Bill Clinton Paid Paula Jones $850,000 in Hush Money — Was Never Charged

 

Former President Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones a whopping $850,000 to keep her quiet over sexual harassment claims — but was never arrested for it.

The case stands in stark contrast to reports that former President Donald Trump will be arrested on Tuesday for an alleged $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 over an alleged sexual encounter that the two had in 2006.

Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to charges over the payment in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 1998, the Washington Post reported, “President Clinton reached an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones yesterday, agreeing to pay her $850,000 to drop the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to the worst political crisis of his career and only the third presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.”

“Just hours before the settlement was inked yesterday, Starr sent new evidence to the House Judiciary Committee stemming from a witness in the Jones case, Kathleen E. Willey, who also accused Clinton of an unwelcome sexual advance,” the report continued. “The extraordinary case came to an extraordinary finale, with the defendant agreeing to pay $850,000 even though the plaintiff originally only asked for $700,000 when she filed suit — and even though the case was dismissed without a trial.”

The report continued, “the case opened a Pandora’s box of allegations about his past sex life and made him the first president ever interrogated under oath as a defendant in a civil lawsuit or before a grand jury as a possible criminal target. Jones v. Clinton also yielded a historic decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled 9 to 0 last year that even the chief executive can be sued. And it was the resulting search for evidence that led Jones’s lawyers to Monica S. Lewinsky and the chain of events that prompted Starr’s report to Congress alleging that Clinton committed 11 impeachable offenses.”

The New York Times reported in 1999:

Clinton Administration officials said a check for $850,000, the amount agreed to in November to settle the case, was being sent by overnight mail to Ms. Jones and her lawyers. The officials, who asked that their names not be used, said that a little more than half of the money, $475,000, came from an insurance policy against civil liability the President held with Chubb Group Insurance.

Most, if not all, of the remainder, was withdrawn from a blind trust in the name of Mrs. Clinton, which officials said last year had assets of slightly more than $1 million.

Clinton never faced criminal charges for his behavior.

If Trump is charged, he will be the first former president in US history to ever be arrested after leaving office. He is also the current leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has called for a congressional investigation into a “politically motivated prosecution.”

“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” McCarthy tweeted.