Establishing Danney Williams as Bill Clinton's son.

Factual Questions
1

There are frequent stories on the Drudgereport that President Clinton fathered a son named Danney Williams whose mother was a prostitute in Little Rock. I’m not going to link to the stories because they’re not relevant to the question that I would like answered.

Obviously, if President Clinton were to submit to a DNA test, that would be the end of it. Who else’s DNA could be used to establish Clinton as Danney’s father? Roger Clinton is President Clinton’s half brother; they had the same mother. Would his DNA be of any use? If it were usable, would it be less accurate than President Clinton’s and if so, by how much? What about Chelsea’s or her daughter’s DNA? Would a cousin on their mother’s side be any help?

Please remember, this is GQ. I’m am not interested in debating who Williams’ father actually is or the practicality of obtaining any of the Clinton family DNA. I just want to know whose DNA would be useful and how useful it would be based upon the “distance” between President Clinton and the DNA donor.

2

And you couldn’t just have asked generically which family member’s DNA can be used to determine paternity, without throwing in the “Clinton/prostitute/illegitimate son” angle?

3

I suppose that I could have but then I would have had to explain “Suppose X has a half brother Y on his mother’s side” and “X also has a daughter C and a granddaughter V” etc.

I am interested in this particular story but I’d like to stick to the scientific facts of the case.

4

Chelsea Clintons DNA would suffice. That is after first verification that Bill is actually her father. Or else the answer will come as negative.

5

IIRC, this came up in the context of the Lewinsky scandal. As I recall it, in the context of establishing the “blue dress” provenance, there was enough detail of Clinton’s DNA such that they could match against that kid. A magazine ran the test and proved that the kid was not related to Clinton.

Unless I’m confusing this with some other alleged love child.

6

Which will stop the Clinton haters desperate to find something, *anything *to hang on the pair… not at all.

7

[Moderating]

I think this is a legitimate GQ question. This is particularly inappropriate as a first response in GQ.

This being GQ, keep political commentary out of it. This is a question about genetics. Posters who politicize this thread may be subject to a warning. Yes, I know the question was originally raised for political reasons, but the OP is asking about the scientific issues. Keep your responses strictly to that.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

8

All due respect, I wrote specifically thinking it was relevant to the OP’s post, which is half a genetic question and half very thinly veiled politicizing. If the OP is too political, perhaps the topic should be moved instead.

9

[Moderating]

The OP says very specifically he is only interested in information on DNA. You don’t need to place your own interpretation on it. If you felt it was misplaced, then you should have reported it rather than make a political comment.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Moderator Instructions]

I will take a very dim view of remarks that do not address the genetics question specifically. Thank you for your compliance.

10

Snopes has some discussion of the paternity DNA testing involving Danney Williams here.

11

The link mentions the paternity test was not terribly specific, since if there were a positive, it would only make it 20x to 30x more likely that Bill was the father than that it was any random Caucasian. But it is not clear what the negative result means. From what little I know of DNA testing, if the results do NOT match as is the case, then it is pretty close to 100% definite that Bill is not the father.

12

I don’t see the problem. Bill won’t submit, Chelsea could. If Chelsea doesn’t, perhaps another close relative of Bill’s will.

Whether they submit or not probably depends on what they feel they have to gain vs. what they might have to lose. There’s probably no desire to address the claims that an illegitimate son exists by either side.

I think the scary thing is that if Bill really did have sex with a prostitute, he did so without protection. In 1985, when the Herpes scare was in full swing. Makes me disbelieve the story.

13

Not just the herpes scare. I turned 18 in 1985, and was still a virgin, mostly because of HIV. I wanted to be a full grown adult able to get my own condoms, medical advice, etc.-- plus the idea of telling the four parents in my life I had HIV or was pregnant was more than I could stomach.

Anyway, for relative DNA matches, you want, ideally for a man, a male relative on the paternal side. For the paternal side, they match the Y-chromosome, which is very slow-mutating so that related men have pretty much have the same Y-chromosome. FWIW, in establishing maternal relationships, they match mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother, and is also very slow-mutating.

Chelsea would have neither a Y, nor mitochondrial DNA in common with her father, but her DNA could still be useful in showing a familial relationship, it would just have to be a more complex test. Matching Ys or mDNA are just easier tests. Like someone said, though, there’s always the possibility he didn’t father her. She looks too much like him, and I’m pretty sure he’s her father, but for legal reasons, I’ll bet her DNA would not be enough to fully establish paternity.

