the meeting room Saturday, her self-published autobiography was easily outdistancing Trump’s The Art of the Deal and a stack of other books for sale.

In an interview, Broaddrick, 75, praised Kavanaugh, portraying him as more credible than his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

“I cried when he testified. When he talked about his little girl praying for Dr. Ford, I could just see real pain. I could not see real pain with Dr. Ford,” Broaddrick said.

Sitting in the Trump Hotel’s atrium earlier in the week, Broaddrick paused during an interview to shake hands and make small talk with passers-by who had recognized her and wanted to meet her.

She’s become accustomed to such interruptions.

During a previous visit to the Trump Hotel, “I was over there sitting with some friends who had brought me here with the Women for Trump and all of a sudden this beautiful gentleman, Ryan Zinke, who is secretary of the interior, comes up with his beautiful wife Lola,” she said. “He gave me a high-five and says ‘You’re my hero.’ I could’ve fainted. I had no idea the number of people who have been affected by what I say. You know, it’s just overwhelming. I can’t even begin to tell you.”

She posted a picture of the meeting on social media; her Twitter account has more than 113,000 followers. Sometimes, she’s recog-

nized in airports. The people are always gracious, she added. At Saturday’s event, Broaddrick found a sympathetic audience. Some, including Debra Drake of San Diego, held copies of Broaddrick’s book as they prepared to hear her speak.

“We’ve spent time with

her. She’s a wonderful woman and we believe her story, and I think it’s high time that the world is now realizing that she should have been heard a long time ago,” Drake added.

Sharing the story is easier now than it used to be, Broaddrick said.

In 1999, “Gosh, it was awful. It was just so degrading,” she said.

It wasn’t much better in 2016 during the presidential campaign between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She recalled struggling to get through a video recording with the conservative Breitbart News Network at the Watergate building shortly before the election.

“Why is it still so painful?” she had asked the interviewer then, after pausing and dabbing her eyes with tissue.

“A 73-year-old woman being filmed crying. You know, it was truly embarrassing. I don’t do that anymore,” she said. “The more I talk about it, the easier it is to talk about it. It’ll never be easy, but it’s easier.”

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was “100 percent sure” that Kavanaugh had attacked her at a party during the summer of 1982.

Broaddrick also expresses complete certainty about her account.

On Jan. 2, 1998, she signed an affidavit denying that Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances. That was false, she said, an unsuccessful attempt to steer clear of litigation filed by another of Clinton’s accusers, Paula Jones.

What really happened during her 1978 encounter with Clinton was horrific, she said.

“I can remember everything about it because I had nightmares about it for years, had panic attacks, would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn’t breathe. [I] would have to go outside and just sit for a little while,” she said.

These days, she shares her stories and is believed, she said, at least in certain circles.

“The support is tremendous, but I’m speaking to conservative groups. I’m not speaking to liberals,” she said.

Her fee is modest, by Washington standards: $500 plus traveling expenses, including airfare out of Fort Smith Regional Airport.

Recently, she’s addressed groups in Newport Beach, Calif.; Fountain Hills, Ariz.; St. Louis, and Ruidoso, N.M., she said. She’ll be speaking in Raleigh, N.C., later this month.

Asked how she feels about being back in the spotlight, Broaddrick said: “I’d probably rather not be.”

There’s yardwork piling up back in Arkansas, she said.

“I haven’t mowed my grass. I’ve got 25 acres and I mow about 10. I haven’t been on the tennis court in about a month now,” she said.

By sharing her story, she hopes to help other survivors, she said.

Although she worked to defeat the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Broaddrick said, she agreed with one of Hillary Clinton’s campaign Tweets: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”