What is Paula Jones's Net Worth?
Paula Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who has a net worth of $700 thousand. Paula Jones is best known for her sexual harassment lawsuits against US President Bill Clinton. Jones claimed that she was escorted to Clinton's room in the Excelsior Hotel in 1991 and he propositioned her and exposed himself. Jones' case was linked to the Monica Lewinsky case and helped lead to Clinton being impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998. Significantly, her case prompted Counsel Ken Starr to widen his investigation into Clinton's earlier financial relations with Whitewater Land Company, and also led to the perjury charges that resulted in Clinton's impeachment. After making it to the Supreme Court, the case of Clinton v. Jones was settled out of court in 1998, while Clinton's impeachment ended in a not-guilty verdict in 1999. As part of their settlement, Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000. Jones went on to be a reality television personality and centerfold.
Early Life
Paula Jones was born as Paula Rosalee Corbin on September 17, 1966 in Lonoke, Arkansas to Bobby and Delmar. The daughter of a Church of the Nazarene minister, she was brought up within the congregation. For her education, Jones went to high school in Carlisle, Arkansas, and then briefly attended a secretarial institution in Little Rock. In 1991, she became a civil servant when she joined the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission.
Initial Lawsuit Against Clinton
In 1994, Jones came forward with sexual harassment allegations against Bill Clinton. Swearing under oath, she told of the time in May of 1991 when she was attending the Annual Governor's Quality Conference at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel. Jones claimed that an Arkansas State Police Trooper told her to report to the hotel room of Clinton, who was at the time the governor of the state. In his room, Jones alleged that Clinton both propositioned and exposed himself to her. Just two days before the expiration of the statute of limitations on the case, Jones filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, now US President.
At first, Jones was represented in her suit by Washington, DC lawyers Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert Davis; meanwhile, her press spokesperson was conservative California commentator Susan Carpenter-McMillan. Showing up on a number of prominent television talk shows, Carpenter-McMillan inveighed against Clinton, calling him un-American and a philanderer. For his part, Clinton requested summary judgment, which was granted due to Jones's inability to demonstrate any damages she had incurred. Jones subsequently appealed the dismissal, while Clinton's defense team disputed the right for Jones to bring a private civil suit against a sitting president for an event that happened prior to the presidency.
JAMAL A. WILSON
AFP/ Getty Images
Clinton v. Jones
Following the various civil suits and appeals that made it through the US District Court and Court of Appeals between 1994 and early 1996, Jones's case reached the US Supreme Court in the spring of 1997. That summer, Jones's attorneys resigned after disagreeing with Jones over the adequacy of her results in the case. Jones went on to be represented by the conservative legal group the Rutherford Institute, as well as by a Dallas-based law firm. Following a dismissal requested by Clinton and a countervailing appeal from Jones, the two parties settled out of court in November of 1998 with $850,000 paid to Jones to drop the case. Early the next year, a judge ruled that Jones would only receive $200,000 from the settlement, with the remainder of the money paying for her legal expenses. Shortly after this, the same judge found that Clinton gave a misleading testimony during the case, putting him in civil contempt of court. He was consequently ordered to pay $1,202 to the court and $90,000 to Jones's attorneys. Later, the day before leaving the White House in early 2001, Clinton's Arkansas law license was suspended for five years.
Monica Lewinsky Scandal
Beyond her own case, Jones was also centrally involved in Clinton's scandal with Monica Lewinsky. This came about in part due to the work of Jones's attorneys, who were intent on demonstrating to the court Clinton's habitual patterns of sexually harassing government employees. The attorneys subpoenaed women they believed carried out affairs with Clinton. Jones became even more integral in the scandal when Clinton was discovered to have committed perjury during his deposition for Jones's lawsuit. It was in that deposition that he denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky, which was soon proven false. The perjury charges eventually became one of the two major elements of Clinton's impeachment, with the other being obstruction of justice. Ultimately, Clinton was found not guilty by the Senate in early 1999.
Later Political Involvement
In 2016, Jones endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential election and attended a rally for him in Little Rock. She also joined him for a press conference where they groused about the Clintons.
Personal Life
Jones wed her first husband, Steve Jones, in 1991; they had met two years earlier in Little Rock. The couple eventually divorced in 1999 amid the fallout from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jones married her second husband, Steven McFadden, in 2001.