If he and his brother share the same father, you can match the Y, but if they share the same mother, you are out of luck: different Ys, and even though the brothers share mDNA, Clinton wouldn’t be expected to share it with the child in question.

A half-uncle would share some DNA, but I’m not sure how much, and whether it’s enough to rule Clinton in to the exclusion of enough other men to order a test on him.

This is the legal thicket: ultimately, you do need a test of Bill Clinton’s own DNA. A match that says Chelsea is the person’s half-sister is probably good enough to get a court order requiring Clinton to submit to a DNA test. A test from a half-brother with the same Y-chromosome that showed a Y-chromosome match (but that ruled out that brother himself) would probably also be enough, but something saying simply that the half-brother could not be excluded as a relative, without the Y match, might not be enough to compel a test from Clinton.

We don’t know what the mother has to say. Sometimes the mother’s affidavit is compelling all by itself (“He has a birthmark that looks like Florida on his junk”), and a judge will order the test based on that alone. Sometimes the alleged father has rebuttal evidence (“I had the flu the week she claims we took a road trip together, and here is a letter from my doctor at the time, and photocopies from my records”). This is where partial matches usually tip the scale in favor of getting the test done.

Disclaimer: IANAL, but I have helped people wade through the legal waters of establishing paternity when I did social work.

I see someone else has already answered the question of whether the man in question is Clinton’s son. I still wanted to go ahead and address the original query regarding what would be enough evidence to prove paternity.

14

When FtGKid2 did the 23andme DNA test, one of the family members in the DB* that matched is approximately a third cousin. Later, an uncle also had the test done and both turned up.

Note that these are labeled as “possibly related”.

So even a cousin would be good enough for a “news” site that would be into this.

But keep in mind, such “possibly related” matches could be explained by alternate who-did-who a couple of generations or more back. To actually prove paternity requires DNA from both individuals and the other parent. (The latter’s needed to rule out certain exceptional/alternate situations.)

  • It is optional to allow your name to be listed in such matches, btw.
15

On the assumption that Rivkah has answered the question, I’d just like to say I enjoyed that the Snopes article points out that Drudge is pushing a story that he himself reported back in the 1990’s wasn’t true.

16

Of course, the scenario that might compel a DNA test would be contesting a will; IIRC, a child does not need to be legitimate or acknowledged to claim a share of an inheritance.
(Would the deceased have to acknowledge the relationship to exclude someone from their will?)

From the stories about Bill Clinton, and assuming too Primary Colors was not an extreme exaggeration, I find it hard to believe Clinton actually needed to hire a hooker.

17

Police sometimes get DNA from coke cans, drink glasses etc. Or even surfaces like car doors or surfaces in a house.

I recall a case on 20/20 news magazine where the Police watched a suspect eating lunch at a fast food restaurant. They obtained the suspect’s discarded coke can from the trash basket and submitted it to the lab for analysis.

A similar approach could be used with Clinton. Items he drank from can be collected if they are discarded in a public area.

18

Thank you for the response RivkahChaya. How far up the father’s paternal line is considered “conclusive”? If President Clinton’s grandfather had a brother, and everyone down the line had sons, would the Y chromosome be similar enough that we could say within a 99% of certainty that Clinton and Williams were related? Just how resistant to change is the Y chromosome?

19

I don’t know that, but I’m pretty sure a Y-chromosome match was involved using a living descendant and the Richard III skeleton (“The King in the Car Park”). Now, it’s not just a matter of the Y being resistant to change, but the rate of change being known, but at any rate, a 500 year gap and a non-direct descendant apparently was good enough. There was probably more to it than just the Y-chromosome, though.

Side note: I REALLY wish they’d compare the Ys on those boy skeletons buried in Westminster as the Princes in the Tower with the Richard DNA. The last time those skeletons were examined was the 1930s, before DNA was discovered.

20

These are used in preliminary proceedings to get warrants, get indictments, etc. Once the actual case gets going, an official monitored DNA test is done.

DNA collected in such an uncontrolled way can be argued against as possibly coming from the server or other source and other avenues. So the prosecutor will try to rule all those out by having an official test done.

Judges are hesitant to order a DNA test merely due to police suspicions. But once things really get going, a defendant can be ordered to give up DNA samples, etc.

(Similar rules apply to fingerprints. Getting fingerprints off a pop can is helpful to the investigation, but isn’t the “official” fingerprints that would be presented in court.)