Amid a long-standing conflict over whether former President Bill Clinton visited alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, a new report indicates that Clinton will be named in an upcoming release of court filings related to Epstein.
Multiple reports have indicated that Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet, which has garnered the media nickname of the “Lolita Express” due to the allegations of trafficking underage girls on it. That eventually ended up with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell being convicted on sex trafficking charges. Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide.
During her trial, pilot Larry Visoski said that during the years he flew Epstein’s private jet, Bill Clinton was indeed a passenger, according to The Associated Press.
A report from ABC said that Clinton – who is identified in the court records as “Doe 36” – will be among more than 150 people whose names will be made public after U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in December there was no reason to keep the names private.
ABC reported that Clinton is mentioned in more than 50 redacted filings from the case.
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The court records will outline extensive legal jockeying that took place in 2016, as Hillary Clinton was closing in on the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
Lawyers for Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre had sought to have the former president give a deposition in her civil lawsuit against Maxwell, which was settled in 2017.
In 2011, Giuffre described seeing Clinton on the Caribbean island Epstein owned, according to the New York Post.
“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,” Giuffre said of seeing the former president in a deposition unsealed in 2020.
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According to ABC, Maxwell called the move “utter nonsense” and a “transparent ploy by [Giuffre] to increase media exposure for her sensational stories through deposition side-show,” her attorney Laura Menninger wrote in a court filing.
Giuffre was unable to get the deposition from Clinton after a court ruled against her in June 2016.
ABC noted that because there was no trial in Giuffre’s lawsuit, the issue of Clinton’s presence was never settled in court.
“More information about the debate over the issue could become public in the documents to be unsealed,” the outlet reported.
A 2019 statement from The Clinton Foundation claimed that Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to,” according to Newsweek.
“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,” the statement read.
“Staff, supporters of the foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of every trip. He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail. He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and he has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida,” the statement said.
ABC reported that flight logs that have currently been released do not mention Bill Clinton flying to Epstein’s island.
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee has recently called on the Senate to subpoena the full list of flight logs to disclose who flew on Epstein’s jet.
