Bill Clinton Denies Having Been to Epstein’s Private Island, Spokesman Says

Bill Clinton Denies Having Been to Epstein’s Private Island, Spokesman Says
Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) in Atlanta, Ga., on July 30, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool/Getty Images)
Zachary Stieber
8/3/2020
Updated:
8/3/2020
Former President Bill Clinton, through a spokesperson, has denied ever having been to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, following the release of documents in which an alleged Epstein victim claimed to have seen Clinton there.

“The story keeps changing, the facts don’t,” Clinton spokesman Angel Urena said in a July 31 statement on social media. “President Clinton has never been to the island.”

In a separate statement to Newsweek, Urena said Clinton has “never been to Little St. James Island.”

“He'd not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade,” he added. “Well before [Epstein’s] terrible crimes came to light.”

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 36, accused Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting prostitution of minor girls in 2008, of sexually assaulting her numerous times, with the help of his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre told one lawyer that she remembered Clinton being present on Epstein’s plane.

“The majority of the girls that Jeffrey actually met or had on his plane or in his house were underage,” she said.

Epstein told Giuffre that lots of people owed him favors. He also said that he helped people for the sole purpose of having them owe him afterward.

“They’re all in each other’s pockets,” she said.

Giuffre said she did remember that, but wasn’t sure whether Epstein, who a medical examiner said killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges, was joking.

Little St. James Island, one of the properties owned by Jeffrey Epstein, in an aerial view near Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, on July 21, 2019. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
Little St. James Island, one of the properties owned by Jeffrey Epstein, in an aerial view near Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, on July 21, 2019. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

“Yes I do. It was a laugh, though. He would laugh it off. You know, I remember asking Jeffrey what’s Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes me a favor.’ He never told me what favors they were. I never knew. I didn’t know if he was serious. It was just a joke,” she said.

By “here,” Giuffre said she was referring to Epstein’s roughly 70-acre island in the Caribbean, named Little St. James and also known as Little St. Jeff’s. Locals knew it as “pedophile island.”

When Epstein and Clinton were on the island together, Maxwell—recently arrested for allegedly grooming minor girls for Epstein to abuse—was also there, as were two young girls from New York, Giuffre said.

Sexual orgies were a regular occurrence on the island, Giuffre and other women have said.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in late July ordered the unsealing of the new documents, which were part of a civil lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell.

Jeffrey Epstein, center, appears in court in West Palm Beach, Fla. on July 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post via AP)
Jeffrey Epstein, center, appears in court in West Palm Beach, Fla. on July 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post via AP)
Epstein visited the White House multiple times while Clinton was in office, according to files from the Clinton Library, and Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane a number of times after leaving office. The flights included underage girls, an investigative journalist has claimed. A portrait of the former president was found in Epstein’s New York mansion.
Urena said in a statement last year that Clinton was unaware of Epstein’s “terrible crimes.” The plane rides also included Clinton’s Secret Service detail and staff and supporters of the Clinton Foundation, he said.
Clinton also visited Epstein twice in New York City, and a former Clinton aide was among those at a dinner at Epstein’s home in 2010.
An ABC anchor was captured on internal video in 2016 saying executives “quashed“ a story that featured an interview with Giuffre.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, speaks in New York on Aug. 27, 2019. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, speaks in New York on Aug. 27, 2019. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

“It was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton, we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail, and it’s like these new revelations, and I freaking had all of it,” she said.

In a conversation with another lawyer that was part of the newly unsealed documents, Giuffre said Maxwell told her that she flew Clinton to the island on a helicopter. She said she wasn’t sure whether Maxwell was telling the truth, because “Ghislaine likes to talk a lot of stuff that sounds fantastical.”

Different details from Giuffre discussing the helicopter were unsealed in 2019. Giuffre said at the time that Maxwell flew Clinton in a black helicopter that Epstein had bought Maxwell but stressed that she didn’t personally witness Clinton being flown to the island.

The relevant parts can be found on pages 144 to 153 and 290 in a compilation that the website Law & Crime created of all of the unsealed documents.