The Trump administration, initially wary over the Justice Department’s release of Jeffrey Epstein documents, pounced on go-to villain Bill Clinton’s appearance in Friday’s trove of pictures, emails and interviews.
“I wonder why the Biden DOJ refused to release the files…,” DOJ spokesperson Chad Gilmartin posted from his personal X account, alongside one partially-redacted photo of Clinton in a pool with an unidentified woman. Another swimming pool photo Gilmartin posted shows Clinton with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime co-conspirator who was convicted of sex trafficking charges in 2021.
Trump and the DOJ also resisted releasing the files until Congress passed a bill to do so. Trump signed the bill last month.
Clinton has long been linked with Epstein, contributing to his status as MAGA’s favored boogeyman. Some high-profile members of the movement cited him in pushing for the release of the files, and continued that message after the DOJ made public a trove of documents from the government’s investigation into Epstein.
“Slick Willy! @BillClinton just chillin, without a care in the world. Little did he know…” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted to X.
“Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors. Time for the media to start asking real questions,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson posted to her personal X account.
The act also allowed the DOJ to redact material related to active investigations.
It’s unclear when the previously unreleased photo was taken and where the pool is located.
Clinton appears in photos posing with Epstein in coordinating shirts, interacting with a dancer, sitting with a redacted woman on his lap on what looks like an airplane and with someone who appears to be the late pop icon Michael Jackson. The music legend faced his own child sex abuse allegations as early as 1993, though he was never convicted of any crimes.
The former president is also seen at a dinner sitting next to rock star Mick Jagger, alongside Maxwell and Epstein.
Epstein faced state and federal charges over two decades related to the sexual abuse and trafficking of dozens of underage girls as young as 14. He pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges in 2008, one of which was for soliciting prostitution from someone under 18. He was awaiting trial on federal child trafficking charges when he died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019. His connections to the wealthy and powerful, and efforts to keep information related to him from becoming public, has become part of the national political narrative – intensifying bipartisan sniping and deepening fractures in Trump’s base.
The files were heavily redacted. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier Friday that the first dissemination would be partial, with as many as hundreds of thousands of more documents to follow in the coming weeks.
A spokesperson for Clinton said the Friday afternoon timing of the document release is “about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever.”
“So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Angel Ureña, deputy chief of staff for Clinton, posted in a statement on X. “There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
Clinton and Epstein have been linked since the early 1990s, having run in the same social circles. They have been photographed together several times. Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane in the early 2000s, taking trips to Europe, Asia and Africa. Ureña said those trips included stops for work connected to the Clinton Foundation.
The former president has never been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein, and said he was not aware of Epstein’s crimes, something a Clinton spokesperson reiterated in a social media post six years ago.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee this month released additional photos from Epstein’s estate that feature Clinton.
Trump has long suggested that Clinton repeatedly visited Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the location of alleged sex trafficking and abuse where the financier hosted high-profile friends. But White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a Vanity Fair interview published this week that Trump was “wrong” to tie Clinton to Epstein’s criminal activity.
Trump and Epstein were longtime friends before Trump said they had a falling out several years ago. The president has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation.
Brakkton Booker contributed to this report.
