Paula J
ones alleged that in 1991, when she worked for the State of Arkansas' Industrial Development Commission, Clinton propositioned her and exposed himself at a conference in Little Rock. Clinton, Jones claimed, beckoned her to his suite at the hotel where the conference was being held, and after a few minutes of conversation, "unexpectedly reached over to me, took my hand, and pulled me toward him, so that our bodies were close to each other."
Clinton then, she said, made a number of sexual comments ("I love your curves"), slid his hand up her thigh, and tried unsuccessfully to kiss her on the neck until she stopped him. Jones claims she asked, "What are you doing?" and walked away from Clinton, and tried to change the conversation, after which Clinton walked back toward her, "lowered his trousers and underwear, exposed his penis (which was erect) and told me to 'kiss it.'" Jones rejected the overture, to which she claims Clinton replied, "I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do." Before she left, she claims Clinton added, "You are smart. Let's keep this between ourselves."
The witnesses corralled by Jones and Clinton's legal teams, however, are somewhat informative. Jones and her lawyers
offered two witnesses to corroborate the events. Pamela Blackard, who had been working with Jones at the registration desk for the conference, said she noticed Clinton "starting intently" at Jones before the incident, heard a state trooper tell Jones that the governor wanted to see her, and spoke to a "shaking" Jones about what had happened immediately afterward (though it was later revealed that Jones only told Blackard
the most salacious parts of the allegation days after the fact, not immediately). Jones's friend, Debra Ballentine, claimed that Jones showed up unannounced at Ballentine's office later that day and recounted the story.
But multiple other witnesses suggested that Jones was, to the contrary, elated by her interaction with Clinton. Pam Hood, a coworker of Jones's, told
the New Yorker's Jane Mayer in 1997 that the meeting sparked a "bubbly enthusiasm" in Jones similar to her demeanor after seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger visiting Little Rock. Carol Phillips, a switchboard operator at the governor's office, said Jones had a "happy and excited manner" in describing her meeting with Clinton, who Jones called "gentle," "nice," and "sweet." In 1994, her sister and brother-in-law, Charlotte and Mark Brown,
told Sidney Blumenthal — then a New Yorker reporter — that Jones was suing Clinton for "the money," and that, "Paula's suing over a stupid lie, and she knows it."