Former President Bill Clinton has responded to the latest release of files associated with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein with a stern statement accusing the White House of using him as a scapegoat.
Clinton, who maintained a relationship with Epstein for years and who features prominently in the trove of images released by the Department of Justice on Friday, issued a statement via his press secretary that read, “The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton.”
“This 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. Never has, never will be.”
The statement continued, “Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton,” referring to Wiles’ assertion that Trump’s repeated claim that the Epstein files incriminate Clinton was incorrect.
“There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light,” the statement reads.
”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. Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.”
Trump’s absence from the files released on Friday is noteworthy, especially considering that Trump and Epstein were friends for much of the 1990s and 2000s and were photographed together multiple times.
Instead, several photos featuring Clinton, as well as other public figures like Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Mick Jagger, and Chris Tucker, could be found in a handful of visible images amid a sea of redacted ones.
A report from Fox News Digital said that while many of the redactions were made to protect victims’ identities, “the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials.”
Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from Epstein after maintaining a relationship with him during the 1990s and early 2000s, with Clinton reasserting in his Friday statement that he “cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light.”
While Clinton may have cut ties with Epstein by the end of the decade, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years in a federal prison on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, was in attendance at Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008.
Clinton has never been formally accused of any wrongdoing in connection with his relationship with Epstein, which included taking multiple trips on the financier’s private jet.
The Clintons were scheduled for depositions in front of the House Oversight Committee this week regarding their ties to Epstein, but their appearances have been rescheduled for January.
Trump, meanwhile, has not been called to testify regarding his own relationship with Epstein.
The president has faced increased scrutiny regarding his ties to Epstein in recent months, particularly as he dragged his feet on releasing the files.
Eventually, he agreed to sign the legislation when it became clear Congress would overwhelmingly pass a bill to force the DOJ to release them.
Despite eventually signing the bill, the damage was done, with a survey conducted earlier this month finding that 70 percent of Americans felt the Trump administration was trying to conceal the exact details surrounding the case, including the identities of Epstein’s associates who may have been complicit in his crimes.
