An old piece of gossip back in the news cycle: Bill de Blasio’s now-press secretary Karen Hinton once accused Bill Clinton of trying to sleep with her at a Holiday Inn.

The story dates back to the 1980’s, when Hinton met the then-Governor while working in Mississippi politics. Her account was initially published in Michael Isikoff’s 1999 book, Uncovering Clinton, but recently resurfaced in a Capital New York profile.

In 1984, when she was 24 years old and working in Mississippi politics, she met the Arkansas governor at a restaurant following a Greenville fund-raiser.

“When he was introduced to Hinton, Clinton stared at her, eyed her from head to legs, and instantly made her uncomfortable,” Isikoff wrote.

Then Clinton invited Hinton and her colleagues to join them for dinner. He sat beside her and “dazzled” her with policy talk. Then he slipped her a napkin with his Holiday Inn room number on it.

“Here I’d been talking to him for all this time, thinking he was interested in what I had to say and all he’s thinking of is how could he get his hand up my dress,” she told Isikoff. She felt “a bit humiliated.”

Hinton also claimed Clinton struck out often in those years, the Daily News reports.

She told Isikoff that she also knew of another woman that Clinton hit on, who was her friend and “the daughter of a prominent Southern politician.”

Clinton was visiting the father’s house when he asked the woman — who was also in her 20s — if she would sleep with him, according to Hinton in the book.

The woman, according to Hinton, rebuffed the future President.

Interestingly enough, Hinton would go on to work for Andrew Cuomo, New York’s current governor, who has in recent years apparently sworn to annoy de Blasio at least once a day or literally die trying. (She’s also married to Cuomo’s former state operations director, which must make for fun dinner conversation.)

Now it seems, Cuomo’s camp is painting Hinton—who apparently “irritated” Cuomo by taking her current job—as the driving force behind de Blasio’s newfound backbone. In less-than elegant terms, of course.

“There’s a clear belief that Karen helped de Blasio grow a pair,” a Cuomo aide tells Capital New York.

My favorite photo via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.