Clinton and Epstein: the relationship

Bill Clinton flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 in 2002 and 2003. The logs list him on 26 flight legs. Those legs belong to four international trips that Clinton has described as Clinton Foundation work, with stops including Bangkok, Brunei, Rwanda, Russia and China. His last logged flight was in November 2003. [1][2]

Counting matters, because the numbers get swapped. Clinton’s office said “four trips.” FactCheck.org counted 26 legs across the itineraries in the logs. In July 2025 President Trump said Clinton had gone to Epstein’s island “28 times.” None of the flight records that have surfaced in court show Clinton on a flight to the island. That is a fact about the logs, not proof about every trip anyone ever took. [1][3]

Epstein’s longtime pilot, Larry Visoski, testified at Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial that Clinton flew on the plane. So, he said, did Donald Trump. Flight logs from that trial are linked from the Justice Department’s February 2025 release, so you can read them yourself. [4][5]

In his 2026 deposition Clinton said Epstein was on most of those flights and that his staff spent the time working, sleeping and playing cards. That is his account. Several of the trips also carried Secret Service agents, staff and celebrities, which is why a passenger list alone tells you little about what happened on board. [1]

Clinton’s office said in July 2019 that he “has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.” In July 2025 Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche: “He never, absolutely never went.” She said Clinton was her friend, not Epstein’s. Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker who was seeking relief at the time, so her word carries her own interests. [1][2]

Virginia Giuffre told Britain’s Mail on Sunday in 2011 that she had dined on the island with Epstein, Clinton, Maxwell and two young women. She said she was not “lent out” to Clinton and saw nothing sexual involving him. In a 2016 deposition, unsealed in 2024, she did not retract the meeting, but she said Maxwell’s story of flying Clinton in by helicopter might be exaggerated: “Ghislaine likes to talk a lot of stuff that sounds fantastical.” [1][3]

Doug Band, a longtime Clinton aide who later fell out with him, told Vanity Fair in 2020 that Clinton visited the island in 2003. On 30 June 2026 Band testified to House Oversight behind closed doors. According to Rep. Nancy Mace and sources who spoke to CNN, he said he had no evidence Clinton went and did not remember why he had told the magazine he did. [4][5]

Giuffre’s memoir, published after her death in 2025, says she was at dinners with Clinton. It does not accuse him of wrongdoing. Clinton told the committee under oath in February 2026 that he was never on the island. [6][7]

So the honest answer is: unsettled, but leaning one way. No log puts him there; Clinton and Maxwell deny it under oath or in a government interview; the aide who said it has retreated. Giuffre’s account is the main one standing, and she did not allege abuse by him. Even a visit would not show he knew of or took part in abuse. [1][3][5]

White House visitor logs reviewed by ABC News show Epstein signing in 17 times between 1993 and 1995. A log entry shows someone was cleared in. It does not show who they saw or why. [1][3]

The photo at the top of this page is real. White House photographer Ralph Alswang took it on 29 September 1993, at a reception for donors to the White House restoration fund, according to the Clinton Library. It shows Maxwell, Epstein and the president. In 2026 Clinton said he did not remember meeting Epstein there; he called it a generic meet-and-greet. [2][4]

There was money too. Epstein gave $1,000 to Clinton’s 1992 campaign and $20,000 in 1999 to a joint fundraising committee for Hillary Clinton’s Senate race and the Democratic Party. The Clinton Foundation has said it received one $25,000 gift from an Epstein-related foundation in 2006. That was the year Florida charged Epstein. [1]

In 2002 Clinton’s spokesman praised Epstein in New York magazine as “a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist.” In 2026 Clinton said under oath that he first remembers meeting Epstein when he boarded the plane for the first foundation trip, and that Larry Summers made the introduction. [1][4]

Johanna Sjoberg, who has said Epstein abused her, testified in a 2016 deposition that Epstein once told her Clinton “likes them young.” The transcript was unsealed in January 2024 and the line went viral as if it were an eyewitness account. [1]

It is not. Sjoberg was reporting what Epstein said. Later in the same deposition she said she never met Clinton and never saw him on the island or in Maxwell’s helicopter. Epstein boasted about famous friends; whether this remark was true, a lie or a joke is not something the transcript can tell you. [1]

In his February 2026 deposition, Rep. Nancy Mace asked Clinton about the remark. He said it was “not true” that he had any interest in underage girls. Mace then asked whether an intern was young. He said yes. [2]

On 19 December 2025 the Justice Department released hundreds of photos under the new transparency law. Several show Clinton: one with a young woman perched on the arm of his chair, one in a hot tub with his hands behind his head, one with Epstein in matching shiny shirts. The department redacted faces of possible victims. It did not say when or where the photos were taken. [1]

The massage photo is older news. It shows Chauntae Davies, then 22 and later an Epstein accuser, rubbing Clinton’s neck. Snopes traced it to a refuelling stop in Portugal in September 2002 on the Africa AIDS trip; the Daily Mail first published it in 2020. Davies has said Maxwell suggested the massage and that “President Clinton was a perfect gentleman.” Clinton told investigators his neck had spasmed. [2][3]

Asked in 2026 about the hot-tub photo, Clinton said he did not know who the other person was and denied any sexual activity with her. His spokesman called the releases “grainy 20-plus-year-old photos” and accused the administration of using them to change the subject. [3][5]

And the painting: a real oil painting titled “Parsing Bill” shows Clinton in a blue dress and red heels. It was shown at a New York art event in 2012. A photo of it hanging on a wall appeared in the December 2025 release. Snopes found the artist did not know whether Epstein bought it, and Maxwell said she never saw it. [4]

Maxwell told the deputy attorney general in July 2025 that she, not Epstein, was Clinton’s friend: “President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well.” She said she helped at the start of the Clinton Global Initiative and that Epstein “may have helped me help them.” She said Clinton was not interested in Epstein: “He was just a rich guy with a plane.” [1][2]

Giuffre’s accounts changed over 14 years. In 2011 she told a British paper about an island dinner with Clinton. In a 2016 deposition she stood by meeting him there but doubted Maxwell’s helicopter story. Her posthumous memoir mentions dinners with Clinton but makes no accusation against him. [2][3][4]

In 2026 Clinton said “we had been friendly with Ghislaine,” called her case “really hard” for him, and said she “has to be punished.” [5]

In September 2025 the House Oversight Committee released records from Epstein’s estate, including the album Maxwell assembled for his 50th birthday in 2003. Clinton is listed under “Friends.” His handwritten note praises Epstein’s “childlike curiosity, the drive to make a difference and the solace of friends.” [1][2][3]

Asked about it under oath, Clinton said: “I thought Epstein was interesting and curious. So, I wrote a letter that I thought reflected that.” He denied it referred to anything inappropriate. He also said: “I felt friendly toward him, but he was, as I said in my book, odd.” [4]

Clinton’s 2019 statement described limited contact. The fuller record — 17 White House sign-ins, four long trips, a birthday note, Maxwell’s friendship — shows more than a passing acquaintance. It does not show knowledge of the abuse, which became public in 2005–06, after his last logged flight. [3]