Behind Trump's Decision to Go Negative Against Bill Clinton

Donald Trump has dug out dirt for his latest campaign moves, bringing up Bill Clinton's old sex scandals in an Instagram video posted Monday.

The fact that Trump's campaign started zeroing in on Bill Clinton's history with women may not come as a shock; Trump has been hinting at the former president's past on the campaign trail and one of his best-known confidantes has been doing so for years.

Roger Stone, a close friend and sometimes adviser of Trump, co-authored a book called "The Clintons' War on Women" that was published last October.

Trump called Bill Clinton "the worst abuser of women" in an interview with CNN earlier this month and used a similar line during a campaign speech in Spokane, Washington.

He continued: "Hillary Clinton's husband abused women more than any man that we know of in the history of politics, right? She's married to a man who was the worst abuser in the history of politics. She's married to a man who hurt many women."

The connection Trump is trying to make between the former secretary of state and her husband's alleged incidents with women is that she was his "enabler."

"Hillary was an enabler and she treated these women horribly. Just remember this and some of those women were destroyed not by him but by the way that Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down," Trump said in the Spokane speech.

One of the clearest actions that could be seen as working against the women making claims about her husband was her argument that the women's claims were part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." She maintained that claim for months during the Monica Lewinsky scandal but in her 2003 autobiography she admitted that "I might have phrased my point more artfully, but I stand by the characterization of [Kenneth] Starr's investigation."

For her part, Hillary Clinton is actively avoiding engaging in the back-and-forth.

During an interview with CNN in Illinois last week, Hillary Clinton was asked if she felt compelled to defend her husband's honor or their relationship.

"Not at all," she said. "I know that that's exactly what he is fishing for and, you know, I'm not going to be responding."

Trump's Latest AttackIn the new campaign video released Monday on Instagram, audio of three women's voices can be heard while a picture of the former president is shown over the White House.

Trump did not specifically name the women in the video but the recordings used have all been publicly released.

The first is Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who was at the center of the scandal that resulted in Bill Clinton's impeachment and eventual acquittal.

The second is Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who made accusations against Bill Clinton, and the third is Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas resident who claimed Bill Clinton assaulted her when he was attorney general of the state.

The real estate mogul has said that he thinks it's necessary to go negative with his campaign.

"I don't like doing that," he said of the Instagram video, "but I have no choice when she hits me on things I just have no choice so you have to do it, it's unfair."

Trump, speaking to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Monday, said of the Clintons: "You know, they're dirty players, they've been dirty players historically and I have to fight back the way I have to fight back."

Vince Foster SuicideTrump also raised questions about the suicide of a Clinton family confidante, former deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, who was found dead in what was ruled a suicide in 1993.

Trump was asked about Foster's death in an interview with The Washington Post that happened last week but was not publicly shared until Monday, bringing up decades-old conspiracy theories among some on the far right and far left. Trump called Foster's death "very fishy."

"He had intimate knowledge of what was going on... he knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide," Trump said before noting that he doesn't bring Foster's death "up because I don't know enough to really discuss it."

Foster's death was ruled a suicide by multiple investigations including ones conducted by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the United States Park Police. Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr issued a 114-page report in 1997 confirming the outcome of the earlier investigations.

Hillary Clinton's team has not directly responded to the specific claims and has refused to engage Trump on the allegations.

"I think it's bad strategy," Hillary Clinton's campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told Bloomberg on Monday, adding that "it was two decades ago."

Claims Made By Juanita BroaddrickTrump has made other efforts to smear his likely opponent in November. Trump brought up Juanita Broaddrick during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, classifying her claims as "rape."

Broaddrick's voice was heard in the Instagram video, where she says: "He starts to bite on my top lip as I tried to pull away from him."

That quote was taken from a 1999 interview she did with Dateline where she detailed what she claimed happened between she and the then-Arkansas attorney general during an alleged interaction in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1978. Broaddrick had denied those allegations in a 1998 lawsuit but recanted her denial in 1999.

No criminal charges were ever filed in the case and Bill Clinton's personal lawyer denied her claims as "absolutely false" in 1999 when they were made public.

Kathleen Willey's ClaimsKathleen Willey was a volunteer at the White House when the alleged assault supposedly happened in the Oval Office in November 1993. She claimed that the then-first-term president kissed her and fondled her.

She first publicly disclosed the claims on "60 Minutes" in 1998 during the Lewinsky scandal, and then again in 2007, when Hillary Clinton was first running for president, Willey released a book called "Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton," and she went on Fox News to promote the book.

"No woman should be subjected to it. It was an assault," she said during that interview, the audio of which was repurposed by Trump in his Instagram video.

During the impeachment proceedings that started in late 1998, Bill Clinton denied ever assaulting Willey.

"When she came to see me she was clearly upset. I did to her what I have done to scores and scores of men and women who have worked for me or been my friends over the years. I embraced her, I put my arms around her, I may have even kissed her on the forehead. There was nothing sexual about it," he said in his testimony.

The U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel had concerns about the veracity of Willey's statements since she had lied to the FBI and in its final report, the Counsel said that there was insufficient evidence to think the then-President's testimony was false.

The Paula Jones LawsuitIn the Paula Jones case, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit stemming from an alleged incident that happened in an Arkansas hotel when Bill Clinton was governor in 1991. Jones filed the suit against the then-president in 1994 and the case lasted for four years but was finally settled when Bill Clinton agreed to pay her $850,000 to drop the case.

Bill Clinton's attorney Bob Bennett released a statement when the deal was released, saying that Bill Clinton "remains certain that the plaintiff's claims are baseless." The deal did not include an apology.

"The president has decided he is not prepared to spend one more hour on this matter," Bennett said in the statement, according to CNN.

"Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to be an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any party," Bennett said.