Hillary Clinton ‘beat Bill with book’ over scandal

Hillary Clinton alleged to have lashed out at husband Bill. Picture: Getty

According to former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower, a maid who went into their bedroom to clean in 1998 was confronted with the bloodstained bedding.

Mr Clinton publicly claimed he ran into the bathroom door but former ushers claim that Mrs Clinton battered him with a book from the bedside table.

Former aides also revealed that they observed Mr Clinton got closer and closer to Ms Lewinsky from 1995 onwards – three years before their affair became public.

The unflattering portrait of the Clintons is in a new book that says they fought “pitched battles” in front of staff.

Florist Ronn Payne said that she once saw two butlers listening in on a “vicious” row in the West Sitting Hall.

She said: “All of a sudden, he heard the first lady bellow: ‘Goddamn b******!’ at the president – and then he heard someone throw a heavy object across the room. The rumour among the staff was that she threw a lamp.”

Ms Brower, a former correspondent for Bloomberg News, writes the account in The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.

She interviewed 100 former members of the famously secretive White House residence staff as well as former first ladies Laura and Barbara Bush and Rosalynn Carter.

She writes that butlers saw Mr Clinton and Ms Lewinsky, a White House intern, start to get close from 1995 onwards when they would be seen together in the family movie theatre.

Such meetings were so frequent that staff began to tell each other when they had had a “Lewinsky sighting”, Ms Brower writes. The night Mrs Clinton hit her husband he publicly claimed that he “hurt himself running into the bathroom door in the middle of the night”.

But one worker told Ms Brower: “We’re sure [Hillary Clinton] clocked him with a book. There were at least 20 books on the bedside table, including the Bible.”

Ms Brower writes: “For three or four months in 1998, the president slept on a sofa in a private study attached to their bedroom on the second floor. Most of the women on the staff thought he got what he deserved.”

The book also says Barack Obama was uncomfortable being waited on by staff when he took office – as he had only just paid off his student loans.

Nancy Reagan ruled her husband with an iron fist and used to nag him when he would stay up to watch the 11pm news, ordering him to go to bed as if he were a naughty child.

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