Inside Bill Clinton’s ‘close’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
When the FBI arrested billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein on July 6, 2019, at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, disgusting revelations of his sex trafficking crimes surfaced.
So did his mysterious, monied world — populated by A-listers, politicians, and captains of industry.
Among the bizarre revelations was an oil painting hanging prominently in his Upper East Side townhouse.
Dubbed “Parsing Bill,” the colorful work by Australian artist Petrina Ryan-Kleid shows former President Clinton wearing a blue dress and red heels while lounging in the Oval Office.
“It was hanging up there prominently — as soon as you walked in — in a room to the right,” a source told The Post back in 2019. “Everybody who saw it laughed and smirked.”
Now — as a deluge of long-awaited documents, including names of more than 170 associates of the late sex trafficker Epstein, was released this week — an insider told The Post that the cheeky painting is symbolic of the relationship between Epstein and Clinton, 77.
“It does show how comfortable they were around each other to joke about something like that,” the insider told The Post. “Many in Clinton’s world are sycophantic, but they were close.”
(A Clinton insider sniffed: “The painting doesn’t indicate anything other than Epstein had bad taste in art.”)
Though he hasn’t been implicated in criminal activity, Clinton’s name appeared in the newly leaked documents — all filed in Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell — at least 73 times.
“[Epstein] said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” Epstein victim Joanna Sjoberg testified in 2016.
Asked for comment, Clinton spokesperson Angela Urena referred back to a 2019 statement which said Clinton hadn’t spoken to Epstein in “well over a decade” and “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago or those which he has been recently charged in New York.”
When it comes to uncovering exactly how the two men met, Clinton world insiders are quick to pass the buck.
While one very well-placed source told The Post that socialite Lynne de Rothschild — a Hillary Clinton fundraiser — introduced Epstein to Clinton, she denied this and suggested it was “well established” that “Ghislaine had introduced Epstein to the Clintons through some White House furnishings fundraiser.”
According to visitor logs, Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times, beginning shortly after Clinton was sworn into office in 1993.
What we know about the Jeffrey Epstein list of 170 associates
- On Wednesday, documents were released naming 170 associates of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The list included Michael Jackson, magician David Copperfield, Stephen Hawking, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President Bill Clinton — who an Epstein victim said “likes them young, referring to girls.”
- Disgraced royal Prince Andrew, a known friend of Epstein, was named in the documents and was previously sued by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who accused Andrew of sexual misconduct toward her. According to one royal family expert, the Firm “will stand beside” the Duke of York “no matter what.”
- Epstein’s former attorney and friend Alan Dershowitz defended the late multimillionaire sex offender’s associates, saying: “None of us knew about his private life that he kept so secret.” Dershowitz, who is on the list, added that no one should be automatically convicted in the court of public opinion simply for showing up in court documents.
- Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told The Post that the ex-business mogul said he could have upended the 2016 election over what he knew about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: “Here’s a direct quote: ‘If I said what I know about both candidates, they’d have to cancel the election.’ That’s what Jeffrey told me in 2016.”
- Only some of the 170 names and their relationships to Epstein have been released. The remainder of the documents will likely become public record throughout the next week.
Photos show the two with Maxwell — Epstein’s right-hand woman and onetime girlfriend, now serving 20 years for child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection to Epstein — at a 1993 event for donors to the White House Historical Association.
According to the Daily Beast, Epstein gave $10,000.
In 2006, Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to Vanity Fair.
But Epstein and Clinton’s relationship first became public in 2002 when they traveled to Africa on Epstein’s plane — the so-called Lolita Express — for a humanitarian trip along with actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker.
Pictures have since surfaced from that flight of Clinton posing with Maxwell — and getting a massage from Epstein accuser Chauntae Davies, who has said Maxwell egged her on.
“Ghislaine chimed in to be funny and said that I could give him a massage,” said Davies of Clinton. “Everyone had a little chuckle but Ghislaine in her prim British accent insisted and said I was good.”
Davies maintains the 42nd President kept his hands to himself: “President Clinton was a perfect gentleman during the trip and I saw absolutely no foul play involving him.”
He took at least nine flights on the infamous airplane, but there are no records of him traveling to Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, where the financier is said to have sex-trafficked scads of women and which was raided by the FBI in 2019.
