Jeffrey Epstein Donated to Clinton White House Fund

By Naomi LaChance  |  July 25, 2019 | 2:50am
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The relationship between former President Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and accused child rapist, date back to 1993, according to a new investigation from the Daily Beast.

Documents at the Clinton Library show Epstein’s name was on the guest list for a 1993 reception for people who donated to renovations for the White House that cost nearly $400,000. Also on the guest list was Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly facilitated Epstein’s predatory behavior toward teenage girls. A letter sent the next month from the White House Historical Association thanked Epstein for his $10,000 donation that would go toward changes to the Oval Office and parts of the Executive Residence.

Clinton took multiple trips on Epstein’s private jet, known as “The Lolita Express,” according to flight logs. In 1995, the two attended a small fundraising dinner together in Palm Beach. In 2003, the two men appeared in a photograph together in Vanity Fair from the previous year in Brunei.

In 2002, in a New York Magazine article with the extremely regrettable title of “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” Clinton called Epstein a “highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”

Angel Ureña, Clinton’s spokesperson, told the Daily Beast that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York. Any suggestion to the contrary, is both factually inaccurate and irresponsible.”

Another person Epstein has been close to, of course, is President Donald Trump. According to Politico:

It is unclear whether Ghislaine Maxwell first introduced Trump and Epstein, who socialized together at least as early as 1992, but she was crucial in ensuring Epstein’s access to Trump’s world. Archival video unearthed on Wednesday by NBC from that year shows Trump and Epstein surrounded by dancing women at Mar-a-Lago, with Maxwell smiling in the background.

The same article quoted an unnamed source who said that “Ghislaine was the contact between Epstein and Clinton.”

A CNBC report published Wednesday said that neither the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee responded to questions about whether they will keep their donations from Jeffrey Epstein. He gave more than $80,000 to the two groups starting in the early ‘90s, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Don Fowler, who was DNC co-chairman from 1995-7, gave CNBC a much clearer answer: “Go back and give money that he gave 20 years ago? Are you nuts? That’s my answer to that.”

Read the Daily Beast’s investigation here.

Correction, July 25, 3:30 a.m. ET: This headline originally misspelled Epstein’s name.

 
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