Troopergate is the popular name for a political controversy that emerged in the 1990s in which several Arkansas State Troopers claimed that they had arranged sexual liaisons for Arkansas governor Bill Clinton during his time in office (1979–81, 1983–92) and had helped deceive his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Core allegations
The allegations by state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry were first reported by David Brock in the conservative magazine American Spectator, in a piece entitled "His Cheatin' Heart" The same four troopers were also interviewed and their charges written about at length by the Los Angeles Times in a story published in December 1993 a day after the Spectator story came out. They also spoke on air to CNN in the same month.
The core allegations that the troopers made were that, while on official duty, they: Two of the troopers said they had been offered federal jobs via the Clinton administration if they would maintain their silence. This reference was cited by Paula Jones in her May 1994 sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton. According to Gennifer Flowers's deposition in the suit, she claimed that Clinton told her to contact Larry Patterson or Roger Perry to communicate.
The lawsuit, Jones v. Clinton, was initially dismissed, whereupon Jones appealed. In 1998, Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000, the entire amount of her claim, but without an apology, in exchange for her agreement to drop the appeal. Meanwhile, the Jones matter had begun a chain of events that led to exposure and instantiation of the Lewinsky scandal.
Then in 1994 and 1995, Jerry Falwell paid $200,000 to Citizens for Honest Government, who in turn paid two Arkansas state troopers who had made allegations supporting a conspiracy about Vincent Foster in the Clinton Chronicles video. The two troopers, Roger Perry and Larry Patterson, also were paid after making their allegations in the Jones-Clinton trial. In 2005, Patterson was convicted of making false statements to the FBI about an unrelated incident.
Brock apology
In a 1998 article for Esquire magazine, Brock said he wished he had never written the original Spectator story. Smith says he eventually paid about $80,000 on the case, including a $5,000 payment to Brock.