Former President Bill Clinton has denied ever visiting former associate Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and expressed remorse about ever meeting the disgraced financier – who died awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
“I wish I had never met him,” Clinton wrote in his new memoir, “Citizen,” according to The Associated Press, which reviewed an advance copy.
Clinton took flights on Epstein’s prive jet on trips for the Clinton Foundation. He wrote that they only discussed “politics and economics” and that he never traveled to Epstein’s infamous Little St. James Island.
“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” he wrote, according to a review in the Telegraph, which also obtained an advance copy. “I wish I had never met him.”
Former President Bill Clinton receives a massage from Chauntae Davies in 2002 at a small airport in Portugal during a fuel stop for Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 which was bound for Africa from New York. (Mega)
After leaving the White House in 2001, Clinton moved to New York and set up a new office in Harlem. He met Epstein there in person once, and they met again in Epstein’s Big Apple mansion, Clinton wrote, according to the U.S. Sun.
The book is largely about Clinton’s post-presidential life in philanthropy, and he wrote that his encounters with Epstein focused on his charitable foundation.
In court documents related to a lawsuit against Epstein’s right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, Clinton’s name came up – although he was not accused of taking part in any of Epstein or Maxwell’s crimes.
Jeffrey Epstein, center, and Ghislaine Maxwell meet with then-President Clinton at the White House at an event that took place in 1993 for donors to the White House Historical Association. (Mega)
In a deposition from Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, who had worked as a “masseuse” for the disgraced financier, she said Epstein bragged about knowing him.
“I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton,” she said. “I did not know they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article about them going to Africa together.”
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“Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Bill Clinton?” attorney Sigrid McCawley, who represents Epstein victims, asked in the deposition.
“He said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” Sjoberg said.
An aerial view of Little St. James Island, Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (U.S. Department of Justice/Mega)
Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and his spokesman Angel Urena noted when Sjoberg’s testimony was released that the former president could have opposed the unsealing of his name but did not.
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Urena also denied claims in the documents that Clinton and Epstein had any kind of personal relationship.
“I had always thought Epstein was odd but had no inkling of the crimes he was committing,” Clinton writes in the book.
Clinton added that the trips he did take on Epstein’s jet happened years before the financier was first charged with sex crimes in Florida. He cut off contact after learning of the criminal case.
Epstein received a slap on the wrist in 2008 but was facing more serious federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 when he died in a jail cell.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