One source who knows the Clintons said there was nothing unusual about his relationship with Epstein or Maxwell.
“Former presidents — all of them — borrow private jets, they have relationships of a transactional nature,” said the source, adding that former presidents have Secret Service detail for life. “They’re never alone. Bill would never have been on a plane by himself.”
But the insider said the relationship was more than transactional, explaining that Clinton, Epstein, and Maxwell were truly buddies who had dinners together and that the two men would have private chats in the back of the plane.
“Any downplaying of their relationship is ridiculous. Epstein had an allure to Clinton. He was the elusive cool billionaire. And women liked him,” the insider said. “Clinton wanted everyone to love him, and this mysterious guy comes along and shows interest in him.”
The insider — who called Epstein and Maxwell “two of the sickest fraudsters” — also said to not underestimate Maxwell’s social charms. “Everyone was benefiting from it.”
Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Urena told The Post “President Clinton was not friends with [Epstein], and to suggest otherwise is categorically false. Their brief acquaintance revolved strictly around philanthropic work.”
Yet Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky. (A Clinton insider said she was a guest of her ex, businessman Ted Waitt).
Follow along with everything we’ve found out about Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
In an explosive Vanity Fair interview in 2020, Clinton’s former aide and gatekeeper Doug Band said he tried to cut Epstein and Maxwell out of his boss’ life.
“I knew in telling everyone to stop including Ghislaine, that Chelsea and her father would be very angry. It made it harder for them to justify being close to her,” Band said.
“Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes. Chelsea needed that.”
A Clinton family spokesperson defended Chelsea to the magazine at the time, saying, “It wasn’t until 2015 that Chelsea became aware of the horrific allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell … Chelsea was friendly with her because of Maxwell’s relationship with a dear friend. When that relationship ended, Chelsea’s relationship with her ended as well.”
Band, who left the Clinton fold in late 2011, told the publication that Epstein gave him pause as far back as the 2002 trip to Africa because he was a fabulist who claimed to have invented derivatives, among other absurd stories.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting a single minor and served 13 months in prison.
According to the Daily Beast, Clinton met Maxwell and her husband Scott Borgerson for dinner at Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles in February 2014.
“This is an intimate dinner with Clinton in LA,” a source told The outlet. “Think of all the people he knows in LA and Ghislaine gets to attend.”
But after an explosive 2018 expose by the Miami Herald on Epstein’s previous sweetheart plea deal, he was arrested again.
Federal authorities alleged that, from 2002 to 2005, he abused nearly three dozen girls — most of them between the ages of 13 and 16 — at his Manhattan and Palm Beach homes.
In August 2019, Epstein died by hanging in his Manhattan jail cell.
It was ruled a suicide.
In 2020, Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested for grooming young girls for sex in connection with Epstein.
She is currently serving 20 years in prison.
The documents released this week, at the order of Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska, were part of a since-settled defamation lawsuit that Epstein accuser Giuffre brought against Maxwell in 2015.
Among the previously redacted revelations was a victim claiming Epstein had pimped her out to powerful politicians so he could secure blackmail material.
An incredible array of rich and powerful names show up in the documents.
Prince Andrew is alleged to have taken part in an underage orgy on Epstein’s Little St. James Island. (He has denied the allegations against him and settled with Giuffre, who has said she was forced to sleep with him, for a reported $12 million.)
In her 2016 deposition, Giuffre claimed to have had sex “once” with Hyatt Hotels heir Tom Pritzker, whose spokesperson said he “continues to vehemently deny” the allegation.
Giuffre also testified that Maxwell sent her to have sex with late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, according to the documents.
Donald Trump, it was revealed by Epstein’s butler, would come by the financier’s Palm Beach home for meals — but never a massage.
Trump has not been accused of any crimes or wrongdoing concerning Epstein.
Sjoberg, who said she worked for Epstein from 2001 until 2006, testified in the newly released documents that she met pop icon Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach home — and that magician David Copperfield, who was performing illusions for Epstein, “questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” noting that the illusionist did not specify what he meant.
As the documents were released throughout the week, Clinton didn’t seem to be sweating the spotlight — he was seen greeting fans in Mexico, seemingly without a care in the world.
Additional reporting by Joshua Rhett Miller and Kathianne Boniello
