Former US President Bill Clinton has somewhat come clean about his controversial ties to the late disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. While admitting to some links, the 78-year-old political leader has denied other heavy allegations in a seemingly tell-all memoir “Citizen: My Life After the White House.” The book is scheduled to come out next week.
According to some of the memoir excerpts pre-released by The US Sun on Friday, Clinton wishes he’d never met the convicted pedophile. Nonetheless, since he did, he admits to having flown on Epstein’s private jet, the Lolita Express, in 2002 and 2003. However, he denies ever having visited Little Saint James, the controversial offender’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, despite a streak of speculations alleging his attendance at the infamous location at one point.
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Bill Clinton regrets meeting Jeffrey Epstein
The forthcoming book suggests that Epstein and Clinton bonded over their economics and politics talks. The billionaire reportedly offered the former president support by lending him his jet. In hindsight, Clinton writes in his memoir: “The bottom line is, even though it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, travelling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward. I wish I had never met him.”
Clinton details where he actually met Epstein. He says they only had two “brief” meetings—one in his own Harlem office and the other in the billionaire’s New York residence.
Clinton even describes the other man as “odd,” doubling down on how he still “had no inkling of the crimes he was committing.”
Reiterating he “never visited his island,” the ex-POTUS insists in his upcoming memoir that he knew nothing about how Epstein was hurting people. “…by the time he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped contract with him,” he adds.
Earlier this year, a May 2016 deposition was unsealed. In these legal documents, Epstein accus Virginia Roberts Giuffre set forth that his former partner Ghislaine Maxwell (a fellow convicted sex offender) may have fabricated the claims about helping Clinton fly to the late pedophile’s island on a helicopter. Although she firmly said “no” to ever being on the helicopter with Clinton and Maxwell, she did not deny crossing paths with the ex-president on the notoriously famed island.
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Bill Clinton’s years-old statement echoes his memoir’s revelations
Clinton’s comments in his book “Citizen” mirror the statement released in 2019, addressing his trips aboard Epstein’s private plane as he became entangled in the scandal tied to the billionaire who’s believed to have killed himself in his jail cell that same year.
“In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” a spokesman pushed the statement five years ago. The official release echoed Clinton’s revelations about the only two meetings he had with Epstein. “He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade and has never been to Little St James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida,” the note added.
Hollywood stars Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker reportedly accompanied Clinton and Epstein on one of these aforementioned trips to Africa.