Hillary Clinton
Hillary ClintonReuters

A former Secret Service agent claims then-First Lady Hillary Clinton regularly had violent outbursts, abusing Secret Service agents verbally and at times physically.

Gary Byrne, who guarded the Clinton’s during Bill Clinton’s tenure as president from 1993 to 2001, says the First Lady had an explosive personality behind closed doors, and treated those around her – including those assigned to protect her – with total contempt.

Clinton, Byrne says, treated the Secret Service detail as “furniture”, and regularly used agents to cover up her husband’s many affairs.

Hillary Clinton’s treatment of agents was so bad, Byrne describes the assignment as “a form of punishment”.

“Most of us knew to brace for her inevitable eruptions. They didn’t happen every day, but behind closed doors we learned about them fast. In public, she was everyone’s best friend. Privately, she was her normal self.”

“She’d explode in my face without reservations or decorum,” writes Byrne, whose book, Crisis of Character will be hitting bookshelves next Tuesday. Clinton reportedly told an agent to “go to hell, and in another instance, said one agent should “Go f--- yourself” after he said “good morning”.

Byrne recalled one incident in which the First Lady hurled a Bible at one agent, striking him in the head.

“She once threw a Bible at an agent on her detail, hitting him in the back of the head.”

Byrne recalls some of Bill Clinton’s most famous affairs, including a relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The former Secret Service agent also confirmed a rumored affair between President Clinton and Eleanor Mondale, daughter of former Vice President and 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale.